Creative Staff
Story/Art: Adachitoka
Translation: Althea Nibley & Athena Nibley
What They Say
While Kugaha continues to plot Bishamon’s downfall, Yukine wonders what happened to his new friend Suzuha. He sees Kazuma leaving flowers at Suzuha’s cherry tree and follows him back to the heavens – right into the enemy stronghold. But when Bishamon attacks, Kazuma is forced to choose whose side he is really on.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Hiyori finally confronts Yato about him stalking her, and decides to start visiting even more frequently. Meanwhile, Kugaha plays his card by telling Kazuma that Suzuha is dead. Worried, he then goes to investigate, and Yukine ends up running into him when going to check up on his friend. This sequence of events ends with Yukine back at Bishamonten’s place, forcing Suzuha to come clean that he’s been in contact with Yato. Though this doesn’t result in the excommunication Kugaha was hoping for, Bishamonten still ends up banishing him.
This ends up as quite a shock for all of Bishamonten’s shinki, who end up feeling the loss dearly. Meanwhile, Kazuma ends up crashing at Kofuku’s place, but he’s obviously quite shaken up. Things start to heat up again when Aiha, one of Bishamonten’s shinki, comes to attack Yato with… a weird magic stick. When Kugaha joins in the tide quickly turns against our heroes, and the corrupt shinki manages to grab Hiyori. Before the villain can get away, though Kazuma steps in. It seems for a second like he has things under control, but as he doesn’t realize that Kugaha has become a stray he gets caught off guard and captured as well.
It is in this final part of the volume that things finally start to heat up and get interesting, with Kugaha’s plan coming to fruition. Yato is finally lured into a confrontation with Bishamonten, with Kugaha hoping for his “mistress” to fall in battle, and then be reborn into a new form that he can manipulate. Before this can advance too far, though, we actually get to finally see what happened between Yato and Bishamonten in the past. And fortunately, it’s a powerful tale that’s easily the best part of the volume. The battle then heats up, until it hits a shocking cliffhanger to bring the volume to a close.
In Summary
Though there are some big twists in this volume, it’s a bit of a mixed back, with the first half being unfortunately a little slow. The big event there is what happens to Kazuma, which has a bit of a punch when it occurs, but it doesn’t really feel like it has as much of an effect as you would think. It’s just kind of something that happens before the plot moves on to the next, bigger event. Which fortunately does salvage the end of the book to a good degree, with some serious action and emotions coming into play as a result. This includes a rather nice flashback that’s played quite well, and easily becomes the strongest part of the book. In the end, this is a volume ends up lopsided, with a weak first half followed by a strong back part, making for a book that’s decent but not exceptional. Still, the end of the book does set up quite a bit of interesting plot points, so hopefully future volumes will be a little more back on track.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: A-
Packaging Grade: A-
Text/Translation Grade: A-
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Kodansha Comics
Release Date: June 23rd, 2015
MSRP: $10.99