A boyish girl, a strong sense of justice, and plenty of guns
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Naoe
Translation: Leighann Harvey
What They Say
Hotaru Tachibana is a girl (though all too frequently mistaken for a boy!) with a deep sense of justice. When a classmate informs Hotaru that she was bilked out of her cash by a shady host at a host club, Hotaru immediately rushes to confront the villain only to discover that the con man in question is her new neighbor! Worse, he proposes to settle their feud with firearms!
Okay, it turns out that they’re just toys, but when Hotaru is soundly defeated, she finds herself sucked into the world of survival games. Is this new world one she can actually escape?
Technical:
The front cover here is a rather nice dynamic image of Masamune holding his gun, with a crosshair placed over the whole image. It just clicks together nicely and gives the book a little extra added flair. The back cover, on the other hand, goes for an incredibly simple image of two guns over a plain white background alongside a synopsis. It’s a bit flat and simplistic for my tastes, but it does at least somewhat work as a minimalist approach. Paper quality feels solid, text reads smoothly, honorifics are maintained, and sound effects are left in their original format and subtitled. Extras are unfortunately a little on the light side, with just one color page and a short bonus manga at the end.
The art is a bit on the better side of your stock stuff. In other words, it definitely looks like a lot of other stuff out there and doesn’t really carve out its own style, but it’s all competently executed and looks solid. The characters are fairly distinct and well differentiated, though, and their outfits actually are quite nice. And the action comes across quite well too. It’s also worth noting that the book oddly enough goes through a weird change in style halfway through due to the shift into proper serialization. It’s not a huge change or anything that kills the book, but it’s definitely noticeable and a bit of an oddity, to be sure. Oh, and the art every once in a while has the characters’ noses look a bit overly long from the side. It doesn’t kill the art in the slightest, but it’s a bit of a distraction. So all in all, this is a book with a solid art style, but one that doesn’t really do much to help set it apart from the pack.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Hotaru Tachibana is our heroine for this book, a high school girl with the familiar affliction of being easily mistaken for a boy. Hell, she even does the “wears a boy’s uniform at school” thing with absolutely no explanation. Anyway, she moves into a new place and finds that her neighbor is a rather brash man by the name of Masamune Matsuoka. And since she’s the sort to be an over the top self proclaimed ally of justice, they of course clash a good bit in their first meeting. The big twist, though, is that she happens to notice that he just plain has a gun lying around. But back at school, the plot really kicks off when her friend, Kanae, mentions that she was tricked out of her money by someone from a host club. With this Hotaru busts into the club and finds the host, who is of course Masamune. This leads to a high stakes battle between them using guns, as was hinted at earlier! But of course it turns out that they’re just toy guns. Still, we get an over the top battle between the two, trashing the club in the process. And to be honest, the action is pretty great here, which definitely makes for a nice hook for the book. That said, Hotaru loses and ends up forced to play on Masamune’s survival game team until she in turn pays off her debt for the damages. To be perfectly honest, it feels weirdly like someone decided to apply the setup from Ouran High School Host Club to the survival game boom to get here, which is just a bit odd. But it’s ultimately not a big deal and actually ends up dropped anyway, so it doesn’t really detract from the book.
The second chapter is where we kick things off proper, with Hotaru properly becoming involved in a toy gun battle. And the big element this time around is the introduction of their third member, Tooru Yukimura, a perverted manga artist who doesn’t exactly take to our heroine at first. Thus, it turns into a struggle to learn the game, take out the jerky opponents, and also turn things around with this rather maladjusted fellow. Fortunately, the book handles that well, providing a nice mix of gags and action in order to add this new cast member fairly seamlessly. And then… the book shifts a tad, as it changed from a short story to a serialized one. The most obvious of these changes is that the debt is effectively called off off-screen, leaving Hotaru with no reason to stay in the group. It’s actually done pretty solidly, smoothly changing Hotaru from someone who’s trapped to someone who’s into the game. I have to say that it’s kind of rare to see this sort of trope thrown away so early, making for a kind of neat change of pace. Hell, the stated issue with her being unable to reveal her true gender is even tossed, leaving her just kind of stuck waiting for the right moment to correct the other guys, which is amusing in and of itself.
Things continue on pretty naturally from there, with Hotaru getting her own gun, for example. But with hints of things getting more serious in the form of a big tournament, will it be able to hold together the enjoyable flow it’s had thus far?
In Summary
This volume makes for an interesting start to the series, marrying some charming characters to a good bit of worn tropes. Fortunately, the book actually recognizes its overdone elements and casually drops them midway through, instead opting to focus on its strengths. And those strengths lie in its amusing cast that play off each other as well, and the action that’s done rather well. It’ll still remain to be seen if this can be maintained, though, as things seem to heading in a somewhat more serious direction by the end of things. Which of course isn’t inherently bad and can still be played well, but it seems a bit against what this volume was best at. Oh, and there is a bit of an odd shift in the middle of the book due to the change over from short story to serialization, though it’s not jarring enough to really be a problem. All in all, this adds up to a book with some definite potential that makes for a solid read, though it doesn’t quite hit the point of being overly special just yet. Still, be sure to keep an eye on it, as it still could turn out to be quite the unique and charming series, based on what’s set up here.
Content Grade: B+
Art Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: B+
Text/Translation Grade: B+
Age Rating: Older Teen
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: October 25th, 2016
MSRP: $12.99
