A mix of great and really, really terrible.
Creative Staff
Story: Kazuma Kamachi
Art: Kiyotaka Haimura
Translation: Andrew Prowse and Yoshito Hinton
What They Say
The Daihasei Festival–a huge athletics festival attended by every school in Academy City, where the superpowered students attending these institutions gather to compete in a wide variety of competitions. And of course, Touma Kamijou is participating. His terrible luck is still in full effect–he’s gnawed on by a famished Index, castigated by a representative of the festival management committee, and zapped mid-competition by none other than Mikoto Misaka. But Academy city’s about to have a much bigger problem–and her name is Oriana Thomson.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
As always, we kick off the volume with some setup, unsurprisingly in a form somewhat detached from our main cast. First, this is through Touma’s parents, in which we learn the basics of the Daihasei Festival… which is essentially just a giant athletics festival in which Academy City opens its doors more widely to let spectators in. More interestingly, though, this is followed by Aleister and Laura discussing a shady deal that will be utilizing this lax security to exchange an important relic right in the scientific center of the world. It’s an interesting enough way to play on the complex politics that have cropped up now and again in the series so far, though I do have to say… the name for the artifact in question, the “Stab Sword”, sounds really damn underwhelming. Like, I can’t speak to if it has any actual legitimate ties to anything from the real world, and I realize it probably sounded better in the original, but as is it just sounds so terribly bland and generic for a supposedly important plot device.
Anyway, the Daihasei Festival is indeed a big part of the volume, and to tackle that part first… it’s honestly pretty awful. Well, perhaps that’s a bit much of an over exaggeration, but those parts of the book are pure clichés and little else, which is terribly lame. In theory there’s a little bit of something different with the addition of superpowers and the scale of the thing, but that doesn’t really change anything of note, and things still end up terribly uninteresting as a whole. And at the core of this is the obligatory female character introduction for the volume, by the name of Seiri Fukuyose, a member of the administrative committee. In theory she has a slight arc about how she’s giving it her all to make sure everyone enjoys the festival, but it’s just terribly empty, inconsequential, and generic that it’s hard to care at all. Instead, most of her scenes go straight to the cliché of accidentally groping and/or seeing undressing crap that you’ve seen a million times (there are legitimately like 4-5 instances of this exact scene in this volume alone which is insane).
Like, I’m used to fanservice and pandering, but this is excessively blunt and empty on a whole other level, leaving the character completely underdeveloped and cataclysmically uninteresting, which is a real shame. Oh, and she gets a real halfbaked victim role near the end, because of course she does (and I’ll go ahead and spoil that no, it’s not well done or worth caring about in the slightest).
On the other hand, the actual action of the book is quite good. The core revolves around Touma, Stiyl, and Tsuchimikado trying to track down Oriana Thomson, a famous smuggler working on the deal. This results in a wild and action packed chase that feels a bit different from what’s come before, which is certainly nice. Rather than someone trying to crush all opposition with overwhelming force, this is someone who’s just really good at getting away, which makes for a real enjoyable change of pace. And to top it all off, we get a nice unexpected cliffhanger leading into the next time around, which certainly leaves things in an interesting place.
In Summary
This volume is a real frustrating one, as part of it really does work quite well. Which is to say, the action feels truly fresh and helps pull you in, making for a great read. It’s a whole different sort of battle, focusing around a grand chase, and it truly doesn’t feel like anything the series has already done. But then you have the more “silly” parts of the volume, and they are a near unbelievable degree of cliché and bland, building about half the book out of concepts that have been long since worn down into nothingness. At the core of this is Seiri Fukuyose, the new character who may as well not be in the book. She feels just completely and utterly unnecessary, outside of I guess the need for some pinup images and talking about her breasts.
Like, she’s less interesting or relevant than any other character in the series thus far, and that includes the one whose sole ability is slaying vampires in a series that thus far has no vampires. Really, this book could’ve cut about 100 pages and been a far more involving read, as that whole portion of the volume does nothing but drag it down heavily with worthless fluff that you’ve most certainly seen done better hundreds of times before. If you’re a fan of the series, I’d say it’s worth struggling through all that to get to the good stuff, especially since things end on an interesting note. Just be prepared for a whole lot of doldrums before you get to anything worth caring about, as this book is absolutely packed to the brim with that stuff.
Content Grade: B-
Art Grade: N/A
Packaging Grade: B+
Text/Translation Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: November 15th, 2016
MSRP: $14.00
