Well… it at least has one scene that works, so I guess that’s something
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Sakae Esuno
Translation: Caleb Cook
What They Say
With the help of his father, Gennai, Eiji finally solves the mystery behind the Great Destruction, regaining his memories of the wish he made ten years ago and discovering his true ability…But will it be enough to stop Gennai from achieving his twisted goals?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Now that Sena has been kidnapped, she finds herself under Gennai’s care. This starts with some bonding between Sena and Rin… which entirely takes place with them in the bath, complete with plentiful shots of their naked bodies. And like, I’m realizing now that I don’t know exactly how old Sena’s supposed to be, but isn’t she almost certainly too young to be doing that kind of thing with? Not to mention that it’s pretty crassly done “fanservice” in general, of course. Anyway, the whole point of this chapter is pretty much showing that Sena’s more mentally tough or whatever than previously let on, ending with her threatening to kill herself more or less to gain Fran (who the enemy were prepared to eliminate) as someone working for her sake. Which, by the by, is done with a panel of her in theory sticking out her tongue like she’s going to bite down on it, but it just looks really awful and comes across super poorly.
Next up, Eiji breaks out on his own alongside Ayahito, who turns out to be a real weirdo who looks up to our hero in a really twisted way. They end up in a fight with the one Momotaro guy who jams a little ogre thing into Eiji’s throat so he can’t speak. Because naturally, when you plan poorly enough as to give your hero such a broken power, you have to go out of your way to cripple it each and every fight so he doesn’t instantly win. Oh, and the answer is naturally Order Fusion again, though I guess this one at least feels like it actually does something.
We do actually get one decent moment, in which Sena steps up and sneakily sets up a conversation between her and Gennai in front of the media in which she throws out all the crap he’s done rather directly. I still wouldn’t call it great, but this war of words at least goes a lot better than most “fights” in the series thus far, so that’s something, and much more so than the bit from earlier in the volume, it feels like something that helps elevate Sena from mere “damsel in distress” status. But then it just ends with Eiji rushing in and getting beaten while the enemy retreats along with Sena anyway.
And then, the back half of the book throws away what little good will had been built up thus far. Sena just hops on board with Gennai’s plan to sacrifice her entirely upon learning the truth, even going so far as to stab Eiji in the process. So that throws away pretty much all of her characterization from the first half. And then we get a dumb twist that oh, it turns out Eiji’s real power was to mess with their memories and steal Sena’s power, which is the one he has now, so he could take the blame. So it’s totally fine, he didn’t do anything bad at all, even by accident, and is totally a great guy! And also everything is needlessly complicated further! So… yeah, I’m not too fond of the events here. Maybe ending on a big cliffhanger will actually shake things up in a good way, though? I doubt it of course, but stranger things have happened.
In Summary
So, on the whole, I’d say this volume is… I guess a slight step up from the last two? It at least has one scene that more or less works, which is kind of more than I can say for what we got before. Sadly though, even that ends awkwardly and then is completely undermined more or less in the back half though, so I can’t even really give a full compliment there, honestly. And I guess the example of “Order Fusion” feels slightly less awful, even if it’s still not great? Though on the other hand, it also has a pretty shameless bit of poorly done, very questionable fanservice awkwardly paired with what’s supposed to be a significant character moment that all that crap undercuts more than a bit, so… yeah. I guess in the end “slightly less bad” is still at least a step up though, so maybe that’s a sign that the series may actually claw its way up to being decent enough by the time it’s over.
Content Grade: C+
Art Grade: B
Packaging Grade: A-
Text/Translation Grade: A-
Age Rating: Mature
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: September 19th, 2017
MSRP: $21.99
