Introducing… way too many characters.
Creative Staff
Story: Kazuma Kamachi
Art: Kiyotaka Haimura
Translation: Andrew Prowse
What They Say
Academy City’s peacekeeping forces are absent due to the Avignon invasion. In that now lawless land, shadowy groups start moving behind the scenes.
–Those acting for their own interests.
–Those who love the dark and revel in killing.
–Those trying to destroy others’ hope.
–Those standing up in defiance for those important to them.
–Those bringing the battle to the higher echelons.
–Those quelling rebellious elements.
–Those who would stop a rampage with violence.
In this city, which controls all of science, who will survive?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
This volume in the series is a bit of a hard one to know where to start, as that’s sort of the biggest issue with it: it’s kind of a big jumbled mess of characters and events. At its core, it’s about five different groups active secretly in Academy City, called Group, School, Item, Block, and Member. Which first off, I have to say, just looks awkward in English. It’s obviously intentional to have those names be such simple words, but I wouldn’t say it’s effective, and on top of that it’s not like they really fit to any kind of clear description of what we know of the groups, either. The bigger issue, though, is that it’s just WAY too many characters introduced here. All five groups have at least four members, and aside from Group we haven’t met any of them before, meaning 16 “significant” characters are introduced here. But as you’d imagine, when combined with the focus on the characters we already know, there’s simply not enough space here to get to know most of them at all, making most of them just a name and turning things kind of messy. It’s just plain hard to keep track of all these characters when they’re throwing so many at you at once, after all. Oh, and as an aside, there is actually one more significant character we’re clearly SUPPOSED to know from the way that the book is written: Hamazura. Now, I picked up on that and was confused, as I tend to have a pretty strong memory when it comes to such things, so I researched the matter. And sure enough, it looks like the fault was not on my memory, but Yen Press’s releases, as he apparently comes from a book entitled A Certain Magical Index SS, which has yet to be released in English. It doesn’t make his character impossible to follow, mind you, but it only adds to the jumbled mess when the book is assuming you’re familiar with one of the cast members despite that not being possible through the official English novel releases.
Now, to talk about the actual groups, well… there’s honestly not much to say. Group is clearly our main team this time around, with the two characters readers should actually have some solid familiarity with: Tsuchimikado and Accelerator. Plus the other two members are ones readers may recall, Mitsuki Unabara and Awaki Musujime. Though even then, they aren’t exactly the biggest or most memorable villains from the past of the series, so they’re still not that far off from “new characters” in their own way. I suppose Item gets the next biggest amount of attention, just because Hamazura is kind of sort of a main character. But even then, the rest of that group aren’t super fleshed out all that much, but they at least kind of get a bit of development and some defined personalities. It’s not a lot, but they at least feel somewhat like real characters, aside from one of them. And then the other three groups are just largely antagonistic and there to get fought, without much personality to speak of. Well, Teitoku Kakine is the big bad this time around I guess, so he at least gets a little bit of development, but everybody else is pretty damn roughly defined at best.
As for the actual contents of the volume itself, though… it’s kind of like one big web of interweaved smaller events. And for what it’s worth… that works out okay, once you get past the fact that it’s hard to keep track of the cast, making the flow of things rather rough. Like, reading about Unabara desperately trying to maintain his cover, or a hacker guy panicking about his safe-house turning into his prison, or Hamazura being sort of broken by how cheap life can be treated… these are all perfectly solid pieces on their own. It’s just a shame that they don’t seem to tie together all that great, and just sort of end up with Academy City’s number 2 fighting Accelerator without even any interesting power boost (because the unique tool he stole actually wasn’t for fighting or anything.)
In Summary
This volume is easily the weirdest entry in the series yet by FAR, shifting the structure of things heavily. That’s because rather than focusing in on a character or two that we know, this time around things are based around five teams composed of four people each, four of which are entirely brand new. This means we get 16 brand new characters placed in a key position in the plot, and… quite frankly, it’s just too much. It becomes hard to keep track of most of them, and they just don’t stand out or stick with you as a result. And, by the way, this is only made worse by the fact that Yen Press skipped over a “SS” volume that came out originally before this book, removing background for one of the cast members that you seem to be expected to have. On top of all that, there’s just the fact that the various interlocking stories just don’t really connect in what feels like a meaningful way, and just sort of “come together” and flow in a way that feels insignificant and sloppy. Still, with that said, a number of the short stories involved are rather nicely done, so assuming you can get past the awkward mess that is the overall structure there’s still certainly good to be had here.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: N/A
Packaging Grade: B+
Text/Translation Grade: B-
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: May 22nd, 2018
MSRP: $14.00
