Signal Fire at the Water’s Edge
Creative Staff
Story: Reki Kawahara
Art: Hima
Translation: Jocelyne Allen
What they say
PREPARE FOR A FULL DIVE!
Umesato Junior High’s culture festival is just around the corner, and Haruyuki is busy helping his classmates prepare for their exhibit. While everything may appear calm in the real world, however, the Accelerated World is steadily falling into chaos. Magenta Scissors is zeroing in on Silver Crow from an unexpected direction, and even his newfound Optical Conduction ability may not be enough to avert tragedy!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
In an astonishing upset, volume 13, while not as good as volume 12, might be one of the better volumes of the series. The previous volume left us on a cliffhanger. Haruyuki and Wolfram Cerberus battled it out in a Battle Royale alongside Ash Roller—Haruyuki’s friend and rival. While the battle technically ended in victory for Haruyuki, the moment is interrupted by Argon Array, aka Quad Eyes Analyst, a girl who is suspected by Haruyuki and the other members of Nega Nebulus to be a member of the Acceleration Research Society. She attempts to finish off Haryuki but is interrupted at the last moment by an unexpected contender.
Aqua Current.
We had actually been introduced to Aqua Current several volumes earlier. She’s a level 1 Burst Linker nicknamed The One and is the only Bodyguard in the Accelerated World. Her job is to help people who don’t have enough burst points regain them by teaming up with them and challenging others to a duel. Haruyuki had teamed up with her after spending too many burst points when he became a level 2 Burst Linker. He had his memories erased by her Incarnate Technique. We discover in this volume that Aqua Current was not only a member of the previous Nega Nebulus, but she was also one of the Element Four, which is like the greatest members of the legion after Kuroyukihime.
While the beginning of this volume is filled with action, the chapters after it are a lot slower. There’s a tearful reunion between Aqua Current—her real name is Akira—and Kuroyukihime. This is followed by Haruyuki and everyone else getting ready for the school festival. There’s a lot of extra stuff going on. This volume is actually packed full of what feels like average, ordinary, everyday occurrences for a group of middle school kids.
I mentioned before that this volume is better than most. In the previous volume, we got to see a really touching moment between Haruyuki and Kuroyukihime, which is what made volume 12 my favorite by far, but this volume also does a good job of showcasing how much Haruyuki has grown as a person. A lot of what happens in this volume is outside of the Accelerated World, so we see him dealing with normal stuff. At the beginning of this series, all the things he’s being asked to do would have made him run away, but now he’s accepting his responsibilities and doing an actually good job of keeping up with everything.
This episode also features and interesting segment between Haruyuki and Niko—aka, Scarlet Rain. She pays him a surprise visit after three of her legion members break the ceasefire agreement between Prominence and Nega Nebulus to attack Haruyuki during The Territories, which is like a wargame where members of different legions can challenge other legions to claim the territory they use as their base. During this scene, Niko dumps a load of her insecurities onto Haruyuki, who does an excellent job of helping reassure her. We also learn during this moment that the girls who surround Haruyuki do so because he makes them feel safe, which I guess is as good a reason as any to give a protagonist a harem. It’s at least better than the cliched “because he’s nice!”
In Summary
This volume is more like a build up volume. It doesn’t solve any problems and instead presents new ones. In fact, this volume ends on another cliffhanger like volume 12 did. Reki Kawahara mentions in his afterword that this is the next arc of the series, which he is calling the Metatron Arc. While I’m excited by a new arc, I do hope this series doesn’t take too many volumes to resolve it. A lot of Reki Kawahara’s arcs feel unnecessarily long because he keeps padding his word count with a lot of pointless information that doesn’t add anything relevant to his story. That said, the story has been engaging so far, and I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: B
Packaging Grade: B
Text/Translation Grade: A
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: April 10, 2018
MSRP: $14.00
