A World of Darkness
Creative Staff
Story: Rei Toma
Art: Rei Toma
Translation: Abby Lehrke
What they say
Asahi is captured by a human who’s using the god of darkness to take over the world! Trapped in the underworld, Asahi resolves to figure out the true intentions of this ruthless boy while the water dragon god and Subaru tag team to try to save her!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Ever since volume 1 came out, I have been in love with this series. It was like a combination of shoujo romance mixed with isekai. Having read numerous isekai stories in my time, The Water Dragon’s Bride was refreshing. It didn’t follow RPG tropes, didn’t have the non-harem harem characters whose only purpose is to make the protagonist look better, and while Asahi is a very oblivious protagonist, she is at least adorable enough that I didn’t care so much.
I’m beginning to care now.
In this volume, Asahi is sent to the underworld, a dangerous place where the dead dwell, and if she doesn’t escape soon, she will become one of the dead as well. While she is trying to find a way out, the water dragon god somehow learns of where she is. He goes to the other gods and asks for help. However, they all tell him the same thing—gods cannot travel to the underworld. It is never explained why, but they explicitly state that gods are unable to do so. I assume there is some kind of universal law or something that prevents them from being able to travel to the underworld, like doing so would cause them to lose their powers, but again, it’s never explained.
And so the water dragon god gets Subaru to help him out.
I’ve always liked Subaru. From the moment Asahi appeared in this world, Subaru has faithfully stood by her side, even going against his own parents to help her. His love for her is one of the greatest driving forces in this story—or it was. In this volume, Subaru does indeed find Asahi and tries to help, but he ends up failing. This would normally mean Asahi is now helpless against the mysterious young man and the god of darkness. However, help arrives in the form of the water dragon god who, against everything we have learned from the other gods, somehow manages to travel to the underworld.
What?
There are two things about this scenario that I can’t stand. The first is how we literally learned several pages ago that gods cannot go to the underworld. Literally every other god said that, which is why the water dragon god asked Subaru for help to begin with. Only a human can travel to the underworld. So why can the water dragon god now travel to the under world? Is he some super special god that has powers no other god has? This entire event smacks of an incredibly bad deus ex machina plot device to showcase the water dragon god’s change from being callous to actually caring about someone, and it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work because we were told constantly that gods can’t travel to the underworld, so now Toma Rei-sensei has just contradicted the rules of her own story.
What’s more, Subaru is slighted in this volume. He wasn’t able to save the girl he loves despite apparently being the only one who can (Remember, gods cannot travel to the underworld—or so we were told), and instead of taking any real part in this volume, he’s relegated to the background while Asahi falls in love with the water dragon god.
I think my biggest issue in this volume is that Toma Rei-sensei uses what I believe is one of the worst shoujo tropes of all time—redeeming the bad boy. You see this a lot in shoujo series that feature a love triangle. One man will treat the girl like she’s his everything. He is incredibly kind, always supportive, and constantly looking out for her. Meanwhile, the other man will treat the protagonist like she’s garbage for several volumes until—bam!—we realize all along that he wasn’t actually a jerk. He was just misunderstood. This is a terrible trope because it is basically like telling girls that it’s okay to date someone who treats them like crap, that if she just keeps trying, she will eventually be rewarded when the jerk who stole her voice, nearly let her die of starvation, and treated her like a plaything for several volumes finally falls in love with her. It doesn’t work like that in real life, and I don’t believe it works here.
In Summary
This volume was probably the weakest of the entire series, relying on overused tropes that were popular at one point but are now more like a crutch people use when they can’t think of anything new to create. This volume was also very jumpy for the first half, which featured Asahi bouncing from one scene to another with no buildup or correlation to the previous scene. Honestly, the most interesting part of volume 8 was the last half when we learn about the backstory of Kurose—this arcs antagonist—which is sad because now I sympathize more with him than I do Asahi. I’m still hopeful that Toma Rei-sensei can turn this series around, but as of how, I am not as enthusiastic about it as I used to be.
Content Grade: D
Art Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: A
Text/Translation Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Shojo Beat
Release Date: January 1st, 2019
MSRP: $9.99
