Oh hey look, something interesting! Now let’s ignore that for more of the same old crap!
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Sui Ishida
Translation: Joe Yamazaki
What They Say
Sen Takatsuki’s newest novel has hit the stands and a video of her admitting to being a Ghoul has gone viral! And if that news hasn’t done enough to shake things up, the contents of her book are sowing civilian distrust of the CCG. How can investigators effectively take on the Ghoul threat if the public has lost faith in them? And what if Sen Takatsuki’s veiled accusations about the CCG brass are true…?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
So, we kick off this volume with society still rolling from Sen Takatsuki’s public revelation that she’s a Ghoul. This is probably the most interesting topic of the volume, as it hints at a potential societal upheaval and really digging into the more general topic of Ghouls living their lives, which has always been the most interesting topic this book has to offer… which makes it even more disappointing that it hardly gets any focus this time. Because no, the general, deeper questions about society at large don’t matter, because we need more twists and turns and tying characters ever deep together and crap.
In particular, I’ve got to say I just really don’t like the way that of course, we tie characters even tighter together with some flashbacks about Rize and Shachi of all boring, bland characters out there, or the whole thing with Touka’s past getting more revelations. Clearly, the attempt is to try to make the characters feel more relevant and important by tying them together, but it just feels cheap and halfhearted here, and more seems like shrinking the world and making it more insular than anything else. Plus you know, it just doesn’t feel well written for any of it to make for an actual emotional scene.
Oh, and it goes without saying, but the book is once more filled to the brim with poorly executed action. It really is baffling to me how the end of the original series managed to give things decent weight and impact with the action, but it’s gone entirely back to crap with this sequel series, just messy empty panel after panel. Maybe one day we’ll get back to that, or failing that at least give the action less focus like the start of :re did, but at this point, I’m honestly not hopeful.
In Summary
This volume unsurprisingly suffers much the same issues as past books in the series. The action is sloppy, shallow, and super prevalent, which means a good bit of the page count goes to dull fights that aren’t even helped by the theoretical emotional significance. And the attempts at character development just feel weak and more like attempts to roughly tie things together. The worst part of it, though, is that the book opens teasing you with something that legitimately sounds interesting, but then that plot gets largely ignored and only gets a smattering of pages throughout, because it has to make room for the same old crap. Maybe one day this series will turn things back around, but that sure as hell isn’t here, unfortunately.
Content Grade: C
Art Grade: A
Packaging Grade: B+
Text/Translation Grade: B+
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: Viz Media
Release Date: October 16th, 2018
MSRP: $12.99
