Creative Staff
Story: Mitsuki Mihara
Art: MonRin
Translation: Jill Morita
What they say
As part of a December 2095 exchange program between Japan and the United States of North America, Shizuku has gone to study abroad. Taking her place is an American student named Lina—who Tatsuya instantly recognizes as one of the Thirteen Apostles, a group of strategic-class magicians with powers that rival weapons of mass destruction! Meanwhile, a vampire lurks in the streets of Tokyo, launching Tatsuya into an investigation about the possible connections between this new foreign-exchange student and a string of deaths where magicians have been drained of their blood. As suspicions deepen on all sides, it soon becomes clear there may be more than one mysterious visitor roaming the halls of Magic High School!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
It’s the second part of the Visitor Arc, so named because it deals with a number of visitors arriving in Japan to cause trouble. The most obvious of these visitors is Angelina Kudou Shields—Lina—a commander of the USNA’s powerful magician unit, the Stars. She’s a strategic-class magician, meaning she is powerful enough to be considered a weapon of mass destruction. In the previous volume, Lina infiltrated First Magic High School in order to get closer to her targets—Tatsuya and Miyuki—but she was discovered by the two long before she even realized it. After losing to Miyuki in a spar in the previous volume, she seems to be even less sure of her position.
One of the first things I’ve noticed about this volume is that it’s very dense. There is a lot going on with a lot of different characters. Sometimes it feels like there is too much happening at once. While this series has always had a lot of perspective changes, telling its story from the perspective of many different characters instead of just the protagonist and his little sister, I feel like this arc, in particular, is taking POV changes to the extreme. It felt like barely half of this volume was even told from Tatsuya’s perspective. While changes in character perspective can sometimes add new information or highlight certain facts and plot points that the protagonist doesn’t know for the readers, this particular volume’s POV shifts felt very redundant.
Many of them didn’t add any new information. Some of them even repeated information we already knew. About the only POV changes I felt that really mattered were the ones where it shifted to Lina’s perspective, and this one shift where it changed perspective to Mitsugu Kuroba—a man who has never appeared in any of the previous light novels and was never even mentioned until he showed up in this one. We learn he’s Maya Yotsuba’s cousin in this. However, just whether he will become an important character or was merely added to shed light on what happened to the other parasites is something I am unsure of.
There are three overarching plots in this arc, from what I can see. The first is the plot involving Lina traveling to Japan in order to spy on Tatsuya and Miyuki to determine if one of them had been responsible for the explosion that happened during the battle at Yokohama. The second deals with the “vampire.” In the previous volume, we learn that a vampire is stalking the streaks of Japan. Of course, it isn’t an actual vampire but something called a parasite that is attacking and killing magicians to steal their energy. The third plot is regular high school shenanigans.
During the first chapter of this volume, the vampire issue appears to be mostly solved. While Tatsuya and Mikihiko are trying to figure out where the vampire is, a company called Maximillion Devices arrives at First Magic High School. What’s important about this isn’t the company, but one of the people with them. Mikaela Hongou was a member of the USNA’s intelligence division, but she was somehow possessed by the parasite at some point in time, though we don’t know when. Lina, Tatsuya, Erika, and just about everyone who was involved with the vampire incident becomes embroiled in a chaotic battle against the parasite after Mikaela’s identity is exposed.
While the parasite is defeated, it isn’t killed. Injured from the battle, it somehow winds up taking possession of a 3H type P-94 robot named Pixie, which is basically a Humanoid Home Helper robot designed to do household chores. It’s asleep for most of the volume. However, it awakens to Honoka’s intense feelings for Tatsuya. Near the end of the volume, Pixie shocks everyone by declaring it wants to give everything to Tatsuya, which I guess is like a declaration of love in some ways, though the love it has stems from Honoka’s love for Tatsuya. I’m not really sure what to think about this particular plot twist. A parasite possessed robot sounds kind of interesting, but I don’t know if this event will have any real impact on the overall story itself.
In Summary
While the volume has a lot of stuff going on, I feel like a great deal of it wasn’t very important in the grand scheme of things. A good portion of the story felt kind of like filler. However, that is not to say the filler wasn’t interesting. I did somewhat enjoy Mayumi trying to get revenge on Tatsuya by making incredibly bitter chocolate for Valentine’s Day. This volume ends with Lina and the members of Stardust—another branch of the USNA’s magician military—enacting a plan to either capture or kill Tatsuya Shiba, which means we’re left on a cliffhanger. Overall, this wasn’t a bad volume, and I’m looking forward to reading the next one, but I hope volume 11 won’t be as redundant as this one.
Content Grade: C
Art Grade: A
Packaging Grade: A
Text/Translation Grade: B
Age Rating: 13 & UP
Released By: Yen On
Release Date: June 26, 2018
MSRP: $14.00