Just plain poorly done.
Creative Staff
Story: Tsugumi Ohba
Art: Takeshi Obata
Translation: Stephen Paul
What They Say
After stopping the killer virus, Mirai goes on the offensive. But can he actually kill another human being, even one who threatens to kill millions? And can he and his team outwit the merciless Metropoliman?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
We pick up from last time with Mirai facing off against Kohinata… and the book launches right into our hero being like “I refuse to kill, but if I don’t, a great many will die… so I’ll just stand here doing nothing but angst about it.” Like, I mean, it’s all well and good to have that character trait, but the way it’s played here both drags on way too long and makes him look more pathetic than anything. Essentially, I don’t think this is played well at all, and just comes across more as a really awkward, stretched out scene. Oh, and Saki ends up having to try to protect Mirai as a result of him effectively just standing there to die as a result of his indecision… but Hajime ends up dying instead to kill Kohinata in the process. I totally get that the whole point is to push Mirai to the limit and really put his way of life to the test… but I just think the way it’s done here makes for a pretty miserable scene.
The other big part of this volume is Metropoliman coming out and announcing his ideals loud and clear, and… once again, this is a let-down. He’s pretty much just straight up says, “Poor people are ugly drains on society, so I will kill them all.” In other words, they just came out and made him a cartoonishly evil scumbag, which is a lot less interesting than the “ends justify the means, taken to insane extremes” style character he sort of felt like before. It’s not enough that I’d say it feels out of character or anything in the least, but it’s a shame that the guy turned out to be completely and utterly lacking in any depth, and is just a straight up bad guy to be taken down.
Oh, and speaking of things lacking depth, the climactic fight of the volume is… a duel between Mirai and Metropoliman where they just take turns trying to shoot each other, getting a bit closer each time. It’s almost like the idea was to completely capture how out of ideas they were for intellectual showdowns, so they just went with the simplest, blandest thing imaginable.
In Summary
I had hoped that even after the mess that was last volume, things heating up heavily this time around could mean we might get back a bit of the cleverness the book showed in the past. Sadly, though, that’s completely absent here, with the final fight of the book in particularly being so downright bland and lacking that I question if such elements will ever really come back. On top of that, I’d say Metropoliman actually devolves massively as a character this time around, and Mirai comes off super poorly with his focus here too. It really is just a mess of a book that has the pieces roughly in place for something interesting, but then goes and does everything in damn near the worst way imaginable. Maybe there’s still some hope that the series can still turn things around, but sadly, there really isn’t even so much as a hint at that present here.
Content Grade: C
Art Grade: A
Packaging Grade: A-
Text/Translation Grade: B+
Age Rating: 18+
Released By: Viz Media
Release Date: December 4th, 2018
MSRP: $9.99
