”There is happiness. And you can obtain it. Please live.”
Creative Staff
Story: Kaiu Shirai
Art: Posuka Demizu
Translation/Adaptation: Satsuki Yamashita
What They Say
Life at Grace Field House is good for Emma and her fellow orphans. While the daily studying and exams they have to take are tough, their loving caretaker provides them with delicious food and plenty of playtime. But perhaps not everything is as it seems…
The search for the mysterious Minerva has led Emma to a secret room within Goldy Pond. Heeding Minerva’s clues, Emma and the other children have successfully escaped Grace Field House and survived the dangerous terrain of the outside world. But when Emma opens the door to the truth, will Minerva’s secrets be everything she’s been hoping for?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Dropping Emma with a new batch of kids and rehashing the prison escape story made me a bit hesitant going into this volume, but volume 9 is an ultimately solid volume because it knows exactly which storytelling pitfalls to avoid this time around.
While the escape from Grace Field was an almost painfully slow burn with a hectic yet almost slapdash conclusion, there actually feels like at least a bit more planning was done on author Shirai’s end this time around. While we ultimately still only care about Emma, with the new kids serving more as a cosmetic change of pace, the actual breakout still feels satisfying because of the constant buildup of the demons throughout the series so far. While we don’t know the context of every kid’s backstory, or even the very specific group of inexplicably dandy demons hunting them for sport, we do know enough about demons in general to know that they’ve almost always served as a setback to the kids in one way or another. Every hardship they’ve experienced and every death they’ve had to witness can ultimately be blamed because the demons simply exist and that’s enough of a setup to make the kids’ eventual mutiny against their hunters feel earned.
As the kids split up and take down each demon one by one, you feel this sense of accomplishment along with them. Up until this point, the kids have been getting by based on cunning alone, but have yet to really express anything in the way of physical combat strength, and I think that’s something that was sorely missing from the series up until this point. Before this volume, the kids’ main strength against the demons would be purely outwitting them, so it felt very satisfying to see the kids being able to bring this mindset and mix it in with something you as a reader can more directly witness. Even with as little backstory on the new kids as was provided, it was still a treat seeing each one be able to come in, guns-a-blazing while still having enough know-how to figure out when to zig when a demon zags. It’s great.
… so great that you almost forget just how many stunning revelations were sneakily worked in near the start of the volume. Not only do we get a good chunk of backstory on Minerva and the human world, but we’re also treated to the apparently still-alive Norman in what looks to be a new holding cell that’s similar but different enough from the original Grace Field (sidenote: I definitely thought the semi-comatose musclehead in Emma’s new group was going to end up being a heavily experimented-on Norman… so glad I was wrong). Such developments in the plot feel like something author Shirai could have worked in at any time in the series, and yet they pick now to drop them in. And what’s odd is that with as much weight as these revelations have, they don’t come anywhere close to overshadowing the immediate plot of the kids escaping from Goldy Pond. Rather, they serve as nice reminders of what we can expect from future installments without putting too much of a spotlight on itself. It kept everything very matter-of-factly while still coming off as informative enough to not come off as just a simple tease.
In Summary:
volume 9 is a solid entry to the series as we see the kids take a more offensive approach to the demons that have been ruining their lives. Even with a just-okay buildup, seeing each kid take down the demons one by one is so thoroughly satisfying because we know just how much of a setback demons have been throughout the series already. Sprinkle in some tasteful revelations throughout, and you have an overall solid volume.
Content Grade: B+
Art Grade: B
Packaging Grade: A
Text/Translation Grade: A
Age Rating: Teen
Released By: Viz Media
Release Date: April 2, 2019
MSRP: $9.99
