“I Want to Fight”
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Jun Kirarazaka
Translation: Junko Goda
What They Say
In a world swarming with yokai demons… One day, mediocre exorcist Kazami encounters a beautiful girl named Paira. But who is she?! And could the seemingly useless Kazami actually have a special ability? Get ready for a new generation of yokai battle comedy manga!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Bone Collection really managed to surprise me by being a series that had such a solid setup and then opted to plow through dozens and dozens of chapters in the space of ten chapters without any of the character-building material to go with it. Jun Kirarazaka has a good concept to work here with what could have been the next Bleach series but did it without spending the time to make its characters accessible and engaging. The scale of fights went off the chart pretty quickly and we’re now ready for some triple-S rank yokai to get fighting while having some important character growth happen off-page. It’s just… very surprising and shows either some really bad work on the editorial side or a creator who wasn’t being watched at all.
With the story having shifted to the island as the large team of exorcists are going after Kyubi, the opening page makes it clear that half of the fifty exorcists on the island were killed right up front by Kyubi himself. His absconding with Runa and sealing himself up makes him the final boss of this particular arc while a number of ranked yokai have set up in the watchtowers. That has the remaining exorcists having to root them out before they can go after Kyubi and deal with him. That’s problematic because it splits forces and draws out events, and we see how Paira and Kazami are running off together to do something. They’re actually out of the picture for a while but when they do return it’s revealed that dealt with two of the five watchtowers already and that’s because Paira’s now able to fight and she’s got a lot of pent-up anger. So much for savoring that really being presented well.
A lot of this chapter basically follows San around and has others trying to keep up with him, but running into different yokai with unique powers causing trouble. The one San runs into has a range of puppet creatures it can create that takes days to do so but he’s been building them up for some time. With San kind of powerless overall, it builds the tension nicely and you wait to see if any of the exorcists get there in time to help him. Since he’s so focused on finding Runa, there’s at least some bravado out of him but it’s not really earned at this point. Sadly, he doesn’t get to really stand his ground or hold his own before Paira and Kazami show up and turn the place into a mess, so there’s no real growth or anything useful for San here other than being protected.
In Summary:
Bone Collection feels like it’s on a fast trip to ending itself soon based on the way it’s handling, well, everything. I’m kind of baffled by the whole thing. I’ve talked a lot about its potential and what it could be but everything it’s done for a large chunk of its run feels counterproductive to good storytelling and good editing. This installment highlights a lot of that but it also has some excellent sequences of action that are wonderfully illustrated and laid out which helps it some overall. It’s unfortunate when you see something with so much potential just squander it away.
Content Grade: B-
Art Grade: B+
Text/Translation Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Shonen Jump
Release Date: August 2nd, 2020