The winds are changing.
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Taeko Watanabe
Translation/Adaptation: Tetsuichiro Miyaki
Lettering/Touch-up: Rina Mapa
Editor: Megan Bates
What They Say
Warfare between the Choshu and the Bakufu factions seems inevitable. Will Sei and the Shinsengumi be drawn into the hostilities as well? Meanwhile, Captain Harada Sanosuke’s first child is born in Kyoto. While the Shinsengumi members are overjoyed, trouble arises when Sanosuke names the child…
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Summer rolls in for the Shinsengumi, but while the day-to-day activities of the troop are the same as ever there’s a distinct tension broiling under the surface.
Sanosuke welcomes his first son into the world during this event. The boy is delivered safe and sound but not without some petty drama, including what Sanosuke decides to name the child. The name is considered bad luck and we eventually see just why that might be.
After such a long gap between the volumes for the English release, I tend to forget where everything lies politically. This leaves situations where I’m glad the translator has left notes at the bottom of some pages to go along with the glossary at the end of the volume. This series has a lot of historical characters and more are introduced all the time, with others returning at key moments. I couldn’t remember the incident where Sei had run into the man who will be the future shogun prior to the reintroduction of him.
With Kamiya now being privy to nearly every high-end and state secret that comes across the Vice Commander’s desk, she’s struggling to keep quiet. She is one of the first to learn of the shogun’s illness and the first to learn of his passing and who is next to pick up the mantle. Throughout all of this, she has to keep her mouth shut under pain of death. Thankfully she doesn’t go and put herself into a stupid situation and carries out her duties, but towards the end of this volume, her own commitment to her cause puts her into a truly perilous situation.
Whole Sei keeps her cool throughout most of the events (relatively speaking, she’s still very emotional about all of it) the men around her are a bit harder to control. Okita is still smitten with her and while he’ll deny there is nothing between them nobody believes it. Vice-captain Hijikata has become preoccupied with Sei’s gender to the point where he questions doctors and keeps misgendering Seizaburo as a ’she.’ He’s not the only one having a difficult time keeping his hands off her, as even a drunk Harada makes a pass on her, and then there is the other figure who they run into later.
Sei is almost too chill about the men around her hitting on her. She should be more concerned with all these dudes learning she’s a woman, but she’s almost let her guard down at this point. The dangerous game she plays with the man at the end of the volume seems absolutely crazy. It’s a game of wits where she doesn’t hold the winning hand, and that leaves her in an insanely precarious position at the end of this volume. A cliffhanger that we’ll have to wait a year for, and that’s really not fair.
In Summary
For every birth, there’s a death. Things become more complicated for the Shinsengumi as the shogun’s illness causes massive waves in the political climate of the Bakufu. Stuck in the middle of this swirling current is Sei, who is just trying to be a good assistant to her commander. Meanwhile, everyone is trying to get into Sei’s hakama and she’s not exactly as concerned about that as she should be. Viz continues to kill me with the slow release of this series, especially with it ended now in Japan. As tensions and circumstances become more tense and complicated for the characters in the story I grow increasingly curious as to how Sei’s story will end.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: B
Packaging Grade: B
Text/Translation Grade: A
Age Rating: Teen Plus
Released By: Viz Media
Release Date: August 4, 2020
MSRP: 9.99