By Reki Kawahara and Hima. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jocelyne Allen.

Much as I said last review that this one was probably going to be nothing more than a string of fights, that doesn’t appear to be the case. Bar the beginning, where despite everything Haru and Chiyuri do indeed succeed in punching hope into Takumu, this volume is a bit of breathing room in the midst of what has become a 4-volume arc. What this volume actually ends up being is a giant pile of good times for Haru, as if the author knew that too much bad stuff had rained down on him lately and so is trying to make up for it here. We get the renewed bonds of friendship, some cute ship tease, and finally succeed in busting out of the Accel World version of the Imperial Palace. We even get to see Haru bust some moves in a basketball game. No, really.

And look, another cover image that isn’t Kuroyukihime posing half-naked! (Don’t worry, it’ll be back for the 9th volume.) But yes, part of the plot of this book is to show how to move to the next level with the Incarnate system, and apparently it involved confronting what your worst trait is, and turning it into a positive. No prizes for guessing that Haru’s self-hatred and urge to escape his troubles is his big negative – this is what led to Silver Crow in the first place. But now we start to see him consciously apply what everyone else has always known are his good points – his ability to analyze a situation and come up with an appropriate response, combined with nearly infinite compassion. Let me tell you something, I realize that OT3s don’t actually happen in actual anime/manga, and also that the endgame of this series is clearly (and deservedly) Kuroyukihime. But after reading the first third of this book, you too will believe in the Childhood Friends Threesome of Pure Love.

Then there’s that basketball game. It’s not as if Haru magically becomes a good athlete, or even an average one – he literally works himself into unconsciousness. But this is the first time that we’ve really seen Haru take what he’s learned from fighting battles in the Accelerated World and apply it to real life – not in a cheating sense, but in terms of using his brain to analyze the best course of action. It’s telling that the one actual basketball player on the other team gives him respect – he’s earned it, simply by not giving up immediately and coming up with a solid plan. (They do still lose, I mean this isn’t Sword Art Online.)

Naturally, of course, it all crashes and burns in the end. After escaping from the Castle, we find that the ISS-infected users are busy torturing Ash Roller and his child – and likely doing so until they’re both forced from the game forever. Haru’s compassion is a big positive, but when he sees his friends cruelly tortured, it comes out in the worst possible way – revenge. And so the Chrome Disaster is back, and we have yet another volume to try to resolve this. Kawahara says it’s the last one, he promises. He’s said that before, of course. But I don’t mind. It’s a great arc in an underrated series.

By Reki Kawahara and Hima. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jocelyne Allen.

Accel World is about a group of elementary and junior high school students fighting battles to the death, and the novels are not afraid to show you the emotional fallout from such a situation. In fact, the first quarter of this book is devoted to a giant flashback to several years prior (when the best you could do is Level 5), where a young couple who have fallen in love in the Brain Burst world (despite not knowing who their real life identities are – oh, and she’s dying in real life as well) discover one of the seven Big Powerups in the game, and as a result are quickly turned on by their supposed friends and fellow players. It’s played for maximum tragedy and drama, and helps to explain why the Disaster Armor currently infecting Haru has a mind of its own.

And these are kids, even if they supposedly have more emotional maturity from all the time they spend in accelerated time. Nowhere is that more clear than with the confrontation Haru has with Takumu at the end of the book. Takumu’s jealousy of Haru was, of course, part of the plot of the very first volume, and it’s actually good to see that it did not magically go away, because those sorts of things don’t. It’s also not being helped by the new ISS pseudo-Disaster program, which is corrupting him so it’s hard to tell if these are his own thoughts or not. But you also see it with Haru, who is also still just a kid, and whose desire to punch hope into Takumu somehow is shown in the end to be just as foolish and short-sighted in a world where nothing is ever quite as easy as you expect. Which of course, means this is not a two-book series, but an arc, and we’ll see what happens next time.

Elsewhere in the book, Haru and Utai manage to at least get closer to escaping from the Imperial Palace world they’re still stuck in in the Unlimited section, helped along by a mysterious samurai-type who happens to have been in the section all along but refuses to tell them how he got there. It’s fairly clear this young boy is supposed to be a member of the Imperial Family (which explains why he’s there – he lives there), but Kawahara is being very coy about it for reasons that are also fairly clear. And Haru and Kuroyukihime get some nice shippy moments, much to the frustration of Chiyuri and Fuko, which leads to probably the book’s funniest moment (and also makes me think that Fuko is more interested in Kuroyukihime than Haru). And of course Haru remains marked for death, both from the Kings and from a group that has put a bounty on his head, as we realize that the flashback we see at the start of the book may come full circle.

This is mostly a setup book that will likely pay off with big fights in the next volume, but as always it’s eminently readable, and for once the cover is not something you have to hide from the outside world. And there should be less of a wait for the next one – the series seems to be shifting to four times a year.

By Reki Kawahara and Hima. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On.

One of Accel World’s strongest points is its ability to built on plot and themes from prior books without overwhelming the reader too much. The last book showed us that the Disaster Armor had not entirely left Silver Crow, and much of this volume is about the fallout from that. We worry about what such a thing would do to the game itself, and then later on find that crude copies of it may be racing out of control via other people, making the question moot. Or it would be moot if this wasn’t in may ways a desire for the others to punish Kuroyukihime through Haruyuki, as by now everyone can see their bond. We’re also asked to see one of the core tents of her past in a different light, as it’s hinted that there’s more to her killing off the Red King than just wanting to get to Level 10.

As for Haruyuki’s self-loathing, it’s gotten slightly better. We get a minimum of school here, and I was a bit faked out when we were introduced to two fellow classmates who I thought Haru would either bond with or get bullied by, but who ended up being mostly irrelevant, another way of showing that Haruyuki is not like the normal “cool” kids, who skive off their club work the first time we see them. Of course, this determination to get better and discover new things is what makes him such a success in the game world, as is pointed out by Chiyuri. One reason that Kuroyukihime, Fuko, and even Ash Roller like him to much is that he’s always seeking ways to get better, ways to play the game that are more than just “get strong and then stop”.

We also get a new character, the titular shrine maiden of the title. She’s around 9 years old, and half of the somewhat tossed off fanservice in the volume is dedicated to accidentally getting her wet with a garden hose (the other half being Kuroyukihime changing in front of Haru – and the cover, if we’re going to be honest). For once, though, it looks like the lolicon is not meant to be the primary driving force. Utai is interesting, from her game persona’s Sailor Mars-style powers, to the Incarnate she unleashed somehow being related to Noh Theater, or simply because she can’t speak – something prevents her from getting the words out, so she types all her dialogue in ways that would be very difficult if people in this universe didn’t already have neurolinkers. And, of course, by definition of the fact that she’s playing Brain burst, her home life is somewhat broken, though we get few details.

And, of course, there’s still the best reason to read Accel World: Kawahara writes excellent battle scenes. They’re understandable, easily visualized, and emotionally raw. They may also make you scream at the ending, as yes, this is a cliffhanger that will hopefully get resolved in the next book. It’s not as popular as Sword Art Online, but Kawahara’s other series quietly goes about telling its story well, and if you can get past Haru’s beating himself up narrations, well worth your time.