By Jin (Shinzen no Teki-P) and Sidu. Released in Japan by Enterbrain. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Kevin Gifford.

Though not without its issues, this is still overall the strongest volume of Kagerou Daze to date. Each volume has quietly doled out tiny bits of the backstory while letting us enjoy the wacky antics of Shintaro meeting the Mekakushi-Dan. This new book ditches Shintaro entirely and focuses instead on Kano and his own tragic past, which he explains to Ene over the course of the book. It really does give me exactly what I wanted to see from the previous books – why Kano appeared to Shintaro as Ayano and gave him a nervous breakdown, why Ayano is no longer with us, a suggestion of who the main villain is (though that’s still not quite clear), and the origins of the Mekakushi-Dan, giving much needed depth to Kano and Kido, and a bit of depth to Seto, who continues to be the one character who gets nothing to do.

As it turns out, most of the kids in the Mekakushi-Dan are orphans. Kano we initially see with his mother, who psychically abuses him (and by the way, Kano’s POV of the abuse and his justification for it is chilling and very well done, possibly some of the best writing in the series to date), but after a burglar kills his mother and living with relatives is messed up by the awakening of his eye powers (turning into a dead woman is never a way to win friends and influence people), he’s sent to an orphanage where he meets Kido, who is a giant ball of anger and can’t control her invisibility, and Seto, who cries an awful lot and is also sometimes telepathic, but again can’t control it. (Kano, by the way, controls his own powers through physical pain, which is utterly horrifying, and he knows it.)

Where this ties into the rest of the plot is when all three are adopted by Ayano’s mother, and she makes the most of becoming their big sister. Unfortunately, this backstory is not meant to show us the few happy, loving years they had – in a matter of a page or two, Ayano’s mother is dead and her father seemingly possessed by the “snakes” we’ve heard about in prior books – snakes which are also in each of the group. And finally we learn why Ayano killed herself. It was not, as it had been suggested, due to self-esteem issues or anything to do with Shintaro (though when impersonating her to fake her death, Kano is not above telling Shintaro it is his fault, which of course leads to his seclusion in the first place), but to stop the snake inside her father. Did it work? Well…

The one flaw the book has to me is the wraparound plot. I knew we’d see Ene becoming Takane again at some point, but it feels very tacked on here, as if the author finally got a cutoff point from his publishers and realized he had to start wrapping things up. (The series is still running in Japan, so we have at least 2 volumes to go after this.) Also, Kano’s ambivalence to his traitorous nature, while it fits his character, is not as emotionally satisfying as I’d like – because he’s always deceiving others and himself, it’s hard to get worked up about him working for the enemy (though I suspect he’s a triple agent, to be honest.) Also, if you’re going to include a child whose physical abuse made such an impression that pain is the main thing that makes him come back to himself, don’t have his best friend constantly hitting him like a tsundere. It sends a bad message.

Overall, though, this volume represents a huge upswing in the franchise, and I am eagerly awaiting the 6th volume in the series (which may be the last for a while – we’re catching up to Japan).

By Jin (Shinzen no Teki-P) and Sidu. Released in Japan by Enterbrain. Released in North America by Yen On.

As we reach the end of this book, our heroes are getting a lot closer to figuring out why they have these strange eye powers and what the powers actually are. In fact, they get a lot closer than the reader, as we’re shown parts of a diary that Marie’s grandmother kept, but they get to read the whole thing. Admittedly, we can connect some dots, but I am reminded once more that this is a light novel series based off of a series of songs, and that the intended audience is meant to be familiar with those songs. In particular, Shinigami (Reaper) Record, which introduces us to Azami’s story that is fleshed out here.

Azami is a mysterious supernatural creature – called a Reaper, she seems to also have many traits of a medusa, something which she’s apparently passed along to her granddaughter. Speaking of Marie, the bigger revelation in this book may be just how old she actually is – it’s somewhat startling, particularly given her fairly childlike personality. But of course, when you live alone in a cabin in the woods, there’s not as much chance to evolve or learn. And there’s also Konoha, whose real identity we’ve been able to guess with information from the previous two books, but who looks to be just as different from his other self as Ene is from Takane. Actually, the biggest disappointment here may be Shintaro, who still has a tendency to get dragged along and whine much of the time – indeed, the trip to and from the cabin is an endless stream of irritation from him.

If there’s a larger issue with these books, it’s the length – they’re much, much shorter than the average Japanese light novel, and you barely get into the book before it’s already finished, padding out its page count with lots of character design art and advertisements for the manga. Each of the last three volumes has featured a segment of the main plot and a more serious side story that gives us backstory and hints, but the backstory really is not connecting fast enough for my taste, and some of the things I was most interested in last time (Kano confronting Shintaro in Ayano’s body) is glossed over here, as Kido reassures Shintaro in a way that makes it seem like just a bad nightmare.

This volume was delayed two months, so the next one will come sooner than expected, and I’m hoping that less lag time will allow me to get into it a bit more. It would seem to involve Kano in a big way, so maybe I’ll finally get the answers to my questions. Kagerou Daze is enjoyable, particularly to fans of the multimedia franchise, but I still wish it wasn’t so fragmented. And short – even this review is underlength when I try to discuss it.

By Jin (Shinzen no Teki-P) and Sidu. Released in Japan by Enterbrain. Released in North America by Yen On.

After two volumes of being very confused, I think I am finally starting to get a handle on Kagerou Daze, and elements of the plot are now coming together in ways they hadn’t before. As with the second volume, this book is divided into two parts, which interlock in alternating chapters. One details the struggle of a young boy in the city and his hopeless crush on a girl his age who seems to be using him as a baggage holder. The other continues to show us Shintaro and Momo getting involved with the Mekakushi-Dan, and dealing with the eye powers – which now have one more member, as the boy from the first story shows up with red eyes and a desperate need to save the girl he loves.

I’ll be honest, I found the Shintaro plot a lot more interesting – almost the reverse of the second book, where it was Takane who held my attention. Part of the problem is that Hibiya and Hiyori are both not very likeable kids – Hiyori deliberately, as she’s written as very much a stereotypical arrogant rich girl (complete with a “Mean Girls” sort of accent, with lots of ‘likes’ interspersed), but I suspect we’re meant to sympathize with Hibiya’s somewhat stalker-ish obsession with her more than we do, and the doll he creates that can speak n her voice is just icing on the cake of creepy. That said, he fares much better in the second story, where he’s allowed to be what he actually is away from his crush, a confused and emotional young kid.

Shintaro and Momo also grow over the course of this volume, although I have a sneaking suspicion that Shintaro may regress soon. The scene between him and Kano is the most powerful in the book, both to show the pain and despair that Ayano’s death sent Shintaro spiraling into, and also to show the reader that Ayano is somehow connected with this group as well, and not just Shintaro’s dead friend. It also shows us a cruel and vicious side to Kano, which I had suspected was there but hadn’t seen till now. As for Momo, she and Hibiya get off on the wrong foot (he calls her “Gran”, which I suspect is Oba-san in the original, and she understandably freaks given she’s still in high school), but quickly develop a sibling-like relationship. He seems to have seen her teacher before, too…

The writing here is quite interesting. It’s rare to see a Japanese book with English wordplay – the title of the book, The Children Reason, and one story within, The Children Record, could have multiple meanings, and the original Japanese used the English words. (The author does need to get better at remembering how he’s numbering, though – going from 01 to 02 to 03 to IV was jarring, and that was also in the original Japanese.) There’s also some subtle callbacks, such as Ene having a complete freakout when she sees Konoha, which sounds so much like her old self that Shintaro almost figures it out before she distracts him. Overall, I remain interested, despite a majority of the characters having serious character flaws, and will definitely pick up the next volume.