Monthly Archives: June 2020

A Certain Scientific Railgun, Vol. 15

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By Kazuma Kamachi and Motoi Fuyukawa. Released in Japan as “Toaru Kagaku no Railgun” by ASCII Media Works, serialization ongoing in the magazine Dengeki Daioh. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Nan Rymer.

In my last review I extolled the praises of Uiharu, whose mad hacker skills were impressive enough to break someone out of an unbreakable prison. Sadly, it turns out that she got noticed by the Dark Side of Academy City, as she’s kidnapped here. Unfortunately, she’s pure peril monkey for the rest of the volume, so it’s up to the other three members of the cast to step up. Do they rescue her? Not yet. Are they badass? Aw yiss. We get to see Mikoto, Kuroko and Saten all show off their best sides as they fight to rescue their friend. Which is not so impressive for Mikoto – it is her series, after all. And we’ve seen Kuroko be badass before, both here and in Index. The more Railgun manga we see, though, the more I remain convinced that it’s an excuse to show off Saten rather than any other Biri-biris who might be lying around. She doesn’t even have a baseball bat this time, but is amazing.

The first two thirds of the book are well done and yet will feel familiar to the Railgun reader. The bad guys here are all teenagers, for the most part, and Index/Railgun has hammered home over and over again that their lives are basically experiments for various bad adults. As a result, Mikoto gets a chance to try to talk the enemy down, which… well, doesn’t work, but hey, she tried. I like the fact that the enemies by now are expecting Mikoto to be, well, a goody-goody, and while she insists that this is Touma’s job and not hers, it’s more or less accurate anyway. Also, salt-based attacks allows for more Biblical imagery in this Bible-heavy series. As for Kuroko’s battle, well, she’s cool and clever, but the “my yuri fantasies can beat up your yuri fantasies” bit was as ridiculous as ever.

And then there’s Saten, who discovers that Uiharu has been kidnapped and begs her friends to have her come along and help. This proves sensible, as while Mikoto and Kuroko both pursue leads that turn out to be false, Saten does what she does best – play detective. She’s questioned for the fallout of the battle between powered folks that happened around her, and, due to various plot-related reasons, this is done in the very prison we’d seen before… where, as it turns out, our enemy is really based. Sadly, they have the world’s dumbest prison guards there, and as a result Saten is able to break out pretty easily. Of course, getting to where Uiharu might be requires jumping between two buildings that are not that close together, and Saten is, as she reminds us, a Level 0. Does she make it? Of course. She’s fighting for her girlfr— erm, best friend!

Again, I suspect Saten is in this story, along with Hamazura in the main Index series, to remind us that Academy City’s “Level” system is complete and total bullshit. That said, I’m fairly sure she’s not gonna rescue Uiharu all on her own. This is shaping up to be another big arc, so we’ll have to wait a month or two… or ten… to find out what happens next. (And with the Index novels now seemingly over in North America, we’re not even getting to tide ourselves over with the main series.) Still, this was an excellent volume. If you take away anything from it, think of Saten, leaping between those buildings and making it – bear-ly – due to the power of conviction and borrowing other people’s technology.

How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom, Vol. 11

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By Dojyomaru and Fuyuyuki. Released in Japan by Overlap, Inc. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Sean McCann.

After spending the last volume having all the weddings, it’s no surprise that we’re starting to see the fruits of that labor, so to speak. No, not Souma, although he does bed three more of his wives in this book (it cuts away before the sex, sorry). Instead we have Poncho, whose two wives are already pregnant, possibly as they are banging so much he is literally getting thin because of it, and Hal, whose childhood friend Kaede is also pregnant. Fortunately, the sex and babies is only a tiny part of this book, which is otherwise devoted to integrating its new problem children into the kingdom. Sometimes this is easy – everyone loves Ichiha, the milder climate means he’s healthier, and he’s written the most important book in years. Sometimes it’s a bit more difficult, as with Yuriga, who is not only a budding tsundere in training, but is also writing her brother every week telling him what King Souma is doing. What is Souma doing? Oh, y’know, starting bicycle message services, doing a Day of the Dead costume parade, staging mock battles to cool anime music. The usual.

As you can see from the cover, the other big plot twist is that Roroa has de-aged, and is now attending school. OK, no. In fact that is Lucy, a merchant’s daughter who adores Roroa and models herself after her, to the point where she’s nicknamed “mini-Roroa” in story. The other addition to the schoolchildren ranks is Velza, the dark elf that Hal rescued who has fallen madly in love with him. It’s a bit too soon for her to be going after anyone, though, so in the meantime she join’s Tomoe’s posse to get some learning. As always with this series, part of the fun is seeing not only how Souma introduces things like sewers and the like to Friedonia, nut also normal Japanese things – in this case the idea of school clubs, who recruit just as violently here as they do in Japan. The kids are cute, and we’re seeing them start to grow up – Tomoe has a bit of a crush on Ichiha, and is also trying to be more mature in general.

Arguably the more interesting part of the book is Souma giving a symposium on monsters and what they’ve learned due to Ichiha’s drawings and analysis. Publicly, it discusses classifying monsters more easily and studying them to try to help prevent things like stampedes and the like. Privately, things are more disturbing – evidence points to the monsters being ‘created” rather than born, and if that’s the case, then what about say, the beastmen, or the sea serpents, or any of the sentient races currently living reasonably peacefully with humans. The last thing Souma needs is adding racism to a world that’s trying to get rid of it. And this doesn’t even get into the potential war with the demons they have coming up. The back half of the book is, therefore, lots of talk, but it’s interesting talk.

This book takes place back in Friedonia, but apparently in the next one we go off to another country and meet some more new characters – because honestly the cast is too small, don’t you think? Till then, this gives the readers what they want, and I enjoyed it. Though for God’s sake, stop citing Machiavelli.

Spy x Family, Vol. 1

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By Tatsuya Endo. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Shonen Jump+. Released in North America by Viz Media. Translated by Casey Loe.

I have technically reviewed this before. Back when Spy x Family was a brand new manga on the Mangaplus app, I was so taken with it that I did a review of the first four chapters even though it hadn’t even been collected into volumes in Japan. Since then it’s gotten up to four volumes there, been picked up by the Shonen Jump app, gotten ludicrously popular (though rumors of an anime coming soon are likely merely rumors), and now we have the first volume from Viz. Is it worth a reread if you’ve already seen it on the app? Of course. This is a manga that rewards rereads. It’s also the perfect combination of funny and heartwarming, and the Spy and the Family in its title are in almost perfect balance. It also features three leads who can each play the clueless one when the plot allows (yes, even Loid). And of course it’s a found family manga, showing off that when you have people you care about, it can be hard to see them as just pawns for your mission.

Spy x Family takes place in not-Cold War Germany, with tensions brewing between thinly renamed versions of East and West Berlin. Agent Twilight is a master spy, good at almost everything, who is now forced to have a wife and child so that he can infiltrate an exclusive private academy. Going by the name Loid Forger (why not Lloyd? I dunno. Why not Gerald instead of Jellal/Geord?), he goes to an orphanage to adopt Anya, a girl who seems brilliant to him, but it turns out she’s a telepath who just reads his mind to get the right answers. She really wants out of the orphanage, and things Loid is cool. As for a wife, he meets Yor, an office lady who is over 25 yet has no husband, suspicious in this cold war environment. She and Loid both agree to have a sham marriage to prop each other up. Oh yes, she’s also an assassin for the other side. Neither Loid nor Yor know each other’s secrets. Anya knows both, but she thinks it’s really cool, so it’s fine.

This manga is funny. It’s filled with great lines from everyone. Loid’s over-seriousness is mined for comedy. Anya’s childishness and ability to read minds is mined for comedy. Yor is perhaps the best at it, as despite being a lethal assassin, she’s also an airhead of the finest kind. I’d happily read this if it were just broad comedy. But the other reason everyone loves it is the gradual love and affection the family develops for each other, particularly on Loid’s end. The entire reason for him doing this was to infiltrate the school (which they do, in a ludicrous chapter that involves a child stuck in mud, a stampede of wild animals through the campus, and THREE different outfits for everyone “just in case”), and yet when they get there and one of the interviewers starts to humiliate Anya and Yor, Loid snaps and almost hits him, then walks out. His family became (even briefly) more important than the mission. It’s fantastic.

There’s a joke that says that the author came up with the idea of this manga by reading the most popular AO3 tags and mushing them together. It does feel like that at times. But like the best found family/enemies to lovers fanfics, it also has a strong plot, and it’s a lot of fun. I can’t wait for the next volume, even if I have read it before on the Shonen Jump app. It’s just that good.