Strike the Blood, Vol. 4

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By Gakuto Mikumo and Manyako. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jeremiah Bourque.

This volume of Strike the Blood features a) our hero trying to stop a molestor on a subway only to get mistaken for a molestor himself; b) our hero walking naked into a bathroom where two young girls are bathing, and the heroine’s reaction as if this is his fault even though it isn’t; c) a childhood friend that everyone assumes is a boy who’s actually a tomboyish girl, now all grown up, here to make everyone in love with the hero uncomfortable; d) two girls waking up next to each other, and teh teasing one saying “you were wonderful last night” despite nothing actually happening; e) bodyswapping, with all the cliches that this entails; and f) two women presented as the big bads of this volume who turn out to be rather pathetic, and are really just a ruse to cover up the actual big bad, who is herself merely a pawn in the game of the actual actual big bad.

Welcome to TV Tropes: The Light Novel.

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Again, there’s no way to really review a series like this without repeating what I’ve said before, so please put up with it. The books still feel as if they’re an adaptation of a pre-existing anime, rather than the other way around. Kojou remains a somewhat underdone hero, though he’s not helped by the fact that this turns out to be the first book in a longer arc, meaning he doesn’t get a big fight to show off with. This is because he spends half the book in the body of his childhood friend Yuuma, and thus is “a normal human” in the sense that most girls who are bred to be a mind controlled tool to rescue a woman from the most well-kept prison in the world is a normal human. And make no mistake about it, Kojou would definitely insist she’s absolutely a normal human, because if you’re going to be an off-the-rack discount copy of Kamijou Touma, you may as well go all the way.

And the series’ strengths remain strong. It’s a light, breezy read, showing that it may copy Index’s hero but not its prose style. The fight scenes are fun. It has several amusing scenes, mostly involving Yukina, such as when she informs the now female Kojou that he should never use the toilet in that body ever, and telling Sayaka “Stuff happened, so he’s a girl now.” As for Yuuma herself, I’m always a sucker for powerful kids with a past history of abuse who hate themselves and think they’re disposable, especially as most narratives exist, rightly, to prove that they’re wrong. I expect the next book in the series will be a lot more serious, and involve a lot more use of vampire powers. Till then, we have this book, which, like the others in the series, is well-written and completely lacking in ambition. It is what it is.

Umineko: When They Cry, Vol. 14

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Story by Ryukishi07; Art by Hinase Momoyama. Released in Japan in two separate volumes as “Umineko no Naku Koro ni: Dawn of the Golden Witch” by Square Enix, serialized in the magazine GFantasy. Released in North America by Yen Press. Translated by Stephen Paul.

Two more volumes of the 6th arc in this series, and how’s Battler doing? Not great, it would seem. His game, it is becoming increasingly apparently, is just duplicating what was done last game, simply because that worked. He’s decided to enter the Love Competition that George/Shannon and Jessica/Kanon are having, with Fledgling Beato as his partner, which raises all sort of questions. More to the point, though, Battler is still far too nice to really be good at this sort of thing. (At one point he tries to praise Lambda for the same thing, and she essentially shuts him down cold.) Battler thinks the best of people, and is easily moved by a girl’s tears. This allows Erika and company to get the upper hand, which I’m sure will rebound horribly on him in the final volume of the arc.

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Speaking of Erika, this volume also attempts to give her something of a backstory, as Dlanor asks her why she hates magic so much. The backstory rings a bit false – partly as it presents an Erika who sounds to me more college age, whereas the Erika we see here is mid-teens at most. But mostly it’s because it is very obvious from the start that Erika is Bernkastel’s “piece” – it’s Bern self-inserting her way into the story to cause havoc. Thus a “real” tragic backstory for Erika pales in comparison to, say, Bern’s own. That said, the background does show us a major theme of the series. Erika couldn’t bring herself to trust her boyfriend as she found circumstantial evidence that he was cheating on her, and though Dlanor tries to present counter evidence that he loved her, she can’t believe it because it’s not “the red truth”. In other words, love requires having faith in someone, which is something Erika can’t do. (She fares far better with Dlanor, honestly, and the yuri tease that was mildly in the VN is amped up here.)

In the meantime, there’s still the murders of the first Twilight, which are framed as part of the love competition going on. George manages to escape his mother’s clutching grasp (Pink Floyd’s ‘Mother’ resonates through this whole scene), and Jessica is able to kill off Kyrie after seeing a truly terrifying example of envy and hatred in action – Kyrie is scary. (Notably, George is rather sanguine about his murder, while Jessica is in tears after hers.) Rosa and Maria are killed fairly perfunctorily, although Maria’s rage at seeing her mother killed is very well-drawn, some of the best art in the book. Fledgling Beato may be confused as to who the man from 19 years ago is (hint: it’s not Battler), but is able to knock off Natsuhi with the help of her father/lover/mentor. (The incest subtext is icky.) And battler manages to top them all by killing himself – yes, in this game board, Battler dies on the first Twilight.

So what’s next? A lot of pain for Battler, I suspect, as I have a feeling he’ll soon be trapped in a Logic Error. And there’s still the remainder of the love competition, as we try to figure out why Shannon, Kanon and Beatrice can’t all be happy with their partners – only one can prevail! Let’s hope that the next volume ends with a nice, happy wedding.

Kagerou Daze V: The Deceiving

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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.

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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).