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Magical Girl Special Ops Asuka #2
魔法少女特殊戦あすか 2巻
拉致された希美を救出すべく、あすかとくるみは敵のアジトへの潜入作戦を開始する。だがそこには料理人、番人と名乗る魔術を操る双子の傭兵コンビが待ち受けており、更には非合法な手段で生まれた魔法少女・アビゲイルまでもが二人に襲いかかるッ!! そしてその頃、飯塚率いる魔法戦に特化した特殊部隊『Ｍ班』も現場へと急行していた。壮絶な魔法戦の火蓋が切って落とされる――!!
Kindle Edition
First published March 25, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 6, 2020
This series can still be a little much. If you blanched at the violence in the first volume, you’re likely to go whiter than a sheep in a snowstorm with this one. It walks a fine line between revelling in the violence it generates and not sugar-coating it, though unfortunately feels like it tends more towards the former.
Asuka still has no intention of getting back into the magical girl game, but fate has other plans. Fate ends up aided and abetted by War Nurse, who happens to enroll at Asuka’s school and shows herself to be a wee bit possessive of the title character. Coupled with what she goes through later in the book, you can see War Nurse inching ever closer to a precipice that’s going to leave her in a bad place.
The musings on whether you can ever truly escape your duty are best saved for another time, however, as a pair of Russian magicians (who oddly enough look like Moai heads with wigs) abduct one of Asuka’s friends, leading into the nastiest scenes of the book. I will say that I thought this was easier to take here than in the anime, but it’s still pretty iffy on the tolerable scale.
Then again, the ostensible good guys are shown to employ similar methods and do some fairly despicable acts of their own, so there’s lots of guilt to go around. I’m sure it’s not unintentional that the people who really suffer from all this maneuvering are the younger generation.
Either way, I’m asking these questions because they’re certainly there to consider and there’s also not much else to say about the book, as it becomes a bunch of very well done throw downs between various forces. There are some dynamite action shots here and the art is fairly easy to follow, which is good as they comprise the majority of these chapters.
This book can be a lot to take sometimes. It has a gritty, action-packed take on magical girls. It also has a fair amount of blood and gore and a penchant for ridiculous body proportions (if you just went by the cover you’d assume that War Nurse’s greatest foe is probably gravity). Sometimes it’s nuanced, sometimes it’s so over the top it’s laughable.
Still, with so much pure spectacle plus interesting characters and a fascinating juxtaposition of grim and gritty with sugary sweet (seriously, it’s like rolling a soft serve in concrete and broken glass), it’s impossible for me to say I wasn’t entertained.
Asuka still has no intention of getting back into the magical girl game, but fate has other plans. Fate ends up aided and abetted by War Nurse, who happens to enroll at Asuka’s school and shows herself to be a wee bit possessive of the title character. Coupled with what she goes through later in the book, you can see War Nurse inching ever closer to a precipice that’s going to leave her in a bad place.
The musings on whether you can ever truly escape your duty are best saved for another time, however, as a pair of Russian magicians (who oddly enough look like Moai heads with wigs) abduct one of Asuka’s friends, leading into the nastiest scenes of the book. I will say that I thought this was easier to take here than in the anime, but it’s still pretty iffy on the tolerable scale.
Then again, the ostensible good guys are shown to employ similar methods and do some fairly despicable acts of their own, so there’s lots of guilt to go around. I’m sure it’s not unintentional that the people who really suffer from all this maneuvering are the younger generation.
Either way, I’m asking these questions because they’re certainly there to consider and there’s also not much else to say about the book, as it becomes a bunch of very well done throw downs between various forces. There are some dynamite action shots here and the art is fairly easy to follow, which is good as they comprise the majority of these chapters.
This book can be a lot to take sometimes. It has a gritty, action-packed take on magical girls. It also has a fair amount of blood and gore and a penchant for ridiculous body proportions (if you just went by the cover you’d assume that War Nurse’s greatest foe is probably gravity). Sometimes it’s nuanced, sometimes it’s so over the top it’s laughable.
Still, with so much pure spectacle plus interesting characters and a fascinating juxtaposition of grim and gritty with sugary sweet (seriously, it’s like rolling a soft serve in concrete and broken glass), it’s impossible for me to say I wasn’t entertained.
February 3, 2020
Love the grittiness to this Manga. It appeals to my love for girly super powered transformations (like Sailor Moon), but the premise so much more dark and realistic.
Kind of left a cliffhanger, but luckily I have the next volume ready to go.
Kind of left a cliffhanger, but luckily I have the next volume ready to go.
May 17, 2021
When I was little, the concept of fried ice cream weirded me out. You take a scoop of something that already melts way too fast at room temperature, and through some wizardry, you stick it in a deep fryer, and somehow it not only stays together, but the inside is still cold? It shouldn't have worked, and yet when I finally tried it years later, it was delicious. Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka is the manga-equivalent of fried ice cream: its combination of terrorism and magical girls should not work nearly as well as it does. And yet, here we are.
This volume starts off a little rocky, with the whole maid cafe thing, and Kurumi enrolling in Asuka's school as a transfer student following the start(?) of their relationship in volume one. But the series quickly puts that shaky ground behind it, once the international intrigue, and the kidnapping plot kick off; at that point, it just shifts into high gear, and never really stops. And it's not all action (though there's a lot of that), there's a good amount of world-building, and little technical details about everything from martial arts to military ordnance. Just be warned that no punches are pulled. If you're squeamish about things like torture or dismemberment, this probably isn't the series for you. But if you can stomach that sort of thing, you might find this series to be as much of a diamond in the rough as I do so far.
This volume starts off a little rocky, with the whole maid cafe thing, and Kurumi enrolling in Asuka's school as a transfer student following the start(?) of their relationship in volume one. But the series quickly puts that shaky ground behind it, once the international intrigue, and the kidnapping plot kick off; at that point, it just shifts into high gear, and never really stops. And it's not all action (though there's a lot of that), there's a good amount of world-building, and little technical details about everything from martial arts to military ordnance. Just be warned that no punches are pulled. If you're squeamish about things like torture or dismemberment, this probably isn't the series for you. But if you can stomach that sort of thing, you might find this series to be as much of a diamond in the rough as I do so far.
July 31, 2022
The second volume holds up well. I knew from the start War Nurse was gonna be LOONY TOONS CRAZY.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 6, 2024
A good adventure story with plenty of zsh, grrgle, ga-bwuff, ba-kwam, and some cute bad guys. I have just two more volumes.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews