When Akari is unexpectedly kidnapped, Menou finds herself caught up in a fight with a surprisingly well-armed group of thugs. After Menou saves Akari and rescues an old friend, things take an even odder turn, but there’re a LOT of odd turns ahead, and maybe a betrayal for good measure…
There’s a lot going on in this series and some of it has always worked a lot better than others. The core conceit, that somebody is tasked with killing isekai’d people from Japan because the latter essentially destroyed the world last time they ran amuck, is really well done.
As confusing as it might be, the goofy Scripture combat that invokes holy verses to attack really has grown on me and the inventiveness of things like the Sword of Salt are a ton of fun. The revelation that the sinister Mechanical Society is basically a bunch of isekai tropes given life, infecting people with the ability to gain experience points and level up, is especially inspired.
Which makes it more annoying that these characters are all so ridiculous and that aspect so drenched in tropes. They cram a freaking swimsuit chapter into this volume for heaven’s sake and this is a fantasy realm!
Ahem. You also have the brutally monstrous Momo, although the addition of Menou’s friend, Sahara, provides the acknowledgment that somebody out there recognizes how awful she is. Between Momo and the ever-ridiculous Ashuna (best dress down for combat!) there’s never a male gaze far from things.
Sahara is an interesting addition, being much different than she should be to Menou’s memory, making an oddly familiar request, and seemingly very thinly drawn until her backstory is fleshed out suddenly and we realize that she’s just a small and petty person. It’s a good take for that character and the denouement to her story provides some unique changes to things going forward.
Akari remains the best character and while Menou is changing due to her influence, the yuri aspect of this is actually pretty uninteresting. There’s a lot of tell-don’t-show, where a throwaway line from the narration stands in for developing the relationship to a point where it’s believable that Menou’s ideals are slipping.
No, Akari is interesting because of her abilities to mess with time and her Cassandra-esque dilemma of nobody believing her despite having immense foreknowledge of events. The reason why nobody trusts her is justified quite well and leads to a great twist in things at the end.
By the end of this volume we’ve gotten a couple of great fight scenes, including one that’s particularly fun because of how unexpected the match-up was, and the author always does those justice. It is crazy pants nonsense in the shonen mould, but done well enough to be fun.
Now, that’s not to say that sentient holograms and a zombie apocalypse might not have shown up, but not for nothing do I describe this series as ‘all over creation’.
3 stars - is this good? Yes. Is it bad? Also yes. This is a story that is constantly at odds with itself and while I have grown used to its style and even enjoy it for what it is, I’d never describe it as a top-tier series. And naturally I’ll devour the next book once it’s out. Purely for reviewing purposes. Cough.