Chrome’s fight against the Wilhelm the Iron Wall seems to have taken a dark turn, but Roue is there to bring him through. After cutting it close, the pair wind up at a colosseum and may have a lead on Heaven Land, if they should even be going there in the first place…
So, the whole reason this gets a free pass to four stars is because of a gorgeous series of late-volume panels where Chrome picks up a discarded limb and wings it into the head of another robot. The composition on the sequence is absolutely fantastic and one of the sharpest bits of action I’ve seen in a bit.
Otherwise, the story continues to hew towards its shonen nature, but not to the extent of everything else. It’s asking good, classic questions about the nature of artificial life and how alive it truly is. It’s philosophical in between beatdowns, and that kind of ‘meet me in the middle’ gesture is appreciated.
I’m also a sucker for a good quest fraught with peril and a clear goal. The mystery of what, precisely, Heaven Land actually is remains obscured, but there’s an obvious reason for our leads to be putting themselves in harm’s way to get there. They just maybe should have done their research first.
Roue’s written young, but not stupid, so that means she isn’t annoying in the slightest. Her major problem is currently how naive she is about how not great the world out there can get - her survival skills are top shelf provided understanding others isn’t involved.
Chrome doesn’t exactly know himself well just yet - his upper reasoning shutting down so he could kick the stuffing out of Wilhelm the Iron Wall left him as basically a literal killing machine, so there’s mystery afoot. It’s certainly not wasting the premise.
Even the hackneyed colosseum plot is given a neat spin, as it’s basically the end game for a bunch of robots that are literally born to destroy and in a world that is shockingly scarce on humans this gives them their purpose.
It serves to push how unique Chrome is - he chose his path in life, whereas the other robots didn’t. Ironically, to achieve his goals that puts him in the exact same position anyway, but that’s more a nice touch than anything else.
This has the feel of a journey, which is really important to making its goals interesting to the reader. We’re just getting into the details of what could be up against Roue and Chrome, but a little battle mixed with some philosophy (and sentient cameras that belong in film school) goes a long way.
Special shout-out to the flashback for Wilhelm’s history as the guardian of that bridge. It is a story of a purpose that slowly becomes a prison due to rigidity and uniqueness that is actually nothing of the sort. It’s really good.
My biggest complaint is when the more unnecessary shonen bits get in the way. Outside of Roue, this story has shown no clue how to dress a female character up as anything but fan service and if I was hard on the maid last volume that’s nothing compared to this one and the new robot they introduce, who makes a real fashion statement. And that statement is, ‘a dude drew this’.
There’s also the very obvious risk that this could all collapse on itself very easily. It’s one thing to go on a journey, and this is off to a very strong start, but it’s another entirely to complete the thing without going off the rails.
4 stars - throw an arm well enough and you can succeed in manga, apparently. This is really good shonen and I haven’t been so hopeful for one in quite a while because, some choices aside, it asks interesting questions.