Content Warning: Gore, nudity, massive destruction
One step closer to the end of this series…
Last time, we left off with a giant hand reaching into Rei’s room. As I suspected, it’s one of the giants attacking the city, not Chiho. The giant grabs Rei and he’s able to cut its hand and get away. The next few pages have a montage of the giants getting killed by the Tokyo PD and JSDF, before the ETE unleashes a giant robot on the city. While the JSDF is able to take down this giant robot, it comes at quite a cost. I do have to say, it’s nice to see some giant robots in something. I miss the mecha genre.
During all of this, we see PaPiCo’s Twitter get 5.56 million followers and start hearing calls for her release. And I’m really glad to see it. When Chiho was arrested, my heart sank. She should be the hero (even if we’re stuck following Rei for some stupid reason) and it’s good to see the people in the book realize that she’s there to help them. She might not have the skills and she might not have wanted the job, but she’s got it and she tries her best. And that’s why I wish this was her story. Aside from the very first page in this volume, we don’t see her until ETE gets ready to unleash not one but THREE Gods of Destruction on Tokyo.
As the Gods appear and start destroying the city, we start following the love interest from the first volume, the one that Rei’s friend had a crush on (at least I think its her) as the city begins to crumble. There’s a lot of death and destruction in this part. People are killed by buildings falling apart, people crying and holding each other, and one child scream in front of the crushed body of his mother. One thing I will say about this series, it doesn’t shy away from the human cost of all this devastation. It’s not something you see very often, this human cost. And I think it’s one of the better parts.
When we really get to see Chiho again, she’s been released from prison and given a super elastic suit to wear, riding on a troop transport helicopter with several squads of JSDF soldiers. There’s some fun dialogue with some of them, with one of them admitting he owns some of her films.
And then they jump out of the helicopter, with Chiho growing to giant size as she falls through the air. The suit doesn’t hold out very long and she naked by the time she hits the ground. Meanwhile, we get cuts to the various people in the city, either in shock or crying.
When Chiho lands, you can see how much more prepared for this than she was the last time. She doesn’t look afraid, she looks confident, ready for the fight. Sadly, it doesn’t last. There’s three of them and one of her. She hasn’t been trained for a fight and the JSDF doesn’t seem to be able to even scratch the Gods. It doesn’t take long for them to knock her around and get ready to tear her apart. When I was reading this part, I was really worried for her.
But, she vanishes before they can kill her, using the same trick she did during the last battle, shrinking down to avoid them. And she uses the other trick she did last time, climbing up one of the giants, only to get inside and destroy it by increasing her size when inside it…
And that’s where this volume ends, with one God of Destruction down, and two more to go.
This one feels so short. Mostly because there’s not nearly as much dialogue and there’s a lot of jumping around. With the lack of focus on Chiho, I found this one hard to get started. To me, Chiho is what makes this series. She’s the hero, not Rei. She should be the main character, not Rei. And even in this volume, Rei doesn’t really do much besides scroll through Twitter and cheer Chiho on from a train. We get a lot of images of destruction and what people closer to the action are up to, but it doesn’t grab me as much as the other bits. However, I do like the action at the end, it kept me turning the page as fast as I could.
I am looking forward to the next volume, as I want to see Chiho and Rei get back together. Now that she’s been given amnesty, I’m sure they can see each other again. I just hope that they give her some hand to hand combat training…
Rating: 3 out of 5
Suggestion: While not the best volume so far, it’s worth keeping up with.
