Many thanks to Yen Press for providing a copy for review!!

About the Mangaka

Spiral – bonds of Reasoning is a joint project of both Shirodaira Kyo and Mizuno Eita. Shirodaira-sensei also worked with Mizuno-sensei on the prequel story, Spiral Alive, which is still sadly unlicensed. Mizuno-sensei hasn’t worked on any other projects, where as Shirodaira-sensei has another piece of work, called Record of a Fallen Vampire. This has been licensed by Viz and is due for release in April.

About the Manga

AWESOME!! This volume was awesome from the outset, no scrap that, it started at awesome and went to freaking amazing!! by the end.

Where as the previous volume had little action, this volume has nothing buy action, and loads of development for Ayumu.

The good thing about this series is that the lead doesn’t suddenly wake up to being a supper hero styled character. In fact his progression is rather interesting as he battles with his own internal fights, his lack of self-confidence and other problems.

Watching him come to terms, and try and over come them is something else!! The action in this volume is a rematch with Rio, only this time it’s a chase with a bomb. Ayumu has some awesome development in this volume, and yet at the same time his flaws are still evident, he even points them out at the end.

Hiyono is really starting to get to me, who the hell is she!! She’s more scary than the Blade Children and Rutherford mixed together >.< I’ve got an idea that she’s more than what is shown, but it’s also clear she isn’t one of the Blade Children.

It ends with a cliffhanger that will have you screaming for the next volume and cursing the wait for it to be released in a few months.

Shirodaira’s art is awesome as I’ve come to expect, he’s worked on his hands and seems to have gotten over the problem he had with them, for the most part. He does trip up occasionally.

The cover art is awesome, Rio looks so damned cute on it!! And the Ayumu/Hiyono image on the back cover is just as good.

Mizuno’s script flows really well, and the personalities of the individual characters is allowed to shine through his writing. While Ayumu got on my nerves last volume, in this one his self doubting nature actually made him more human, and more realistic hero.

Christine Schilling does yet another superb job on the translation to English. I’ve fast become a huge fan of her work. She really cares about the translation, and clearly understands the manga she’s working on and takes the setting and personalities into account.

No translation notes this time, though if people haven’t figured out honorifics by now they never will, and there were no cultural references of note in this volume.

It ends with a two page omake, not a lot considering past volumes, and a brief one page summary of the next volume.

This series easily sits on my Essential Read list, with out a doubt. Yet another awesome release from Yen Press.

Where to Buy

For the Brits: Book Depository, Waterstones, and the Little Brown Store

For the Yanks and Canadians: Amazon USA and Amazon Canada