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

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Damn I’m running out of praises for this series hehe. Once again we have another action filled volume.

I’ve already gone on enough about the art, so I’m not going to bother repeating myself again. Suffice it to say that the art is excellent as per usual.

The focus in this volume is once again the setting up of the characters, and the introduction of the third party, Kanon. I love seeing the parallels of the characters, which are all the more evident in this volume. The other thing about this series it’s still not clear who the bad guys are, which is great.

While we do get a small bit of action in this volume, it mostly focuses on setting Kanon’s personality up. While on the one hand he’s portrayed as a demon, he’s also portrayed as a person living by strict rules. It’s a very interesting personality he has.

This is another of the series I’ve read recently that has a well rounded and solid set of characters.

We still haven’t really learnt much about Narumi senior, or about the real story. This is rather surprising, as we usually have at least the basics by this point. This could be a good thing, or it could fall flat on it’s face. It all depends on how Shirodaira handles the revelations.

If he pulls it off right, it’ll be one of the best stories ever. However if he fails to do it right it’ll be just another mediocre series that failed to live up to it’s potential. For the time being this waiting is one of the key hooks that keeps people coming back for the next volume.

For me, I’m now eagerly awaiting for the next volume!!

Yen Press did another excellent job with this, especially Christine Schilling as the translator. Once again she pulls off an exceptional job keeping the essence of the series intact while translating it into english. I’m hoping to get an interview with her at some point.

It’s chock full of extras as well, including a two page afterword by Shirodaira. Needless to say this retains it’s place on my Essential Read list.

Where to Buy

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