About the Mangaka

No info on either Kakinuma Hideki or Tsurugi Yusuke

About the Manga

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Damn, yet another excellent volume of the Junk Force saga. Though like the first volume it’s not without faults. But it’s a lot better than I was expecting, as once again every other review of this volume I’d read had been negative.

I was a bit disappointed to find that Mamet, who was introduced at the end of volume one, was fixed already at the start of volume two. I was hoping to see more of her claiming the Louis was her husband. Overall I thought that would have given some fun, unforced comedy to the series.

While the gang now have a set destination, they don’t really seem to be in any rush to get there (contrary to the story plot), and tend to get involved in everything they come across. It’s fun to follow at first, but I felt that after the first few incidents, these side ventures were getting in the way of telling the real story.

As with the previous volume Hideki seems to miss parts of the story, suddenly going from the confrontation to the end. Usually leaving the reader asking what the hell happened to the middle bit.

That said I do like his stories, they’re fun and he has a knack of injecting humour at just the right moment.

Though after two volumes we still haven’t really gotten anywhere, rather with the exception of the one story, any mention of the main story seems to be accidental. In that respect I’m hoping volume three is a lot better.

Art wise, as with the previous volume we’re given only a few bits, mostly at the chapter start, with a few others thrown in. Of course we get a load of fan service, including a semi full frontal scene in a lake (she’s covering her breasts but everything else is visible lol). I wonder how that was censored in the original.

DrMaster are once again blighted by some silly mistakes, and I admit there were a few times I had to stop and reread a sentence, and a few I had to just ignore. Some of the mistakes are the sill spellchecker styled ones that everyone gets. But others I think are more idiotic, and I wonder just who QCed this volume.

The other thing that really got to me was the chapter starts. The chapters start with a log entry by one of the gang, and previously these were all done in italics. Even the first few of this volume are done like that, then for no apparent reason it suddenly stops and they merged into the main chapter. This was a bad decision IMO, since the two parts are written in different perspectives and will naturally lead to confusion,

Despite the issues with this volume, it was an excellent read. Though out of all of the stories the final one was my favourite as it made the most sense to me. That said if the third volume is like this one, it’ll lose it’s place on my Essential Read list.

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