Manga Review: Spiral: The Bonds of Reasoning Volume Three

[Jason]

Title: Spiral: The Bonds of Reasoning
Volume: Three
Author: Kyo Shirodaira
Mangaka: Eita Mizuno
Genre: Shonen, Mystery
Originally Serialized in: Monthly Shonen Gangan
Published by: Yen Press
Price: $10.99/US

Spiral, volume three, is interesting in two ways. One is that the back blurb gives away most of the plot twists… okay, thanks for that. And two, the character evolution of Ayumu Narumi is interesting: he’s actually devolving. Ayumu started the series as a Mary-Sue of sorts, with nearly supernatural deductive reasoning and superb skills as a pianist. Unfortunately, his older brother, Kiyotaka, has these same traits and Ayumu has come to see himself as a poor copy, a mere shadow of his brother, something his own mother reinforced.

Ayumu’s faith in himself is further shaken with each clue he discovers about the mysterious Blade Children who all have two things in common: they’re missing a rib and they’re psychotic killers. Worse, Kiyotaka might not have disappeared while investigating them, but actually be involved with the Blade Children.

When a teacher promises to fill in Ayumu and Hiyono (the school reporter who is obviously infatuated with Ayumu) about the Blade Children, it leads to another dire mystery that puts Ayumu’s life on the line. The mangaka says the story has now been officially listed as a mystery manga but should be a “showdown” manga, and that’s about the size of it. There hasn’t been much mystery other than why the Blade Children exist and this whole volume is a showdown between Ayumu and new Blade Child du jour. This is essentially just a series of showdowns leading to murder, attempted murder and hospitalizations.

This volume didn’t really work for me, mostly because the action just didn’t make sense logically. Ayumu and Hiyono quickly realize there’s a Blade Child in their school and all they have to do is find her. Their nemesis takes insane steps to keep them from doing it but it’s really just a process of elimination leading right back to her, and Ayumu even hints at that. I found the reasoning here weak but it does serve to undermine Ayumu’s confidence.

While I found this one to be the weakest of the first three volumes, there is some mystery here and a lot of Machiavellian plotting (if you go in for that sort of thing). The art is decent, though these characters don’t look sixteen so I thought they were much younger. Yen Press leaves the sound effects intact, gives you the phonetic pronunciation and then the meaning. Occasionally this can get a bit cluttered.

Reviewer: D.M. Evans
Proofer/Editor: Lissa Pattillo