Akuma no Riddle Manga/Riddle Story of a Devil, Volume 3 (悪魔のリドル) (JP and EN)

November 9th, 2015

AnR3There’s almost no point in reviewing Akuma no Riddle (悪魔のリドル) as a manga series, since clearly the manga was contracted out by Kadokawa to illustrate the anime and not much more. This is frustrating, as I quite like Kouga Yun and would have liked a chance to see her flex her writing skills a bit.

Instead, we have a nearly word-for-word repetition of the anime, with no new depth or information about the characters.

Volume 3 follows arcs set around the school festival, including one about the one apparently Yuri couple, otokoyaku-like Kirigaya Hitsugi and her nemesis with whom she’s fallen in love, Namatame Chitaru. Their arc is almost tangential to the hunt for Haru, so it’s a bit of a relief when they, as Romeo and Juliet, die on stage during the school festival and make room for more actual assassination attempts.

At this point, it’s hard to not feel pity for the broken (and obviously doomed to fail) members of Class Black. Haru hasn’t been more than scared slightly and whatever baggageTokaku is carrying isn’t stopping her from being an effective bodyguard. In fact, the only reason to read this series to relive the set up, so that hopefully, we’ll get an explanation at the very end that makes some sense. ^_^;

I was able to read this book twice, in fact, to fully appreciate how silly it is. Once in Japanese and again, using the relaunched Global Bookwalker. For that one, I purchased the English edition, Riddle Story of a Devil, Volume 3. (The print edition from Volume 3 from Seven Seas has a release date in April 2016. Seven Seas clarified on Twitter that the Bookwalker edition is Kadokawa’s own content and translation.) The Bookwalker format worked beautifully on my phone. Pages were crystal clear, easy to zoom in and out, with very nice color pages of various “couples” in the series. I’ve got a Japanese light novel next on the thing and if it works half as well, I’m going to be a really happy reader.

Ratings:

Art – Competent
Story – Ridiculous
Character – Tragic
Yuri – Contrived
Service – Of course

Overall – 7

This series is brain candy, if your brain likes assassination by absurd means, pointless conspiracies, and whole plotlines that make no sense, are never developed and have no connection to the actual story. ^_^

5 Responses

  1. Liz says:

    This series is so bad but it does attempt to try and mix up the normal yuri formula. I wish another series could like Hayate X Blade but all the subtext is flat out cannon text. And maybe be set in some place other then a school. A girl can dream can’t she?

  2. Jin says:

    Yes. Yes. I am still playing with bookwalker.jp and honestly, I feel some trepidation in regards to digital manga at times, simply because I love books very much, even if I cannot afford to own many. “otokoyaku-like” indeed, however this fits well with the parents of western favorite bimbo-sama (as my chicago friend calls her) as one parent must be referred to as the mother. It reminds me of people seriously asking which one of us is the woman in the relationship. Whether male otaku or BL fan, apparently unable or unwilling as always, to reach outside of prescribed patriarchal masculine-feminine roles for humanity. This was an odd series, as GL has become more popular this was not very yuri. In any event, I am still buying this series, there are things that I do like. I like Tokaku a lot for what this series is about.

    • There are books I want to own…and books I want to read, but do not need to own the container for. I’m glad to have the opportunity to do both. I can still by print, no one is saying I may *not* do that. But for something like Miniskirt Pirates, I’m glad to have it in ebook format.

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