We left the gang back in 2014. Yomiko, Ou-En and the Five Sisters had teamed up with China, leader of Dokusensha, in an attempt to keep the Gutenberk Paper from Gentleman and Joker. Wendy and Nenene were attempting to sneak out of China through tunnels carved under the Himalayas in a vehicle driven by a guy named Shark.  Nancy had caught up with Drake and his team in their submarine and were on their way to find Yomiko.

Got it?

Good, because not much of it is relevant to R.O.D., Volume 12.

Nenene and Wendy do make it out of the mountains and, after turning down several heartfelt proposals from Shark, Nenene has a proposal of her own. Weary and car sick, she suggests to Wendy that they go home. And so they do, never to be mentioned again.

The bulk of the book is a series of extended battle scenes. China and Gentleman duke it out for dozens of pages, some of which include Yomiko saying “…!” or just “!”.  After China goes down for the last time, Ou-En takes on Gentleman and here, at last the book gets weird. Joker is watching from his airplane, the Victorious, and makes some vague threats to Drake’s group and Yomiko. Morris reappears from a previous volume to serve Joker tea. China isn’t dead again, so Gentleman calls on the animals in the wilderness around them to attack.

Yomiko is injured. She creates a ball of paper around herself so we all expect a massive evolution but, predictably, when her evolution is complete, she looks exactly the same.

Gentleman has all but killed Ou-En when Faust finally appears and absorbs Gentleman’s life force. Both Gentleman and China are now really dead. Turns out the Gutterberk Paper was powering Ou-En, and when Faust draws it out of the young man, he threatens Yomiko with a choice to “Read…or Die.” Yomiko chooses protect Ou-En, even going so far as to sacrifice the book Donny gave her to bring Ou-En back to life. In return he gives her the black book with black pages that they’ve all been looking for.

“Well?” Nancy asks as the story winds down. “What will you do now?”

Narrator voice: We never learn what Yomiko does next.

Instead we see Morris serve Joker tea and when they finally get a clear image of the battlefield all that is there is Gentleman’s body and a bunch of dead animals.  Unsurprisingly, Joker has no clue what happened.

At last Drake goes home to his daughter Maggie, who asks where he’s been. And, so, he begins to tell her…

…and that’s it folks, thanks for coming by today! Hope you grabbed a drink and had a snack before you go and see the rest of the….

…

…

What. The. Actual. Fuck. Kurata-sensei.

I sat through school girls uniform, and comprehension contests and you whining about working while at Anime Expo a decade ago and this is what I get? DUDE. Not okay. Hire a ghost writer if you have no ideas.

If the series had wrapped up in Volume 10, as it should have done, even if it were a mash of incoherent whatever, it would have been acceptable. But waiting this long for incoherent whatever is just vexxing.

Here’s what *should* have happened:

China and Gentleman should have killed one another.
Ou-En and Faust should have fought one another, then Yomiko should have taken down Faust, brought Ou-En back from the dead with the book.
Eeverything with Joker the same. Sure let Morris serve him tea 3 times for no reason.
Nancy should have taken wounded Yomiko back to Japan, where Nenene was waiting.
Wendy should have gone back to the British Library one last time to tell Joker to stuff it.
Then Drake should have gone home to Maggie.

It really would have been very simple to end this series well.

Ratings:

Art – 5 Okay, but always of the wrong things
Characters – 9
Story – 0
Yuri – 0
Service – Meh.

Overall – It is a thing that has been read. It has lost the shelf space it has been taking up for years. Bye, R.O.D., you died an ignominious death.

I’m sorry about it too, but from now on, I’m sticking with the anime.