Hoshin Engi 5

Aw, Hoshin Engi.  I forgot I even read this volume.  It’s a couple weeks old, it was at the bottom of the stack, underneath two things which must be reviewed together, one of which is delayed because I need to scan something that desperately needs to go with the review.  Anyway.

I’m still always mildly puzzled when I start a volume of this series.  I’m getting better and better at remembering the Doshi and the characters from the spirit world, but this volume stumped me when we were dropped in the middle of a battle that involved all the members of the Buseio’s family.  I actually remember last volume where I had to constantly keep flipping to the front to reference the chart that had their relationships mapped out when they were introduced.  I also couldn’t remember much about the fast Doshi (?) that keeps calling himself Taikobo’s assistant.  I’m sure these things will make themselves clear as the important people stick around longer and the other characters fade away, but man, it’s frustrating to read this series sometimes because of all the characters.

I like Taikobo quite a bit, and one of my favorite things is seeing how he always outsmarts his opponents.   Sadly, there was only a bit of this in this volume, and he didn’t actually even defeat the opponent.  He was tricked and trapped himself a couple times, which doesn’t work for me only because he can’t act stupid then be played a fool, because that leaves me with nothing to root for except an extremely stupid character.  The volume was split between several different battles with different characters allied with Taikobo and the Buseio fighting against a type of Doshi who were from a different spirit world than Taikobo.

The fights themselves are pretty cool, as always.  Lots of different powers are employed, and Nataku especially makes use of several different magical weapons against his opponent.  The Doshi all have different and unusual powers that the other characters are unable to predict, which I think is mostly why the battles lasted pretty much the entire volume.  Like I said though, I kind of read the series for Taikobo and the way he and others (mostly Dakki) always one-up other characters, so while the battles are very cool, that’s just not what I’m looking for.