Nora: The Last Chronicle of Devildom 4

You know, I kind of like this series.  It’s not very good, which I may have said before, but it’s got a lot of things I like in it, like demons and a couple of really awesome main characters.  And actually, it starts to get a lot better in this volume, so my patience was rewarded in this case.  We actually get to see the fully released body of Nora in this volume, which I was not expecting.  It’s actually pretty epic, and the whole scene, which includes groups from both sides of the war, is a good one since everyone seems at a loss as to what to do with this gigantic hellhound that sucks away their energy.  Meanwhile, Nora is having an inner struggle while he tries to deal with all the magic.  His conscience takes the form of Kazuma, which is kind of amusing and terrifying at the same time.

I was a little unclear what happened at the transformation.  It was clear that Kazuma and Nora still had a master-familiar relationship since Kazuma still had his tattoo, but the “I forbid” commands stopped working… and then somehow they put a new collar on him?  How did this happen?  Did they have to do this while he was unconscious?

Even more terrifying than Nora’s transformation was the fact that Kazuma seemed uninterested in going toe-to-toe with demons with nothing but Nora for protection and sought power of his own.  The volume leaves this up to your imagination, both the power and how he pays for it, but Kazuma is kind of a scary guy.  I can only imagine this going wonderful places.

Some of the things I dislike about the series are being toned down, like the Dark Liege.  She only actually appears once or twice, which is great because the story becomes more about Nora wanting to destroy her than her making jokes about how pretty she is and how Nora is her doggy and all that.  The general characters are a little unclear in my mind, though, and other than the one that likes to fish and the one that periodically shows up to antagonize Nora, I can’t tell the rest of them apart.  They don’t appear that often, and are usually background noise when they do, but it’s gotten to the point where I should probably learn.

Now not only am I looking forward to the next volume, I’m actually pretty excited about getting to read the first volume since I think that will clear up a lot of things.  This volume was pretty good, and while it’s not quite good enough to require an immediate purchase of the entire series, it is picking itself up out of mediocre shounen territory.  I’ll be excited if the story lives up to some of the things I’m imagining for it.

And to be fair, some of the humor is funny.  The weird and persistent obsession every character has with donuts, offhandedly mentioning them every so often, is a great gag.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.