Nora: The Last Chronicle of Devildom 8

Kazunari Kakei – Viz – 2009 – 9 volumes

I still love this series, but it has to wade through the mess of mediocre shounen manga ending here.  It’s kind of lame, honestly, since it is literally all about Nora and Kazuma wanting to win so badly that they conquer evil.  I didn’t really pick up on a better reason than that for their success.  They just wanted it more.  And all the generals and bad guys are in this volume, running around while both the human and demon world are being destroyed… I never really bothered much with the side characters, aside from the ones that were around from the beginning, so most of these random characters thrown into the final fight are lost on me.  Oh well.

I still can’t help but like the whole final battle mindset though, especially since I’m so fond of Nora and Kazuma.  I kept hoping one or both of them would get to be the Dark Liege, though it was made rather clear last volume that the current Dark Liege is quite popular, and she is one of the main characters, so a death/fade away isn’t very likely.  Nora and Kazuma’s partnership and teamwork is fun to watch, especially when Nora is controlled and commanded to kill Kazuma.  The other fairly amazing thing, what made it worth sitting through the rather boring final fight, was what Kazuma admitted about both himself and Nora.  Not so much the friends crap, because we’ve seen that inferred, but more about himself.  It was pretty amazing, and made even more so by being in character.  We did get one callback to the beginning of the series that I was very glad for, and I was hoping to see it again before all was said and done.  It went down a little differently than I imagined, but it was still pretty cool, despite the fact it was a huge shounen manga cliche.

There’s one more volume, but the way this volume finishes… it’s like it would only take about one chapter to wrap it up.  Well, except for the whole “Kazuma is an adult now” thing.  I’m kinda curious to see how that will be handled.  I’m sure it will be hilarious and terrifying.

I love this series.  I love it even when it crashes and burns.  I hope very much that the sequel series will start coming out when this concludes, though I suspect I won’t like that nearly as much since I’m a little less impressed with every volume of this series, but all the same, I’d love to see more of Nora and Kazuma.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.