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By Mamoru Hosoda. Released in Japan as “Bakemono no Ko” by Kadokawa Sneaker Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On.

this was one of those titles that I picked up but knew absolutely nothing about except the bare minimum. This is a rarity for me, as regular readers know. I was aware it was from the author of Summer Wars and Wolf Children, so expecting a heartwarming coming of age story was pretty much it, and that’s what I got. The main thrust of this new work is fairly predictable, and it’s also quite short, so you can zoom through it. That said, there are individual moments in the work that quite surprised me, and the characters are fun and easy to like, even the Beast in the title, who is the focus of the one bad word in the whole child-friendly novel (he’s called a prick, because, well, he is).

Our hero is a young boy who gets the benefit of both a dead mother AND a disappeared father, who escapes his snooty mother’s attempts to take him into their family and heads for the streets. There, he accidentally runs into two men with faces like beasts, and (evading police looking for runaways), ends up in a completely different world, one where beast people are the norm and being a human is strange and untrustworthy. Turns out that one of the guys he followed is in competition to be the village “grandmaster”, with the slight problem that he’s an angry hothead with no social skills. Since our hero is an angry hothead with no fighting skills, the two are made for each other. An apprenticeship begins.

It is fairly impressive that Kumatetsu, the Beast of the title, is as much of a jerk for as long as he is in this book. There are flashes of goodwill, but the way he was raised and self-trained makes him simply bad with people, including Kyuta, his own disciple. The long journey where you’d expect them to bond and become close is instead an exercise in Kyuta learning from the other masters while Kumatetsu stands around bored. He’s a difficult man to like. That said, once Kyuta returns to Shibuya on a regular basis, his anger gradually reveals itself to be the desperate loneliness we knew was there all along, and his actions towards the end of the book develop well from his character.

Speaking of Shibuya, there are several odd narrative choices in this work, some of which are clearly there to make sure we can get through this in 190 pages or so. Eight years pass by in a few paragraphs, and suddenly Kyuta is one of the best fighters there is. I’d wished for a bit more there, perhaps a montage of various scenes through the years. The Shibuya stuff also surprised me – I was not expecting to return to our world until the end of the book, frankly. Kaede is nice and a good match with Kyuta (or is it Ren)?, and I loved her stubborn refusal to let him fight alone. Indeed, the entire climax of the book takes place in the middle of the city, as the two of them battle a giant magical Moby-Dick, something which must look amazing in the movie that this also is (it came out in Japan in July).

Some sources call this an illustrated novel, be warned. The one illustration is on the cover. But it doesn’t matter, as this is a decent story, well-told. It’s a good comfort book to read on rainy days, or get for your tween kids.

By Kazumi Kamachi and Kiyotaka Haimura. Released in Japan as “To Aru Majutsu no Index” by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On.

I’ve talked before about the way that Japanese manga and light novel series have to be planned out from the start with multiple ways to end, depending on popularity. If the series bombs, there’s the fast “wrap it up in 1 volume” ending. If it plays out as a minor hit, you get a medium-sized ending which develops the plot and characters more. and if it’s a big, big hit – as Index was – then you get to start to take out all your chess pieces and shuffle them around the board, confident that you have the time and audience to stretch and let things simmer for a few volumes till you can fire off all your plot guns. With this volume of A Certain Magical Index, we see Kamachi hitting that point. There’s a whole lot here that is relevant to later volumes down the road.

Introduced in this volume: Hyouka Kazakiri, Aiho Yomikawa, Sherry Cromwell. This takes place literally one day after Book 5 (in fact, we see Touma returning to Academy City at the start of this book), so the timelines for the spinoffs are still the same as the previous book.

While I said that this volume has a lot of setup for future plots down the road, a casual reader wouldn’t necessarily know that, as this is Kamachi’s smoothest work to date, with a minimum of bolded words and encyclopedic dissertations on the nature of superpowers. That isn’t to say that they’re absent, of course, but they blend together better with the story proper, as Komoe lectures Touma on diffusion fields while also reminding him of what’s truly important – saving anyone that’s in front of him. (This also leads to the funniest moment in the book, where Mikoto and Index finally meet each other and realize that they’re both “I didn’t ask to be saved but he saved me anyway” girls in Touma’s nonharem.) The absence of Last Order and Misaka Imouto also means there are less weird speech quirks for the translator to deal with.

This is also, for once, an excellent volume for fans of Index herself. She’s used very well here, showing off her childish side but also demonstrating that childish does not mean stupid, as she manages to go head to head with a giant golem for several minutes. She’s also exactly the sort of all-loving friend that someone like Kazakiri needs. Kazakiri herself is an extremely clever idea, but she’s also a sweet kid, and you feel for her when her sense of self is blown out of the water by Sherry Cromwell and her desire to start a war. As for Sherry herself, it strikes me that this is the first Index villain whose main motivation has simply been revenge. It’s also a misplaced revenge – as Touma hints, Sherry really wants to be stopped, but has to let it be known just how insanely dangerous letting the Magic and Science sides intermingle is.

We also see Aleister Crowley again, and he gets to show off his “mwahaha, just as planned” side to a disbelieving Tsuchimikado. As the mastermind behind most of what has gone on in the past several volumes, he’s clearly the Science Side’s final boss. I wonder if he has an equivalent on the magic side? (Foreshadowing: your key to quality literature.) In the end, there’s simply lots for the Index fan to enjoy here. Good fights, Kuroko being cool briefly (and lecherous, but I’m putting off that rant for a bit), Touma managing to stay out of the hospital for once, and, in perhaps the best moment of the book, Touma, turning his catchphrase he uses against antagonists – “I’ll smash that illusion of yours!” – and motivating Kazakiri by showing her that her own illusion “isn’t something that can be broken so easily!”.

It also breaks the even-numbered curse at last. Definitely recommended for Index fans, and those who like superhero books with 87 million characters.