Dragon Eye stays with some rapid-fire Vius missions this time around, and still manages to be pretty good fun.
Creative Talent
Writer/Artist: Kairi Fujiyama
Translated by: Mari Morimoto
Adapted by: Mari Morimoto
What They Say
Issa is a powerful warrior who is sworn to protect his city against Dracules: deadly, virus-infected monsters. But now someone is smuggling them into the city - and the culprit may be one of Issa's colleagues. To capture the villain, Issa and his band of heroes embark on an ambitious undercover operation... but they might be walking right into a trap!
The Review
I was wrong.
The end of the previous volume of Dragon Eye left me with the impression that the series was taking a breather. It seemed to me that the story wanted to space out the elaborate action set pieces that had been its bread and butter, so that they didn't come into too close competition with each other. The nose can't stay on the grindstone forever, after all; neither can the shoulder remain to the wheel without refreshment. But it also left me with the impression that it was just about to get geared up again - to throw itself renewed into the energetic chaos of battle. But it didn't.
I was wrong.
However, I don't find myself disappointed. At least not much. This volume turned out to be much like the last: it covers a sequence of short missions, rather than the earlier focus on long missions packed with action and conflict. As such it is not Dragon Eye at its best. But it's still pretty good.
The missions themselves are interesting and varied. We start off with a nice infiltration style of mission with some nifty ninja / spy stuff that's more elaborate than I would have expected. Instead of just having Issa and a couple of other regulars sneaking in to steal the MacGuffin, there's actually a three-pronged operation with Issa given strange orders to go off on his own for undisclosed reasons. It also ends up tying in well with the larger plot that we started seeing more of in the last volume. Another, shorter, mission follows that's more in the usual Dracule vein; but even this has a pretty important revelation up its sleeve. If you were wondering why the squad mascot gets his own character profile box at the front of the book, this is your chance to find out.
The final chapter shifts the focus to Sosei, and gives him some quality time as he is presented a situation that forces him to confront his real motive for being a Vius, and to make him question whether or not squad five is a better place to be than Issa's group. Meanwhile, Issa and Leila get a day to unwind and we watch Issa show himself as a goof-off to everybody because that's the side of himself he doesn't mind showing. The cliffhanging revelation that closes out the story leaves me feeling like Dragon Eye is finally going to return to its true forte. At least I think it's going to.
I may be wrong.
The extras in this volume are probably the best so far. Q&A dominates the scene here, but some of the answer sections are done as short manga adventures and manage to be pretty funny.
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