Title: Dead Mount Death Play Vol. 6
Author: Ryohgo Narita (Story), Shinta Fujimoto (Art)
Publisher: Yen Press
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 242
Genre: Supernatural, Action
Publication Date: August 31, 2021
The Story
In volume six of Dead Mount Death Play, Takumi is still being held captive by Higuro and Momoya. Higuro begins to torture him when Xiaoyu shows up and attempts to rescue him. On top of that, Misaki shows up in her brand-new vampire form thanks to Polka’s necromancy. Misaki takes on Momoya while HIguro uses the confusion to escape.
Solitaire then pulls a gutsy move and pays a personal visit to Superintendent General Jirotarou Takasu, pointing the finger at him for being the puppetmaster. In reality, Solitaire is fishing for information and once he discovers that Jirotarou has a connection with The Grocer, he begins to believe his information is valid and correct. In exchange for info, Solitaire provides a clue behind the true identity of the Fire-Breathing Bug!
Meanwhile, Hosorogi has Polka rig it so that he can talk to Iwanobe so he can feed him some information that leads him to who is really suspected of pulling the strings only to be attacked by Fire-Breathing Bug! All the while, we are introduced to, yet, another new character and a fellow member of the Agakura clan… Momoya’s big sister Majiri.
Lastly, it seems that Polka is about to get paid a visit from, yet, another new character… this time it’s someone from his homeworld!
Characters
There was so much happening character-wise in this volume that I’ll try my best to pull everything together.
First off, even though the beginning of the volume focused on Momoya, Higuro, Misaki, Xiaoyu, and Takumi, we only really got some new information on Takumi and Misaki. The first is pretty obvious that Polka used his necromancy to give Misaki, who was sliced in half and killed in the last volume, the powers of a vampire. She can quickly regenerate her body and, apparently, now possesses sweet saliva which can paralyze her victims.
As for Takumi, we got an explanation as to why he always wears a visor. It’s because he’s afraid of reality and feels that if he looks at the world through a piece of technology, it would seem like a game to him instead of reality and, therefore, he can deal with his anxiety. Plus, he showed no fear when faced with death as he is also well aware of Polka’s powers of necromancy
Even though Solitaire got some pretty good screen time, we still don’t really know what he’s up to yet. At least not fully. Although, knowing Fire-Breathing Bug’s secret is rather interesting in and of itself.
Thanks to the introduction of Majiri, we learn more about Xiaoyu’s backstory and what happened to his body as well as how he got his prosthetic limbs. Obviously, there is quite the connection there!
Final Thoughts
I probably missed some stuff but there were just SO MANY moving pieces in this volume. Even though the book had 242 pages, it felt as if it had the content of a book twice its size. Then again, if you are familiar with Ryohgo Narita’s works and his style of storytelling, this isn’t anything out of the ordinary for him. Narita has an uncanny ability to tell many side stories with a massive cast of characters and then tie all of those stories together in one huge revelation. He’s done it before with Durarara as well as Baccano. Dead Mount Death Play is shaping up to be no different.
While it seems as if it is hard to keep track of it all, the information and stories presented in this volume didn’t really seem to overwhelm. It’s just remembering everything after reading it that poses the challenge; however, when you do read it, the information just flows smoothly and the story feels as if it unfolds naturally. I can say that no character was wasted in this volume but now it seems the shift will be made to Polka in Volume 7 as it is very clear that he is no longer alone in this world when it comes to people from his homeland.
It’s also still puzzling how the police know of the name Sarabamond as well. Right now, they’re claiming it’s a certain someone’s information network but that is way too unique of a name to just randomly call an info network as such. There is way more to this and since this manga doesn’t like to stay in one spot for too long, perhaps we’ll get more info on that next volume, too?
Plus, there is the whole Majiri situation we were introduced to!
Needless to say, things are heating up more than the Fire-Breathing Bug and it’s getting really good!
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This item was provided for review by Yen Press