Title: Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody Vol. 11
Author: Aya Megumu (Art), Hiro Ainana (Story), Shri (Character Art)
Publisher: Yen Press
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 180
Genre: Shonen, Fantasy
Publication Date: October 5, 2021
The Story
Volume 11 of Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody enters a bit of a slower pace once again. We are still in Muno Castle and here, Satou recounts a myriad of things he has done during his stay. After that, he is asked to choose a family name to go along with his honorary Viscount title. He spends some time going around and asking others for advice until he settles on the name Pendragon… yes… the very same from the King Arthur mythos.
With his new title appointed, he makes sure all loose ends are tied and it’s off to escort Karina to her destination before heading to the dwarven lands to finally complete the task of delivering a message. I thought we would get some sort of side story but once they arrived at the fork in the road, it was the equivalent of “welp… off we go. Goodbye!” and Karina was now out of the picture!
When they arrive at the city of the dwarves, Satou wants to learn blacksmithing. They are brought to the mithril forge; however, the cores they have are low on magic power. Satou lends his aid and regulates his flow of magic so he doesn’t cause the forge to explode and cause hellfire and brimstone and rain down on poor, unsuspecting, ale-loving mini beard men! The volume then ends on a bit of a “meh” note as in there is no cliffhanger. They simply ran out of something to drink so Satou offers to be their alchemist.
Characters
I, honestly, cannot think of much in the way of character development outside of Satou getting used to his new nobility. I wonder why it was so odd for him to choose a family name, though. He even said it himself that Suzuki is his name in the real world and, most likely, wouldn’t even exist in this isekai world so… I wonder why he opted to not go with that and, instead, steal a name from real-world lore? It was kind of an odd conundrum to spend so much time deciding on but, alas, we now have Satou Pendragon as our main protagonist.
Tama and Pochi did get into a bit of trouble and it shows that no matter where they go, beastfolk are still looked down upon, even if what they did was show a couple of (presumably) dead mice. I guess showing it to someone of high standing also had something to do with it, too but at least nothing came to pass from their innocent actions. Even though it was a small occurrence, it still carried on the storyline from the very beginning of the series where beastfolk were seen as nothing more than slaves. A small touch but great continuity!
I also laughed once Satou got his surname that everyone in his little harem started attaching it to their names as if they all have a chance of marrying him! That was a cute moment, too!
Final Thoughts
This volume felt like another filler. It wrapped things up with the Muno City arc and now we are on to the Bolehart City arc. I’m sure Satou will, once again, win over the hearts of more people and learn some blacksmithing skills in the process. It was already funny that in order to learn blacksmithing he first had to prove himself… by making a sword. It was even funnier when his skill was already high enough to detect an impurity in the ingot.
In between all of that we’ve had more cooking, more cooking, and even more cooking. You know Satou does a lot of cooking when one of the biggest worries of him leaving Muno City is “who will make us our crepes now!?” At least this time, they opted to give us the cliff notes version of what happened on the way to Bolehart versus the earlier volumes where they went on a myriad of camping trips in between cities.
Despite all of that, we did get a nice summary of the whole demon invasion and how it’s still left wide-open. There is still fear that a demon lord will be summoned and by running down all of the past demon lords and evaluating their power, it plants the seeds for a future confrontation. Plus, it was kind of funny how they talked about past heroes being the level range of the upper 80s while Satou if I recall, is over 300. It’s going to be laughably easy for him to destroy a demon lord. I feel the hardest thing for him to do in the future would be to explain how he was able to do it! Then again, there’s always Mr. Silver Mask.
I can see the next volume being more of the same so I do expect the slower pace to continue. We’ll have to see if there is any action to be had rather than “We met some monsters on the way but we defeated them.” Would be nice to actually see them fight the monsters…
Follow me on Twitter @JJPiedraOELN
You can also check out other The Outerhaven reviews on your favorite social media networks:
Subscribe to us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/theouterhaven
Subscribe to us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheOuterHaven
Subscribe to us on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/theouterhavennet
This item was provided for review by Yen Press
