Title: Choujin X Vol. 9
Author: Sui Ishida
Publisher: Viz Media
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 248
Genre: Supernatural, Battle
Publication Date: June 17, 2025
The Story
We are continuing the search for the poppy fields; however, Nude, their only lead, died. That’s okay because they enlist the services of Palma, who had been previously captured. She agrees to help Yamato Mori and communicates with Nude’s soul; however, he will only provide information in exchange for a complete raise. Once Palma brings him back to life, he divulges the location of the poppy fields, and our team gets permission to survey the area.
Tokio realizes that they need to fly there, but he can’t just bring Nude by himself because Palma’s raise isn’t perfect, and he needs constant maintenance. The only other person who can fly is Ely, so he recruits her for the mission; however, Nude wasn’t planning to go quietly. On a train ride to the closest point to the island, Nude shows his true cards… literally. In a quick battle, they subdue him and arrive at their destination. After a long flight filled with rest stops, they arrive and confirm the location of the poppy fields; however, they discover a choujin is guarding them, named Cabirol 16: The Golem Choujin.
Another battle ensues, and because of this, we learn a bit more about Sora (aka Zora). Also, Tokio and Ely have a heart-to-heart talk, exchanging a couple of secrets they were harboring within them. Once everything is settled, we switch to a lighter note as it’s time to celebrate Ely’s 17th birthday! Once we get that out of the way, we wrap things up with a pretty interesting bit of history from the 1940s and 1950s. This further compounded the existing backstory for Sora that we received before, fleshing out a few more details. Now, the decisive battle is about to begin!
Characters
Nude received a lot of the spotlight in this volume. We learned that he’s just a sniveling little rat who will take an opportunity given to him. He pretended to play along just so he could get raised, but what was odd was that despite being told he would rot without Palma’s constant care, he tried to make a break for it on the train. Maybe he didn’t fully believe Palma, or he planned to take her with him since she was the only one who wasn’t affected by his card tricks. Despite that, he begins to warm up to Tokio… even going so far as to fight to protect him against Cabirol 16; however, that sense of fighting came from looking at Palma more than anything, which suggests that something is there that is yet to be discovered!
Speaking of Palma, despite her previous business of selling corpses, she admits that she knows nothing of society, and wanted to make amends for everything she did, which is why she agreed to help Yamato Mori with its investigation. Once the investigation concluded, she was more than happy to stay in Yamato Mori and to continue to offer her assistance! This means we’ll be seeing a lot more of Palma as we move forward!
Tokio and Ely both received some development when they talked about each other’s secrets; however, I feel as if these secrets are setting something big up for the ending to the series, which, to my knowledge, is still quite a way off in the distance. Still, the seeds were planted, so it’ll be interesting to see how they grow.
Lastly, there seems to be something up with Sato. His training seems to have an ulterior motive, and there were some things that he said that made my eyes squint. The phrasing he used seemed to suggest that he and the higher-ups at Yamato Mori know something. It wouldn’t be the first time an organization perceived as handing out righteous justice would be up to some shady stuff, so we’ll see if it was just a poor choice of words or if something else is truly there!
Final Thoughts
Well, the search for the poppy fields is finally over, and because of that, we are going into a decisive battle against Zora, which means we’ll probably run into Batista again, too. I’m not sure how it’s going to go, but if this truly is going to be the decisive battle, I would expect it to go on for a very long time. It wouldn’t surprise me if it spanned two or three volumes. Then again, Sui Ishida is known for grand-style battles and wrapping them up within a single volume. He did that throughout Tokyo Ghoul, so it wouldn’t shock me if it was all contained within Volume 10.
The ending to that battle is going to be interesting. Especially since Ishida himself made it clear that the story is still in the middle of its arc. This claim was made about a year and a half ago, but that’s still relatively short in manga serialization terms. That means this battle might not be as decisive as we are thinking it will be. Something big is going to happen that will propel us into the back half of this series, and I have a feeling Tokio and Ely’s secrets have everything to do with what is to come.
If it weren’t for the secrets, I would be making my predictions about the many outcomes of this battle; however, thanks to those very secrets, I can already see the road ahead… especially with some of the flags that were planted in this volume. God, I hope I’m wrong… not from a quality or enjoyment viewpoint, but because we all know what happens to characters when flags get planted.
We’ll see.
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This item was provided for review by VIZ Media
