Title: Bug Ego Vol. 2
Author: ONE, Kiyoto Shitara
Publisher: Viz Media
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 219
Genre: Supernatural, Drama, Horror
Publication Date: July 21, 2026
The Story
The second volume of Bug Ego picks up with Hitsujiya trapped inside the wood carving. Luckily, Kokudo taught him a hack that could be useful in that situation, so he tries it out, and sure enough, he was able to escape. With that out of the way, Kokudo has second thoughts about trying to keep Hitsujiya away from the hacks. He believes that he is somehow attracted to them, or the hacks could be attracted to him like a magnet. Instead, he decides to start testing out the majority of the safe hacks.
This leads to them forming a group called Hacon with a whole two members… themselves. As Hacon, they realize that they need a base of operations, so they fill out an application to open up a Walking Club at their school. This way, they can roam the city as part of the club and use it as an excuse to seek out the hacks. The problem is that they need to collect five signatures, and their go-to people only account for four.
This is when they turn to their classmate, Yuki. She blindly signs the application without caring what they do. After all, she’s busy studying and pushing herself to the point of exhaustion to get into “Toukyo” University. Despite this, she sees Kokudo and Hitsujiya trying to fish in a street gutter. Her curiosity gets the better of her, and what she sees in the gutter changes her entire perception of her life to the point where she joins the club. She uses her superior deductive reasoning not only to belittle them for not getting anywhere, but also to reveal that she investigated the hacks, plotted out someone’s next steps, and captured them!
We are about to find out one of the other hackers of the world, but sadly, the volume comes to an end before we do!
Characters
Moesawa got a little time to shine here by way of her 9-year-old brother who absolutely hates milk, and his homeroom teacher won’t let him leave until he finishes it. A hack made him love milk to the point of hilarious obsession. It was quite the hilarious side chapter; however, outside of being one of the go-to people to sign their club form, there wasn’t much in the way of her as a character.
Yodomi ended up becoming a comedic character after the museum incident. I won’t spoil what happened, but let’s just say that he became a Hitsujiya worshipper. I’ll leave the method of discovering how up to you, but he becomes the other go-to guy to sign the club form.
We have a new character in Yuki Hashira. She’s very monotone and has a pretty special power. She can make anything, and anyone, explode at just a simple thought… in her mind, not in the real world. It’s not explained how her mind’s world works, or if it’s just her vivid imagination running wild, but she is constantly hearing a ticking noise inside of her head. When she looks into the street grate and sees something beyond imagination, the ticking stops… and that’s when she decides to join the Walking Club. She’s blunt, doesn’t sugarcoat anything, but has great deductive reasoning on the level of a professional detective. She quickly became the missing piece Kokudo and Hitsujiya needed to uncover the mysteries behind the hacks!
Final Thoughts
This was just more of the same from ONE… in other words, insane, off-the-wall comedy, but wrapped around a pretty cohesive and entertaining story. I knew the first volume teased that there would be other hackers in the world and that we would eventually meet them, but I didn’t think the series would go in that direction this quickly. Then again, they did say multiple hackers, and we’re only going to meet one of them, but that’ll be saved for the third volume.
The hacks themselves are still just as ridiculous, but when Yuki joins the cast, things get deep pretty quickly, and this becomes the most interesting part of the volume. In a way, it saved this volume from just being hack after hack paired up with joke after joke. That pattern can get stale quickly without anything to shake it up, and it seems that ONE knows this because things got shaken up in a hurry. Having Yuki be a Deus-ex-Machina plot device character to speed along the story was a bit jarring, though. I would have liked to see the entirety of the third volume showcasing her logic and hunting down the supposed hacker instead of just saying “oh, I already took care of that.” Then, maybe end the third volume on volume two’s cliffhanger ending instead.
But, knowing ONE, this series will probably be quite long, so a few sped-up plot points shouldn’t be a huge issue. Whether or not this new hacker will end up joining the Walking Club remains to be seen, but I have a hunch as to who it might be… and if you think logically about it, you might draw the same conclusion. Then again, rather than who I think it could be, it could be someone brand-new… or something from a parallel dimension since that’s been on the table ever since they noticed that the sticker in the notebook keeps changing. I mean… characters have already time-traveled, so why not bring in Alternate Universe versions, too?
In any event, fun, hilarious, and hugely entertaining. Bug Ego is shaping up to be another series from ONE that screams “give me an anime adaptation!”
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This item was provided for review by Viz Media
