Title: Mujina Into the Deep Vol. 4
Author: Inio Asano
Publisher: Viz Media
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 199
Genre: Slice-of-Life, Dystopian, Action
Publication Date: May 19, 2026
The Story
We open with Ubume’s operation to kill those who originally kidnapped Juno. Meanwhile, we visit Terumi in the hospital as he is still recovering after the attack he suffered. He is wearing a cloth around his eyes, but thankfully, Nive said that she knows a hospital that can do something about that. The operation goes off without a hitch, but it doesn’t come without a rare moment for Ubume.
After the operation, Ubume begins to have strange dreams about a man in a tanuki suit. She begins to ask around to see if anyone knows anything, with her main lead hoping to be Tenko, but she knows nothing. We shift gears to an island where we are introduced to Yuhang Lin, a man who goes on quite a monologue about the island, what the ultra elite did there, how it tied into mujina, and more specifically, set the stage for Ubume’s backstory!
Once we learn everything, we also learn that Ubume is starting to regain her memories. Nive and having a chat with our favorite underground doctor, and they fill us in on the missing details of Ubume’s origins. Speaking of, she has accepted a new job to rescue a journalist who was caught in a bit of a war between two publications after both were accused of using doctored audio to smear a politician. We end things on Ubume arriving at the scene and meeting some resistance!
Characters
Obviously, Ubume’s backstory was the major focus of development here, and while it goes into heavy spoiler territory, I will say that it kind of makes sense as to why she lost her memories. If you’ve been following the details of the story, you can probably guess how that happened… especially when she continues to ask for a certain something to continue doing her job. The circumstances surrounding it, however, were pretty surprising, but not all that surprising considering who the author of this series is.
We also got a bit of development on Nive… or more like… how she’s more charitable and caring than she lets on. Let’s not get it twisted, though. She’s all about the money, selling Ubume and other mujina as a service, and bolstering her portfolio of information brokering. That comes first and foremost, but she does show that she has a heart a few times in this volume. The biggest factor that showed her heart was when she set up Terumi with a hospital to treat his eyes. She was legitimately concerned for him, which is something that I didn’t expect from her character. It added a new dimension to her without actually changing the core of her archetype.
Final Thoughts
Well… it looks like there is way more to the Happy Club case than we imagined. I can’t help but think that this is a huge parody of a certain real-life event playing out right now… You know… the one involving a bunch of files? Yeah, that one.
Nevertheless, it’s interesting to learn about how politics are evolving, and what that could mean in the future for all mujina. Despite a future that looks promising for them, it doesn’t exactly sound promising for society as a whole. The thing is, it all ties back to Happy Club, its true purpose, and how they aimed to achieve it by using a bunch of loopholes in the law. It was even stated that as more and more laws are passed, the more loopholes develop, and that’s how people learn how to survive in today’s society.
With everything involving Happy Cub coming together, tying into Ubume’s backstory, and what it could mean overall for the world, it would seem that we know the ultimate end goal for this series, and I have a pretty good hunch that this all ends with Ubume confronts her demons and puts an end to things once and for all, but will the special investigators beat her to it? Doubtful, but they’ve been made quite aware through our new character, Mr. Lin.
I feel as if the plot moved forward heavily here. Now, all that’s left is to continue our journey there, but this is Inio Asano we’re talking about. I’m sure there will be more side paths to take before we get there, but they won’t exactly be meaningless. After all, if we are ending this volume on a job involving two news outlets, I’m sure there’s a deep reason why this is being used as a focus, even if it doesn’t immediately tie into anything we learned here. We’ll have to wait and see if it does, or if this is just another mission for Ubume to give us a bit of action. Either way, maybe we’ll see Terumi’s new eyes next time?
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This item was provided for review by VIZ Media
