Murcielago vol. 17

Have you ever played a “Yakuza” game and thought to yourself, “You know, this Goro Majima guy is pretty crazy, but he’d be even more crazy if he wore high heels?”  If you have, then the arc that kicks off in this volume has you covered.  Zenpachi Kurogane is a member of the Yakuza family that Kuroko’s girlfriend Chiyo is a part of and he’s just got out of prison.  While he’s enjoying the party that Chiyo has thrown for him, Kuroko is sulking to herself.  Until she gets a call from the cops about another weird murder.  This time the corpse in question has lost a lot of blood after being stabbed multiple times.  Kuroko’s all about proclaiming this the work of the “Hundred-Jab Thrust,” and she’s actually not too far off this time.  Former possessed swordsgirl Hikaru acknowledges that this person was murdered… with a rapier.

So if rapier-specific murders and yakuza in high heels don’t do it for you, then I’m not sure what else to say about this arc.  The killer in question is your garden variety kind of crazy with only his raging hard-on to distinguish himself from the maniacs this series has shown us in the past.  There’s also not really a lot of intrigue to this arc as well with Major Kyogoku’s interest in the crime (and Kuroko) and the killer’s ties to another character from a previous arc providing interest beyond the crime itself.  Neither of these things are enough to make this arc stand out, particularly with the action being rather pedestrian for this volume.  It all makes me (again) pine for the days when this series had arcs that involved girls getting turned into fertilizer, kids being murdered, and high school kids getting curbstomped.  No, none of it was in good taste, but it at least made the series stand out.