Frau Faust vols. 3 & 4

I thought that the first two volumes of this series were fun, but a little slight in the storytelling department.  The good news is that things get a lot more interesting with these two volumes.  After the demonic threat, and affectingly tragic backstory, of the previous volume is taken care of, Johanna and Marion head towards Athens to see a specialist about getting Nico’s body repaired.  Said specialist turns out to be Sarah, an old friend of Johanna’s, who is followed around by As, a demon who is clearly lovesick for the girl even as he refuses to admit it. Things are going well for everyone until Ino, the demon responsible for the bad business of the previous volume, makes a sudden reappearance.

How did Ino manage to make such a quick return?  Unfortunately it’s all because of the church and their determined efforts to capture Johanna and make sure that Mephistopheles stays dismembered.  The head of their inquisition office, Olga, has her own thoughts about how humans and demons should relate to each other, and that winds up spelling bad news for a girl named Anastasia.  She’s a ward of the church and sister to Lorenzo, the semi-hooded swordsman who is pursuing Johanna. When he learns about what Olga has planned for his sister, will that be enough to get Lorenzo to work with the person he’s been hunting all this time?

In case the summary above wasn’t clear enough, there’s a lot more going on in these two volumes compared to the first two.  We also get lots of interesting bits of worldbuilding from more background on the church and how it operates, to Sarah’s elaborate doll construction skills.  There’s plenty of backstory to be had as well, all of it interesting and not exclusively focused on Johanna as you’d expect. Which is nice. Olga also makes for an interesting antagonist as her actions here are quite hateable, but not to the level of out-and-out villainy yet.  All this stokes my anticipation for the next volume — currently set to arrive in November — as mangaka Kore Yamazaki notes that the story is set to approach its climax.