Asadora! vol. 6
Asa, with a little help from Keiichi, managed to avert a kaiju attack on the Japanese coast in the previous volume, saving countless lives, averting lots of property damage, and allowing the ‘64 Olympics in Tokyo to start without a hitch. Vol. 6 doesn’t continue that momentum as Asa and Kasuga are placed on standby by Minoru as the Japanese government tries to figure out what happened to the monster. That leaves the title character with plenty of time to catch up with her friends Yone and Miyako as they pursue their own respective paths to stardom as a pop singer and wrestler. We even get to spend a lot of time with Shota as he’s continuing to train for the next Olympics and facing increasing pressure from his family to succeed at that. Whether or not this pressure means he’ll decide to take a shortcut and use some “enhancers” to increase his performance is yet to be seen.
There’s only two directions for that kind of plotline to go: Either Shota “Just Says No” or he starts taking these drugs and sees them take over his life before he gets clean, probably with Asa’s help. I’m not sure if mangaka Naoki Urasawa is going to give us a fresh spin on this, but I’m not optimistic and that feeling leaves the parts of this volume featuring the aspiring runner as its weakest.
Fortunately the rest of the volume is still solid as we check in on the rest of the cast and meet a new face or two. I’m definitely curious to see where Yone and Miyako’s stories are going to go, particularly in the latter’s case. “Girl Trains to be an Aspiring Wrestler” is likely a genre that has many entries over in Japan, but this is the first example of its kind that I can recall seeing on these shores. Meanwhile, Asa gets to be a supportive friend in both cases, and to Mister Kasuga’s misguided efforts to sell cosmetics between missions. This is all well and good, though, I have to admit that I’m probably more excited than I should be at the indication we’ll be getting back to the business of Kaiju hunting in the next volume.