Asadora! vol. 7

In this volume, Asa Asada and Mister Kasuga take to the skies again against the kaiju that’s menacing Japan.  While government men in a boardroom angst about what its presence means for the country – will America step in to pacify it with nukes – they’re all about bringing the fight to it.  Even if it doesn’t seem like one plane with jury-rigged missile firing capabilities can do anything to stop this thing, that’s not the only thing Asa finds herself dealing with in this volume.  No, her friend Miyako is still wanting to become a pro-wrestler and now she’s run away from home in order to do it.

While the kaiju threat is still front-and-center for this volume, it’s not the most interesting thing about it.  To my surprise, that would be the ongoing issues facing aspiring Olympic sprinter Sho.  I expressed concern in my review of the previous volume that we were going to get some kind of “Winners Don’t Do Drugs” storyline with him, but mangaka Naoki Urasawa has given us something that’s a bit more nuanced and even crazier than you could first believe.

The good thing is that the mangaka really gets us into Sho’s headspace here to have us understand his insecurities and why he’d even consider doing drugs in the first place.  However, when he finally takes that first hit, things get… ultra.  I won’t spoil the surprise, but the experience does allow Urasawa to indulge his love of kaiju movies from a completely different perspective here.  It also puts Sho’s storyline on track to experience a different kind of tragedy than I was expecting.  Which is bad for him, but good for anyone expecting the story to follow the obvious throughline for this kind of thing.