Asadora vol. 9

It was one thing for Asa to get involved in the shenanigans relating to her friend Yone’s movie, but doing so managed to have her encounter the man who wrote her favorite song, River Etheridge.  While she’s elated to find this out, Asa soon learns that he’s a deserter from the American forces currently fighting in the Vietnam War.  While this doesn’t deter her from wanting to meet him again, it does complicate things for Kasuga and his government backers.  So they’ve got to find a way to break these two up in a way that doesn’t jeopardize their fight against the giant monster.  Meanwhile, Lt. Kosugi can’t stop thinking about his close encounter with said monster, and wants to find out more about it.  This will lead him to a remote part of the country, and to someone we haven’t seen in a little while.

I suppose it was inevitable that we’d do some kind of “first love” story with Asa as it’s an obvious complication to her ongoing storyline given her current age.  Too bad that mangaka Naoki Urasawa hasn’t made it all that compelling as it feels like he’s pursuing this out of dramatic obligation rather than because it’s all that interesting.  Not helping matters is that River comes off as a nonentity at this point, meaning that he and Asa don’t have much chemistry together in their scenes.  Urasawa does try to jazz things up with the threat of other government agencies getting involved, but this isn’t the series at its strongest.

Better is Kosugi’s subplot in this volume as he’s a no-nonsense guy who’s had his worldview shaken by something he can’t explain.  This leads him to make a questionable journey in search of answers, only to wind up face-to-face with someone who only thinks they know everything that’s needed to fight the monster.  Where is this thread going to go?  Almost certainly nowhere good, and right now I’m more interested in seeing how it plays out as opposed to the romantic nonsense in Asa’s storyline.  I’m still up for seeing everything that does happen, even if it means we’re going to be waiting a while to see what comes next.