Dai Dark vol. 5

Who is Hajime “Hellmaster” Damemaru?  That’s the question Shimada Death wants to answer in this volume.  So she pursues the only rational course of action to find out:  Hooking up his shadow-ified body to the brain of an ancient decaying organism in Darknest in the hopes of getting a look inside.  Shimada and Zaha do wind up getting a peek into the (alleged) sixteen-year-old’s brain… only to wind up with more questions.  It’s not a total loss as Hajime says he has a lead on who spread the rumor that Zaha’s bones will grant any wish to those who get them.  It was started by (big surprise) the Photosfere corporation.  This now means that our protagonists have a reason to take the fight to them.  Which may be a problem as their religious arm, the Lighthead Order, has decided that the way to take on the Four Little Shits isn’t one Photonuclear Man – it’s MULTIPLE Photonuclear Men!

That’s right, it looks like “Dai Dark” finally has some direction and is intent on pursuing it for the foreseeable future.  We also have a lot of additional questions regarding Hajime, but I’m willing to put up with them since his appeal has always been in his suffering.  Which he does a lot of in this volume.  There’s also the expected amounts of weirdness, ultraviolence, and dark humor which are this title’s stock-in-trade.  Better still is the developing subplot about internal strife between Photosfere and the Lighthead Order and the various schemes in the latter organization regarding who’s going to be the next Photonuclear Man.  Schemes which look to finally tie the flashbacks to Zaha’s elementary school days to the present!

Never have the words “Meatball Spaghetti…” been uttered with so much malevolence as they have at the end of this volume.  It’s utterly ridiculous, but in a way I can completely get behind.  “Dai Dark” may not have brought all of its utterly weird storytelling pieces together here at last, but they still remain a singularly entertaining storytelling experience here as always.