The Ancient Magus’ Bride vol. 11

It’s a lovely, dense volume of the series we have here.  While the cliffhanger from the previous volume is dispatched quickly enough, it immediately segues into telling us all about Father Simon’s genuinely tragic backstory.  (As well as the various factions which exist in the church, which I’m sure will become relevant later…) Then we see what happens when some characters who haven’t met before finally do as Chise catches Rahab up on how Elias has been doing, while Stella makes a pact with Ashen Eye.  After that, it’s back to the College — via a secret path shown to them by their centaur mailman — as Chise gets to know more about its students. Including one in particular. That would be Zoe, a surly green-haired boy who has a major unexplained grudge against the young mage . He also has some sweet noise-cancelling earmuffs and when they’re taken away we find out that he was wearing them for a very good reason.

There’s a lot of world-building going on in this volume, more so than we’ve seen in the series for a while.  It goes down extra-smooth, though, because mangaka Kore Yamazaki does a great job of tying each instance to a member of this title’s expansive cast.  It’s exceptionally well-handled in the case of hearing about Zoe’s backstory as his origins and struggles are easy to understand and relate to. Even with the snakes.  There’s also lots of interesting foreshadowing here: from the stuff about the church, to the “Berserk”-looking monsters occupying the shortcut Chise takes, and the various houses behind the College, it all feels like Yamazaki is laying the groundwork to make this arc bigger and badder than the previous one.  It may be a little hard to see exactly where she’s headed with it at this point, yet the details she’s providing along the way make this a great volume of the series even by its normally high standards.