Review by Karl Verhoven

It’s 1964 with Asa now seventeen, and for the second time within a matter of days she’s seen photographic evidence of an impossible creature, one she saw with her own eyes five years previously. “My family is alive somewhere, but this thing took them away”, she tells the intimidating Minoru Jissoji, a government agent. Aware of what an talented pilot Asa is, he wants her to fly her plane up close at short notice next time the creature is sighted.

Dangerous or not, she’s up for the experience, and is more worried about accompanying her friend Yone to meet with a talent agent. As seen in Volume 2, this involves ditching Yone’s friend and singing partner Miyako, so someone’s going to be hurt. On top of that the opening ceremony of the 1964 Olympic Games is only a week away. The unforeseen complication is Kaiichi Nakaido, a student obsessed with the work of his unorthodox professor who’s now dead.

After the out and out thrills of Volume 2, Naoki Urasawa here dials down the threats a little as he reinforces the cast he’s already introduced. More time is spent with people only previously seen in passing, and for this volume it means Asa is barely seen with her plane, although her one flying scene is a good one. Urasawa is a supremely skilled dramatist playing with a likeable cast and has a killer ending leading into Volume 4, but this doesn’t reach the highspots of the previous volume. To put that into context, though, it sets a fair number of plots up, and has to be seen as one instalment in a bigger picture.

Every volume contains notes at the end from translator John Werry, offering greater context for incidents and people mentioned in passing and presumably known to readers of the original Japanese editions. They’re always informative, and here include the tragic story of Japanese runner Kokichi Tsuburaya.