Review by Frank Plowright

Jiro is unique among the mononoke hunting members of the Black Torch team via actually carrying a mononoke within him, adding to his already formidable ninja skills. Black Torch 2 ended with him beginning his participation in a training exercise designed to test his limits by pitting him against a huge panther as seen on the sample page.

Readers of the series to date will have learned there are times when Tsoyoshi Takaki is seemingly concentrating on one matter, but there’s something else going on. The panther is one of those occasions, used as a means of exploring Rago’s past and simultaneously revealing it to Jiro. However, Takaki is even smarter, and it’s also the revelation as to who’s behind the overall threat Black Torch are fighting against.

It’s also the start of Black Torch taking rather a grim turn. So far the assumption has been of it being pitched at a young adult market, but the gruesome violence – decapitation a speciality – ranks it at a higher level. That continues as the team undertake their first proper mission. Mononoke have sealed off a city and trapped the inhabitants, and it’s also been disclosed rogue mononoke feed on humans to absorb their energy. During the previous volume Jiro’s ability to talk with animals wasn’t used, prompting the wonder whether it was just a passing fancy to be forgotten, but it’s useful here.

Black Torch 3 concludes with an extended battle in the sealed-off city, where Takaki again cleverly drops a secret during what’s already a collection of interesting personal battles building on the revelations from the last volume. What Rago learns feeds into the cliffhanger leading into Black Torch 4.

Anyone who’s read this far is already a captured audience, and will want to know how things play out.