Review by Frank Plowright

This volume opens by spotlighting the Tokyo police department tasked with identifying and tracking down the monsters terrorising the city. The threats have been allocated numerical designations, and from a beginning where all were considered the same, there’s been a growing realisation that Unidentified Lifeform #4 has saved lives rather than taken them. Can the unit’s chief be persuaded that it should be helped rather than hunted? It also returns to a plot of conflict and distrust within the department not mentioned during Kamen Rider Kuuga 04. There’s a prime performance from the frankly unhinged Suruga, in some panels drawn grinning by Hitotsu Yokoshima as if he’s been treated with a serum by the Joker.

As with every volume, Toshini Inoue adapts episodes of an ongoing TV show written by Shotaro Ishinomuri, and here there’s an expanding of Yusuki Godai’s world as we’re introduced to his incredibly enthusiastic sister. Ichijo’s sister is also returned, in a volume concentrating on people rather than the monsters. The way the background has been set up over earlier volumes gives plenty to play about with, but even so what’s revealed will be shocking. Readers will have made assumptions, and they’re seemingly wrong.

The first third of the book, though, is just a prologue to bolster the cast. Kuuga doesn’t indulge in any monster bashing until halfway through, when a new threat appears. Once again, it’s very distinctively designed by Yokoshima even before transforming into a monster, as a grinning punk that Inoue gives a potty mouth, but he can be a frustrating artist. The designs are good, and the actual drawing great, but there can be problems with storytelling, when it isn’t always clear what’s going on. Conversely, as a change of pace Yokoshima gets to draw a girls’ shopping trip, and there’s a delicate beauty to the sequence, and the sample art mirroring a playing card is creative.

A monster that’s bulletproof and able to turn intangible is a threat significant enough to carry over to Kamen Rider Kuuga 06. That’s because the revelations divulged are more than enough to cause division and resentment among the regular cast, and there’s a solid cliffhanger ending to fit in.

There’s less action than in any previous volume, yet unless that’s all you want from a series it makes for the most engaging set of chapters to date. It introduces new sides to the main cast, and some wounds that will take some time to heal, if at all, opening new dramatic doors, and as such makes for the best volume yet.