Review by Frank Plowright

It remains Yukito Urabe’s task to increase the following the goddess Mitama has. A big change that came about in Working for God in a Godless World 4 was Mitama gaining a hefty increase in followers, and consequently the power she’s able to draw on. However, Yukito has learned that it’s best to actually distance her capricious personality from the followers, as that risks losing them. His big idea to increase her popularity as this volume begins is to start up a girl band.

Because there’s no major action scene until well into the book, far more time can be spent noticing how neatly Hangetsubansonsyo’s art defines a band playing music and how the crowd’s enjoying it. There’s a real lively attraction to the scenes. The sample art comes from a brief action scene just over halfway through, and in contrast to the action in previous books, what’s going on can be understood, which is great improvement on similar sequences earlier in the series.

Mitama’s popularity is increased via getting worshippers of other gods to switch allegiance, and this time Yukito has Gaia in his sights. Because of Working for God in a Godless World‘s general sexual undercurrent and Gain’s followers all being children, there’s a brief moment of concern that Aio Akashiro is about to deliver a scene that’s somehow acceptable in Japanese comics, yet would be considered appalling elsewhere. Thankfully, that doesn’t happen beyond some minor innuendo at one point, and there’s some clever psychological manipulation at work. It opens up into one of those unexpected sequences where Akashiro has a point to make just at the juncture where all seems to be wackiness.

Largely due to not having to puzzle over the art, this is a better volume than the last, but still has a tendency to meander, letting ideas drift rather than following them through. The ending drops a surprise and a cliffhanger to lead into Working for God in a Godless World 6.