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Title:  Kekkaishi #8

Author:  Yellow Tanabe

Publisher:  Viz

ISBN:  9781421508283

May Contain Spoilers

Yoshimori and Tokine are trapped, helpless, in the ayakashi assassins’ kekkai.  With their magic rendered useless within the field, they are reduced to normal teenagers!  As they worry about Gen’s condition, Tokine conjures up a desperate plan to get them out of their mess.  Will they be able to escape without using their kekkaishi powers?

Who needs all that mushy soul-searching from the previous volume?  This  installment took off running and hardly paused for a gasp of air.  Even cocky Masamori had his butt spanked as he starts stirring up trouble with the Executive Committee.  Best of all, Yoshimori, swallowing a little crow, is forced to call his older brother and ask him for a favor.  Of course Masamori is too contrary to actually be around to pick up the phone, inciting a burst of rage from Yoshimori.

Gen’s background was finally revealed, and I like him a lot better now that his surly attitude has been explained.  Picked on mercilessly as a child by both his brothers and classmates, he’s unable to rein in his temper, and is constantly getting into fights.  When he begins manifesting his ayakashi aspect, his parents, alarmed by their strange son’s bouts of aggression, make plans to hand him off to the Shadow Organization.  After an incident with a neighborhood bully, Gen’s world implodes, and he loses himself to the ayakashi that’s integrated with him.  Critically wounding even his sister, the only kindness in his otherwise comfortless life, he is saved from total self-destruction by Masamori.  Dear me, I simply adore Masamori after these last two volumes.

Even among others of his kind, life is not kind to Gen.  He’s still a walking powder keg, and he doesn’t make many friends in his new environment.  Quite the contrary.  He’s still considered a monster, even by  others integrated with with their own demons.  Only Masamori, whom Gen idolizes, believes in him. 

Kaguro is such a bad ass.  I can hardly wait to see what he is really capable of.  How can you not look up to a guy who dices his men into little pieces when he grows weary of their incompetent fighting style?   What nasty tricks does he have hidden under his layer of artificial skin?  Maybe they’ll be revealed in the next volume.

Grade: B+

Rated for Teen