Release date: February 7, 2006 (2004 in Japan)
Publisher: Viz Media
Format: Print (from library, but I’m hoping to buy my own copy soon, maybe the omnibus)
Type: Manga (in most cases these are read from right-to-left)
Age Group: 13+
Pages: 186 (176 not counting extras)
Source for Synopsis: back of book
Challenge: (personal) 2012 Reading Challenge, The 50 Book Pledge, Support Your Library Challenge 2012
Series
By night, junior high student Yoshimori Sumimura is a “kekkaishi” – a demon-hunter who specializes in creating magical barriers around his prey. By day, Yoshimori’s got some other demons to battle: an addiction to sweets and a seriously crotchety grandfather! Yoshimori’s pretty 16-year-old neighbour and childhood friend, Tokine Yukimura, is also a kekkaishi, but their families are feuding over who is the true practitioner of the art.
Volume 4
Sibling rivalry surpasses the bounds of life and death when Yoshimori discovers secrets of a ghostly patissier’s past life. The fraternal theme continues when Yoshimori’s older brother Masamori returns to Karasumori. Everyone seems to respect and admire Masamori—but Yoshimori feels alienated and left out in the cold. All this, plus more ayakashi to catch and cakes to bake—what’s a young kekkaishi to do?
Some Quotes
Couldn’t find anything to include here. (Forgot to look for some when I was reading this book, I finished it so quickly that I realized this when I finished reading this book, and I don’t feel like skimming through it right now).
Review
Gore: No
Magic: Yes (they have barrier making powers, I think they call it manipulating space and dimensions, something like that, I don’t remember, but I consider it to be magic)
Romance: (This one’s kind of hard to say) So far, there isn’t much romance, although it’s obvious that Yoshimori likes Tokine, I’m still not exactly sure how she feels about him yet, although she does care about him
Action: 4 stars
Pacing: 4 stars
Plot: 4 stars
Drawings/Art: 4 stars
Warning, Spoilers
This volume has an obvious theme in it, which is brothers and sibling rivalry, although there’s not much sibling rivalry with the ghost and his little brother.
Volume 4 has chapters 27-35 in it.
In the first three chapters (27-29), it’s about the ghost patissier —who’s always following Yoshi around and helping him with baking— and the reason why he can’t move on, which is because he’s worried about his little brother and he thinks that his brothers hates him. Although, the younger brother is mad at him for a different reason, which is for leaving him after his parents died when he was a child and being his only real family. Everything is resolved at the end and the ghost is finally able to move on from this world.
The rest of this volume is about Yoshi and his big brother Masamori, which I think is the main story of this volume. Masamori comes back home after a few years being away, he’s the leader of the night troops. Yoshimori hates him because he’s more talented than he himself is yet he’s not the heir (which isn’t something you see a lot, since the heir would be so proud and the other sibling would hate him/her for it, but instead it’s the other way around). Yoshimori also hates him because everyone keeps talking about how perfect he is: that he’s a really great kekkaishi, talented, handsome, etc. He really hates it when Tokine talks about him, which is most of the time, he gets jealous so easily, lol. Masamori only makes Yoshimor’s confidence in himself worse, all he does is criticize him. I’m confused if Masamori is jealous of Yoshimori for being the legitimate heir, obviously he’s a little jealous, but I’m not sure how much though. I’m ahead on watching the anime than the manga, and in there Masamori actually ends up helping Yoshi and we see that he does care about him, although is it just me who thinks this, is Masamori looking for more power? Sometimes he’s testing Yoshi to and sometimes he’s just criticizing him.
He leaves at the end, which is a pretty short visit, because he senses something weird going on with the Shadow Organization so he decides to leave the next day to find out what’s going on.
Obviously Yoshi isn’t too thrilled about his job since everyones always saying that he’s too reckless, too lazy, too slow, that he never thinks, etc, yet they are always amazed by the strength of his powers and talk about it behind his back, they could at least congratulate him sometimes, especially his grandpa, he’s always so mean to him, although Tokine sometimes does congratulate him and his little Toshimori tells him that he has talent.
Those are the major incidents of this volume, of course more happened, but I don’t want to bore you with all of the details.
Overall, I like this manga more and more with each volume, mostly because the characters are becoming more familiar and so is the plot. I’m getting really curious about the area Karasumori (I know I say that sentence in every Kekkaishi review, but I’m really curious). I also realized a few weeks ago that most of Sumimuras have names that end in mori (except for the dad) and the Yukimuras have names start with Toki. I think it’s tradition since the founders name is Tokimori, although I’m not sure.
Wow, this is shorter than my other Kekkaishi manga reviews, I think I’m getting better at summarizing.
I’m not sure if I should review every book I read in this series or just some, I keep thinking that maybe I should review just some volumes, I don’t know yet, we’ll see.
Wow, ten reviews in one month, I’ve never done more than six reviews in one month (plus I read a total of fourteen books this month, it’ll probably end up being fifteen soon), I know that most of them are mangas, but it still amazes me how crazy I was with reading this month.
If you want to read more reviews about this book, go to Goodreads and read the reviews in the comment section or go to other websites.
I rated this book: 4 stars.
If you read this book, then tell me what you thought about it and or the series. Tell me in the comments section.
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