Shin Kibayashi

A kind of hilarious conclusion to this first series/season. I can't decide if I liked the manga ending or the jdrama ending better, but they both worked. Overall, I liked the series and I plan to eventually read the rest of them. I like the characters, if if the Japanese government seems to rely on teenagers far too much (much to my delight, I might add).

I saw this coming a mile away. Yeah, I agree with the author, he sure did make this novel sound and feel like a manga... One of those ecchi kind of male wish fulfillment manga where we reveal that these people are ELITES of some type BUT WAIT!! The MC of course have to be SUPER DEE SUPER ELITE!! Also he's hinted at being a reincarnation of Jesus Christ... I shit you not. I don't know if it's a translation thing where it's supposed to be Buddha or what and Del Rey decided we couldn't relate, show more OR that really the author was going for Jesus. Considering Del Rey is pretty good about this.... I say it was Jesus.So of course you have the casual gender essentialist misogyny going on: Girls being weaker, women getting themselves into situations where they are SUPPOSED to be bad ass but.. nope not this time for some shitty reason. Also the MC is a creepster that reads porn and calls Ayano 'childlike' when she sleeps and wants to stare at her... show less

Most angst! More death! More spying! And ... a lot more Takagi Fujimaru hacking. I love it, but it cracks me up how much everyone relies on a teenager to do the hacking. I mean, it's not as ridiculous as Alex Rider (and the jdrama makes it even less ridiculous), but as I'm reading, sometimes I have to laugh because they just let Fujimaru hack from everywhere. We did get to meet a new foreign agent, I like her history with Kano (who is one of my favorite characters in the drama and the show more manga). One more volume to go. show less

The stakes (and the angst) are higher. We got some nice insight into J, who I like (like to hate?) more and more. But I'm not sure if I like him more because I'm thinking of him as Narimiya Hiroki or just because I like a conflicted (to some extent) baddie. And as I'm reading, there are still parts that the jdrama used, just not as many. I'm just plowing through it now because I need to know what happens.