James Nicoll Reviews

RuriDragon, Volume Sixth is the sixth (hypothetical¹) tankōbon for Masaoki Shindo’s on-going RuriDragon modern-day fantasy manga. I say hypothetical because thus far the Anglophone translations have been made available online, but only two volumes worth collected into tankōbon. I am making an educated guess as to what volume six will include, when and if it is published.

Japanese teen Ruri Aoki’s grudging effort to participate in high school life has hit a small snag. Half-dragon Ruri is aflame with an unquenchable fire.

Fortunately for Ruri’s schoolmates and especially for Ruri herself, her new incandescent daemonfire aura ignites neither flammable objects nor Ruri. Nevertheless, the daemonfire is very eye-catching. Can Ruri continue trying to live the life of a normal schoolgirl or should she seclude herself far from humans?

Happily for Ruri, and the author’s hope for plots involving interaction with humans, Ruri does not go off to live alone in a damp cave. Experimentation eliminates quenching daemonfire in water as an effective long-term solution. However, Ruri discovers a method of making her daemonfire less obtrusive.

The next draconic feature to appear introduces Ruri and chums to the delights of hypothermia. An adult dragon can reduce a vast area to a frozen wasteland. As yet, Ruri’s ability to generate cold only chills a classroom. This is inconvenient for her classmates but at least they can leave Ruri’s proximity. Ruri isn’t especially immune to cold, and she cannot get away from herself.

Her exciting new abilities have a mundane price. Time spent learning how to control (more importantly, survive) her draconic traits and abilities is time not spent studying. Ruri’s grades are dismal. There’s only one solution: a study party in which her more academically adept pals try to cram information into Ruri’s head.

~oOo~

There is a stark contrast between the parents in Insomniacs After School and the parents in RuriDragon. Insomniacs’ parents assume the worst about the kids, taking swift action without bothering to verify their suspicions. Ruri’s mother prefers a nonchalant approach to parenting. It seems that parents of Ruri’s schoolmates share this view, as the other kids are not yanked out of class after each brush with potential death.

Surprisingly, the government also takes a hands-off approach to Ruri, aside from assigning a teacher to keep an eye on her while providing occasional reports. Info about possible new powers would be useful, but apparently human-dragon treaties limit sharing information to a pace that facilitates wacky hijinks2.

It’s almost as though parents in manga are written to choose parenting methods that best further the plot. Very odd.

Or perhaps the parents in Ruri’s prefecture understand that Ruri’s abilities include weather control; simply changing schools won’t protect their kids.

The plot arcs follow a very predictable sequence: Ruri manifests a new power about which she has not been warned (even though the adults have some idea what powers dragons might have), she is forced to consider that perhaps she cannot fit into human society, and then having brought her latest ability under control, she continues bonding with her chums. It helps that the most destructive draconic abilities are also those under conscious control.

I suspect that the author doesn’t want to close down the manga with a class full of dead students.

The net effect of the above is that this manga is fun to read but somewhat less fun to review. My readers may well want to track it down. Happily, that is very easy. The issues I imagine will one day comprise RuriDragon, Volume Sixth are available here (Viz).

Unfortunately, Viz appears to be pivoting to AI translation, which means there is no point in reviewing future Viz imports³. Pity. Still, it doesn’t affect the material that’s already published.

1: My understanding of the manga ecosystem:

Manga are serialized chapter by chapter. When there are enough chapters, these are collected into tankōbon, what Anglos would call graphic novels. Because they are published in Japan, of course they are in Japanese.

Manga whose North American rights have not yet been acquired by a North American publisher are often translated by eager bilingual fans from Japanese to English. The translations are sometimes more enthusiastic than accurate or grammatical.

When (or if) a publisher buys the North American rights, the fan translations often vanish, to encourage people to purchase the authorized translation.

In the case of RuriDragon, it is being translated and serialized chapter by chapter on the Viz site. Twelve chapters have been collected into two tankōbon thus far, with a third slated for 2026. I think.

I am assuming each volume will include the same number of issues as the first two.

2: USA delenda est.

3: Hilariously, one of the justifications for using technologies developed by stealing vast numbers of published works to feed into the AI meatgrinder is to ​“fight piracy,” presumably in the same sense Sir Francis Drake did.