(L) Black Bullet(ブラック・ブレット) [Light Novel]

[ZeKeR]

Originally Posted by XFire

FFFFFFFFF-------

Spoiler for spoiler:

It had to be the girl, didn't it.

man.... COME ON!!!!!!!

i hope the big twist will be in V5... else this is gonna go well beyond squat norms.

[blackwhite67]

Does our MC gain any special abilities?

[Log]

Originally Posted by blackwhite67

Does our MC gain any special abilities?

Surprised no one answered this question.

Spoiler for Bit of a tr;dl:

Gain isn't the correct word here. He already has it.

He's a mechanized soldier like Hiruko.

His left eye, right arm and right leg are prosthesis limbs made out of "super varanium" (basically a stronger type of varanium or something like that).

Most of the time he has castings that hide the fact that half his limbs are prosthesis. They also seal his limbs ability. He needs to release it in order for his limbs to activate.

Basically his left eye has the ability to increase his brain calculation speed to superhuman level. His reflexes was stated to shot up a thousand fold iirc while using it.

His limbs have bullet shells in it. By releasing these bullet shells he can accelerate his limbs and strike at supersonic speeds. It's boasts his "Tendo martial arts" considerably.

He's also shown to be able to accelerate to 150 km/hr when releasing the shells in his leg. He even can "air run" (sorta) by constantly releasing the shells in order to propel himself in air.

Doesn't like using it though because the bullet shells in his limbs have a limit. He needs to refill once it runs out. And doesn't like using the eye because it increases his reflexes by a thousand fold so he perceives things many, many times slower while using that eye. I'm sure you can tell why that's a problem.

Besides that he's fair bit smarter and stronger then he appears to be. For example he was able to figure out stuff about a type of gastrea that someone with 200+ IQ had trouble figuring out (TBF said 200+ IQ person is a kid). For the stronger part, he only appears weak because he always faces monsters while not releasing his casting. He's shown to be perfectly able to take down regular humans and even trained military people.

His willpower is godlike. He was able to survive long enough to inject healing medicine into himself while his entire chest+stomach part was blown up and organs were literally falling out simply because he refused to die.

His luck is also godlike when it matters. But is below lancer tier when it doesn't matter.

And he's a women (loli especially) magnet.

It's also highly hinted that he has some other ability. He was able to injure that gastrea in the prologue of volume 1 and was able to protect Kisara when they were a kid (protect is a relative term of course, he still got fucked up by the gastrea but it can be considered a miracle that him and Kisara made it out alive).

His linage is all but stated to be special. That's basically why Tendo family took him in and why several characters have a interest in him.

I've only read half of 3 and chapter 1 of 4 though. He might have gained something in volume 3 or 4 that I'm unaware of.

Also it should be noted that the manga changed some important things from the LN.

Spoiler for manga and LN differences:

For some reason in the manga Rentaro was irritated at Kisara for bringing up his IP ranking.

He doesn't really give a shit in LN since his rankings aren't accurate anyway.

And he just doesn't really care about IP in general for most of volume 1.

Sorta a out of character moment for him imo. Not to sure what the manga author was going with that.

Also IP in the manga was stated to be a ranking of strength. It isn't. The manga sorta suffers from lack of narration there.

While strength plays a big role in it, it's more along the lines of your achievements in hunting gastrea (or just achievements in general). Obviously you would need strength to do something like that. So it's often used as a judge for strength.

However even normal mode Rentaro was able to take down trained bodyguards while he was surprised so his IP ranking should really be way above 120000. I would chalk his IP being so low as a result of his lack of motivation and lack of luck in finding good jobs (until Hiruko comes along and fucks everything up).

[blackwhite67]

Originally Posted by Log

Surprised no one answered this question.

Spoiler for Bit of a tr;dl:

Gain isn't the correct word here. He already has it.

He's a mechanized soldier like Hiruko.

His left eye, right arm and right leg are prosthesis limbs made out of "super varanium" (basically a stronger type of varanium or something like that).

Most of the time he has castings that hide the fact that half his limbs are prosthesis. They also seal his limbs ability. He needs to release it in order for his limbs to activate.

Basically his left eye has the ability to increase his brain calculation speed to superhuman level. His reflexes was stated to shot up a thousand fold iirc while using it.

His limbs have bullet shells in it. By releasing these bullet shells he can accelerate his limbs and strike at supersonic speeds. It's boasts his "Tendo martial arts" considerably.

He's also shown to be able to accelerate to 150 km/hr when releasing the shells in his leg. He even can "air run" (sorta) by constantly releasing the shells in order to propel himself in air.

Doesn't like using it though because the bullet shells in his limbs have a limit. He needs to refill once it runs out. And doesn't like using the eye because it increases his reflexes by a thousand fold so he perceives things many, many times slower while using that eye. I'm sure you can tell why that's a problem.

Besides that he's fair bit smarter and stronger then he appears to be. For example he was able to figure out stuff about a type of gastrea that someone with 200+ IQ had trouble figuring out (TBF said 200+ IQ person is a kid). For the stronger part, he only appears weak because he always faces monsters while not releasing his casting. He's shown to be perfectly able to take down regular humans and even trained military people.

His willpower is godlike. He was able to survive long enough to inject healing medicine into himself while his entire chest+stomach part was blown up and organs were literally falling out simply because he refused to die.

His luck is also godlike when it matters. But is below lancer tier when it doesn't matter.

And he's a women (loli especially) magnet.

It's also highly hinted that he has some other ability. He was able to injure that gastrea in the prologue of volume 1 and was able to protect Kisara when they were a kid (protect is a relative term of course, he still got fucked up by the gastrea but it can be considered a miracle that him and Kisara made it out alive).

His linage is all but stated to be special. That's basically why Tendo family took him in and why several characters have a interest in him.

I've only read half of 3 and chapter 1 of 4 though. He might have gained something in volume 3 or 4 that I'm unaware of.

Also it should be noted that the manga changed some important things from the LN.

Spoiler for manga and LN differences:

For some reason in the manga Rentaro was irritated at Kisara for bringing up his IP ranking.

He doesn't really give a shit in LN since his rankings aren't accurate anyway.

And he just doesn't really care about IP in general for most of volume 1.

Sorta a out of character moment for him imo. Not to sure what the manga author was going with that.

Also IP in the manga was stated to be a ranking of strength. It isn't. The manga sorta suffers from lack of narration there.

While strength plays a big role in it, it's more along the lines of your achievements in hunting gastrea (or just achievements in general). Obviously you would need strength to do something like that. So it's often used as a judge for strength.

However even normal mode Rentaro was able to take down trained bodyguards while he was surprised so his IP ranking should really be way above 120000. I would chalk his IP being so low as a result of his lack of motivation and lack of luck in finding good jobs (until Hiruko comes along and fucks everything up).

Wow! Thanks a lot man! Here I was thinking our MC was ordinary, but he turns out to be anything but.

[XFire]

Originally Posted by Log

Surprised no one answered this question.

Spoiler for Bit of a tr;dl:

Gain isn't the correct word here. He already has it.

He's a mechanized soldier like Hiruko.

His left eye, right arm and right leg are prosthesis limbs made out of "super varanium" (basically a stronger type of varanium or something like that).

Most of the time he has castings that hide the fact that half his limbs are prosthesis. They also seal his limbs ability. He needs to release it in order for his limbs to activate.

Basically his left eye has the ability to increase his brain calculation speed to superhuman level. His reflexes was stated to shot up a thousand fold iirc while using it.

His limbs have bullet shells in it. By releasing these bullet shells he can accelerate his limbs and strike at supersonic speeds. It's boasts his "Tendo martial arts" considerably.

He's also shown to be able to accelerate to 150 km/hr when releasing the shells in his leg. He even can "air run" (sorta) by constantly releasing the shells in order to propel himself in air.

Doesn't like using it though because the bullet shells in his limbs have a limit. He needs to refill once it runs out. And doesn't like using the eye because it increases his reflexes by a thousand fold so he perceives things many, many times slower while using that eye. I'm sure you can tell why that's a problem.

Besides that he's fair bit smarter and stronger then he appears to be. For example he was able to figure out stuff about a type of gastrea that someone with 200+ IQ had trouble figuring out (TBF said 200+ IQ person is a kid). For the stronger part, he only appears weak because he always faces monsters while not releasing his casting. He's shown to be perfectly able to take down regular humans and even trained military people.

His willpower is godlike. He was able to survive long enough to inject healing medicine into himself while his entire chest+stomach part was blown up and organs were literally falling out simply because he refused to die.

His luck is also godlike when it matters. But is below lancer tier when it doesn't matter.

And he's a women (loli especially) magnet.

It's also highly hinted that he has some other ability. He was able to injure that gastrea in the prologue of volume 1 and was able to protect Kisara when they were a kid (protect is a relative term of course, he still got fucked up by the gastrea but it can be considered a miracle that him and Kisara made it out alive).

His linage is all but stated to be special. That's basically why Tendo family took him in and why several characters have a interest in him.

I've only read half of 3 and chapter 1 of 4 though. He might have gained something in volume 3 or 4 that I'm unaware of.

Also it should be noted that the manga changed some important things from the LN.

Spoiler for manga and LN differences:

For some reason in the manga Rentaro was irritated at Kisara for bringing up his IP ranking.

He doesn't really give a shit in LN since his rankings aren't accurate anyway.

And he just doesn't really care about IP in general for most of volume 1.

Sorta a out of character moment for him imo. Not to sure what the manga author was going with that.

Also IP in the manga was stated to be a ranking of strength. It isn't. The manga sorta suffers from lack of narration there.

While strength plays a big role in it, it's more along the lines of your achievements in hunting gastrea (or just achievements in general). Obviously you would need strength to do something like that. So it's often used as a judge for strength.

However even normal mode Rentaro was able to take down trained bodyguards while he was surprised so his IP ranking should really be way above 120000. I would chalk his IP being so low as a result of his lack of motivation and lack of luck in finding good jobs (until Hiruko comes along and fucks everything up).

......Damn, kids a badass, isn't he?

[blackwhite67]

If Rentaro is this jacked, then does Enju have any notable abilities?

[Log]

Originally Posted by XFire

......Damn, kids a badass, isn't he?

Yep.

Every notable character is a badass to some degree though.

Originally Posted by blackwhite67

If Rentaro is this jacked, then does Enju have any notable abilities?

I wouldn't really call Rentaro "jacked".

Again the people he faces are all monsters.

His abilities as it is, is around 150ish-200 in IP ranking (he beat higher ranking people than 150 but that's due to a combination of planning, luck and a lot of determination).

There are quite a few stronger then him.

So he's around where he's suppose to be.

Basically not weak enough to be useless but not strong enough to make challenges look easy.

Anyways about Enju.....

Spoiler for spoilers:

She isn't really hiding anything like Rentaro.

She has the standard gastrea package. Super strength, super speed, super durability and super regen.

However she takes the standard package far higher then most initiators. Her speed in particular is notable. She's a rabbit type so it should be higher then usual but it's high even for a rabbit type.

For an explanation for what I mean by "rabbit" type, basically each of the cursed child inherited a different aspect of the gastrea gene. Based on their type they gain special traits that reflect on the animal of that type.

Rabbit has high speed, dolphin are smarter (the 200 IQ girl I mentioned is a dolphin type), praying mantis type are good with swords (Kohina is a mantis type) the owl type is nocturnal and can see in the dark and so on and so forth.

Even for a rabbit type she's implied to be extremely fast as while as stronger than usual. She managed to kick away a sniper bullet that was going to hit Rentaro for example.

She's bad against machine guns however since she isn't adapt to dodging bullets that spray.

Her shoe's sole is made up of varium boasting her kicking power

She's hinted to be able to gain a power up in the near future.

According to Sumire since she reached the limits of her power she can't grow any stronger.

This applies to every one of the "gastrea children". They all well eventually reach a wall that prevents them from getting stronger.

However if by some rare chance they do get past that wall they gain a huge boast to power.

That boast in power is called "Field" (not really accurate translation but the best I can do).

It's very vague since the specifics aren't explained and no one with the "Field" showed up yet.

But it's apparently enough to stomp Rentaro and Enju if they were to ever fight someone with it.

Only top initiators unlocked it thus far.

Obviously Enju is eventually going to unlock it unless foreshadowing is wrong (it isn't).


Compared to all the initiators introduced so far only Tina (the sniper loli in volume 2) is stronger than her. And Tina has both the abilities of a mechanized soldier as well as gastrea.

If we compare her to pure gastreas children only Kohina can compare thus far.

Although against initiators with IP higher then 100 can likely beat her (Tina is 98).

Compared to Rentaro she's quite a bit stronger. Rentaro with his eye released but with his limbs sealed was able to score a 2200 on a training simulation that gives an accurate measurement for strength (for the record his strength without releasing anything is 100). According to him he can score 3 times the amount with his limbs unsealed. That's 6600. Enju on the other hand scored around 8000 (8600 iirc).

Enju thinks that she’s confident that she can beat Rentaro. She thinks that Rentaro has unbelievably strong offensive but lacks proper speed and durability to keep up with her. Her strategy if she were to ever fight Rentaro is to dodge every attack until Rentaro doesn’t have any shells left. And then go in for the kill.

Rentaro, on the other hand feels that he can beat Enju because she’s to overconfident and naïve.

Who knows how it would go if they actually went at it.

Anyways, in the Tendo company the strength ranking (without taking into account strategy and individual personality) goes Tina (yes she joined)>=Enju>=Kisara(her swordsmanship is broken)>=Rentaro (released).

[waffler]

^^ wow so rentaros actually pretty strong xD also i think i read in the manga rentaro is kisaras boyfriend?

[ZeKeR]

so... how many girls does our criminal have?

I will flip if that girl thats sorta a figurehead for Japan joins him.

[Log]

Originally Posted by waffler

^^ wow so rentaros actually pretty strong xD also i think i read in the manga rentaro is kisaras boyfriend?

Spoiler for rentaro and kisara:

Their relationship is platonic thus far.

She obviously likes Rentaro in a romantic way (as both Enju and Sumire can tell).

And Rentaro is implied to like her back. For example when Enju asks Rentaro, if he likes Kisara in "that way", he reacts with embarrassment.

Out of all the girls her chances with Rentaro are the highest. Which is why Enju is so fiercely competitive against her.

Originally Posted by ZeKeR

so... how many girls does our criminal have?

I will flip if that girl thats sorta a figurehead for Japan joins him.

Spoiler for Rentaro's semi harem:

In his sorta harem the main girls as of volume 3 are:

Enju is a given.

So is Kisara.

Besides that volume 2 introduced Shibi Miora, who is part of a wealthy weapon making family. She's the kimono wearing girl here. She provides Rentaro with weapons whenever he needs it and in exchange he goes to the school she's attending (she's student council president at the school he goes to). She isn't really developed much with Rentaro thus far and it isn't really explained why she likes Rentaro besides having an interest in Rentaro due to him being a mechanized soldier. Anyways she likes to tease Rentaro a lot. She and Kisara hate each other.

And Tina joins as of volume 2 to. As I said before she's the sniper loli. She's attracted to Rentaro since he shown her kindness. Anyways after many, many complicated things happen (which I might get to if I ever work up the motivation to write a summary of volume 2) she joins Tendo company.

And Seitenshi ("that girl that’s sorta a figurehead for Japan”) is implied to be attracted to him as of volume 2.

Out of all the girls I listed only Kisara really stands a chance so far. Enju and Tina are firmly in the “treat like annoying daughter/sister” territory. All the rest of the girls are friend-zoned.

Anyways Black Bullet isn’t really that type of genre. It’s more focused on the whole “war with deadly genetic virus” part. The harem is used for ship teasing purposes (every LN needs multiple girls to ship tease for some reason) and humor purposes (the amount of suffering Rentaro gets for having 10 year old girls state that they want to do this and that with him is hilarious).

[XFire]

Why does Kisara hate her grandpa so much? Is he secretly an asshole? Is he responsible for making Rentaro a cyborg? Is she jealous of his awesome beard? Did I really ask that last question?

[Log]

Originally Posted by XFire

Why does Kisara hate her grandpa so much?

Spoiler for kisara's motives and shit:

She doesn't just hate her grandpa. She hates the entire Tendo clan.

The reason isn't entirely revealed but the gist is that she suspects that there's a insider that purposely let the gastrea in to attack her parents.

The Tendo clan is a pretty big clan and judging from Rentaro's brief flashbacks on the Tendo clan most of them were jerks. So it really isn't out of the question that for some reason her parents were killed for the benefit of someone else, and no one bothered to care about it which fueled her hatred.

It's unknown how much she knows (not really developed yet) so far but presumably she has strong evidence.

And her grandpa is implied to chose the clan over her. So naturally she would dislike him as well.

So she ran away from home (with Rentaro following), and is currently awaiting a moment where she can take revenge.

Is he secretly an asshole?

Spoiler for Kikunojyo Tendo:

Yep.

He's highly racist against anything Gastrea related including the cursed children (not to sure if they count as a race but eh). That's because he lost his wife due to gastrea and that rational hatred of the Gastrea transferred into a irrational hatred of the cursed children (like a shitload of people).

Which ironically makes him on the opposite of Seitenshi (who he is extremely loyal to) and Rentaro (his former student). Both of them are big believers in the goodness of the "cursed children" and in Seitenshi's case even advocates for their rights.

His hatred is to the extent that he actually let Hiruko in on the seven treasure thingy in hopes that Kohina (whose with Hiruko) would turn up on the media which would lower public opinion of the cursed children even more.

On the plus side he's extremely loyal to Seitenshi which as Rentaro pointed out reflects his contradicting nature. He's also one of the few competent advisers that Seitenshi has.

Is he responsible for making Rentaro a cyborg?

Spoiler for Rentaro:

Nope.

That's Sumire the mad scientist.

She's one of the four that received the title "sage".

Basically the top 4 geniuses in the world. Most (if not all) of the mechanized solders came from the 4 of them.

[blackwhite67]

Why did Rentaro become a cyborg and is this series ongoing? I looked it up on dengeki's website and there are only four novels with the last novel being published last August.

[Iggy_Pop]

Originally Posted by blackwhite67

Why did Rentaro become a cyborg and is this series ongoing? I looked it up on dengeki's website and there are only four novels with the last novel being published last August.

It's still ongoing. I've tweeted the author and according to him, the fifth volume is going to be late.
https://twitter.com/Siden_K

[Log]

Originally Posted by blackwhite67

Why did Rentaro become a cyborg and is this series ongoing? I looked it up on dengeki's website and there are only four novels with the last novel being published last August.

Spoiler for spoilers:

He didn't really have much of a choice.

After getting his limbs, and eye eaten he was bound to die.

And Sumire gave him two choices.

To have super varium implanted into him as limbs or to die.

Naturally he take the former choice.

And yeah, the novels are still ongoing and unless canceled I would expect it to continue for a while. There's still a lot of questioned unanswered and a lot of plot to be developed.

The author's just fairly slow in writing.

It doesn't help that each novel is fairly long (not horizon level but above the likes of To Aru and DxD) and complicated in words (as Hemisphere pointed out).

I would expect the next one to be latter this year if not next year.

On a different note the summary of volume 1 chapter 2 part 1, 2 and 3 is here. First time summarizing so forgive me if I got a part wrong or sounded to long winded.

Spoiler for summary of volume 1 chapter 2 part 1, 2 and 3:

First the scene that the manga skipped.

After encountering, Hiruko Kagetane and his daughter at the group meeting, the next day Rentaro is greeted with 8 kids that Enju somehow dragged here.

They want Rentaro to be their sensei in martial arts. Because Enju bragged about how much of a badass he is in class, (something along the lines of, "Rentaro stared down a bear" and "Rentaro defeated a squad of marines by himself", and "Rentaro took a nuclear warhead and tossed it back") they all want him to show them how it's done.

At first Rentaro was unwilling but after realizing that Enju honestly believed that Rentaro can do anything if he puts his mind into it, and not wanting to fail the expectation of 10 year old kids he decided to put his mind into impressing him.

After all, the first impression is the most lasting and kids should be very easy to impress, right?

As it turns out Rentaro was completely off.

At first he used a "Tendo" punching technique that failed to impress the kids because it was just a basic punch and also because he failed to strike down the tree.

Then he tried to use a special kicking skill and while preparing thought back to yesterday's events on his encounter with Kagetone. Due to him being distracted he failed to notice a mischievous kid kicking a soccer ball at him.

He got hit in the lungs and due to loss of balance fell down.

The kids all left in disappointment.

Enju tried to cheer Rentaro up which Rentaro responded with a "please spare me".

Then they went shopping.

Chapter 6 in the manga basically covers what happens so I'll be skipping straight to the encounter with Kagetone.

As the two face off, Rentaro calls Kagetone's taste in guns bad. Kagetone casually dropped his gun and Rentaro notices that he has another gun on his hand.

Kagetone introduces his guns as [Spanking Sodomy] and [Psychedelic Gospel] (yep Kagetone has a weird ass naming sense).

Rentaro asks what Kagetone wants.

Kagetone tells him that he just wants to talk and asks him to put his gun down.

Rentaro refuses to put his gun down.

Kagetone in response to that tells Kohina (Kagetone's daughter) to cut his arm off.

Rentaro manages to dodge the first slash but realizes that he can't continue to dodge because she was to fast.

As Rentaro was about to get cut Enju comes and intercepts the blade.

Both Enju and Kohina act surprised that their attacks failed to take the other down.

Kohina warns Kagetone that Enju is really strong.

She then demands Enju to tell her, Enju's name.

Enju insults her by pointing out how rude she is but tells her, her name and her type (rabbit) anyway.

Kohina mutters Enju's name several times and then asks Kagetone if she can cut the rabbit (Enju) down.

Kagetone rebukes Kohina for being so bloodthirsty causing Kohina to get upset and sulk.

He then turns his attention back onto Rentaro. He asks Rentaro if he wants to join him.

He reveals that for some reason (cough Rentaro is also a mechanized soldier cough) he liked Rentaro the instant he met him and would like Rentaro as a partner (yes I know he sounds sorta gay, Kagetone's creepy like that).

Rentaro shot him down instantly but Kagetone continues to try to persuade Rentaro by pointing out how Rentaro isn't satisfied with the way the world is. He then promised Rentaro that if he joined him Rentaro can achieve anything he would like. He also points out that Enju shouldn't be going to school. Since human's can't appreciate the power of the "curse children" and how cursed children are the evolved humans destined for greatness.

As a show of his goodwill he offers Rentaro a suitcase filled with money.

Enough money that Rentaro can easily turn around his shitty living condition.

In response to that Rentaro shoots the suitcase filled with money as a form of rejection.

Rentaro promises to stop, Kagetone.

As they glared at each other, they hear police cars.

Apparently the shot have been to loud causing people to report it.

Kagetone retreats but not before threatening Rentaro, that something bad will happen tomorrow.

As they disappear Rentaro asks Enju how strong is the enemy initiator. She responds that she isn't sure if she can beat her.

Rentaro feels uneasy at all this.

As it turns out tomorrow, Kagetone's threat came true. Somehow (read:Kagetone) people found out that Enju is one of the "cursed children".

Rentaro hurries to Enju's school and gets greeted by one of the teacher's there.

As it turns out Enju got rejected by every single one of her classmates (which would include her friends to) for being one of the cursed children.

This is traumatizing for her and caused her to run away from school.

Rentaro goes home thinking she went home, but she wasn't home. He waits for her to come back while brooding on how lonely it was without her there.

After realizing she isn't coming back after waiting for a day he decides to head out to look for her.

He rationalized that there was no place to go for her in the inner distracts so she can only go to the outer area.

Since she's familiar with the outer area better, he reasoned that she'll hide there.

There's some explanation here. Basically the outer area is the part where a lot of the fighting with the gastrea took place and as such many, many buildings got damaged.

Instead of repairing these buildings people decided that, it's to much effort and as such decided to use this place as a nuclear power plant. That way none of the harmful effects will reach the place where people live.

There's only cursed children that got abandoned that live here.

Rentaro finds a sewer hatch and knocks a couple of times. He is greeted by a young kid (obviously a cursed child), that tells him to go away (and also accuses him of being a police and a sex offender).

Rentaro responds and tell her that he's looking for someone, she decides to get him to meet her elder.

As it turns out the elder is a middle aged man that's been taking care of the children.

Rentaro expresses his admiration for him being nice enough to take care of the cursed children. They talk about the cursed children condition and how people can't get over the war 10 years ago.

Rentaro got almost to deep in this conversation and almost forgot his original intent. Rentaro, asks him if he's seen Enju.

He responds that he haven't.

Rentaro thinks to himself that it's to be expected considering that there's a huge area for Enju to hide in.

As he's about to leave the elder asks him why he's so desperate to found Enju. After all it's not that unusual for him to get another initiator if one runs away.

Rentaro responds to tell him to stop talking nonsense. He didn't want to found Enju because she's his initiator.

The elder is shocked at Rentaro's declaration.

When Rentaro left the elder turns to the darkness and asks if it's really ok to let him leave like that.

I'll do more latter.

[Hemisphere]

Fourth volume clocked in at 376 pages, and that's pretty long, not to mention heavy to hold while reading.

If it counts for anything, massive kudos for your brief summaries; not just for kindling interest for this series (which IMO carries its atmosphere, mood and tension pretty well), but also for doing that with this series' level of vocabulary in mind, and making it easier to grasp for those who do not have to face the JP head-on.

[XFire]

Originally Posted by Log

Spoiler for spoilers:

He didn't really have much of a choice.

After getting his limbs, and eye eaten he was bound to die.

And Sumire gave him two choices.

To have super varium implanted into him as limbs or to die.

Naturally he take the former choice.

And yeah, the novels are still ongoing and unless canceled I would expect it to continue for a while. There's still a lot of questioned unanswered and a lot of plot to be developed.

The author's just fairly slow in writing.

It doesn't help that each novel is fairly long (not horizon level but above the likes of To Aru and DxD) and complicated in words (as Hemisphere pointed out).

I would expect the next one to be latter this year if not next year.

On a different note the summary of volume 1 chapter 2 part 1, 2 and 3 is here. First time summarizing so forgive me if I got a part wrong or sounded to long winded.

Spoiler for summary of volume 1 chapter 2 part 1, 2 and 3:

First the scene that the manga skipped.

After encountering, Hiruko Kagetane and his daughter at the group meeting, the next day Rentaro is greeted with 8 kids that Enju somehow dragged here.

They want Rentaro to be their sensei in martial arts. Because Enju bragged about how much of a badass he is in class, (something along the lines of, "Rentaro stared down a bear" and "Rentaro defeated a squad of marines by himself", and "Rentaro took a nuclear warhead and tossed it back") they all want him to show them how it's done.

At first Rentaro was unwilling but after realizing that Enju honestly believed that Rentaro can do anything if he puts his mind into it, and not wanting to fail the expectation of 10 year old kids he decided to put his mind into impressing him.

After all, the first impression is the most lasting and kids should be very easy to impress, right?

As it turns out Rentaro was completely off.

At first he used a "Tendo" punching technique that failed to impress the kids because it was just a basic punch and also because he failed to strike down the tree.

Then he tried to use a special kicking skill and while preparing thought back to yesterday's events on his encounter with Kagetone. Due to him being distracted he failed to notice a mischievous kid kicking a soccer ball at him.

He got hit in the lungs and due to loss of balance fell down.

The kids all left in disappointment.

Enju tried to cheer Rentaro up which Rentaro responded with a "please spare me".

Then they went shopping.

Chapter 6 in the manga basically covers what happens so I'll be skipping straight to the encounter with Kagetone.

As the two face off, Rentaro calls Kagetone's taste in guns bad. Kagetone casually dropped his gun and Rentaro notices that he has another gun on his hand.

Kagetone introduces his guns as [Spanking Sodomy] and [Psychedelic Gospel] (yep Kagetone has a weird ass naming sense).

Rentaro asks what Kagetone wants.

Kagetone tells him that he just wants to talk and asks him to put his gun down.

Rentaro refuses to put his gun down.

Kagetone in response to that tells Kohina (Kagetone's daughter) to cut his arm off.

Rentaro manages to dodge the first slash but realizes that he can't continue to dodge because she was to fast.

As Rentaro was about to get cut Enju comes and intercepts the blade.

Both Enju and Kohina act surprised that their attacks failed to take the other down.

Kohina warns Kagetone that Enju is really strong.

She then demands Enju to tell her, Enju's name.

Enju insults her by pointing out how rude she is but tells her, her name and her type (rabbit) anyway.

Kohina mutters Enju's name several times and then asks Kagetone if she can cut the rabbit (Enju) down.

Kagetone rebukes Kohina for being so bloodthirsty causing Kohina to get upset and sulk.

He then turns his attention back onto Rentaro. He asks Rentaro if he wants to join him.

He reveals that for some reason (cough Rentaro is also a mechanized soldier cough) he liked Rentaro the instant he met him and would like Rentaro as a partner (yes I know he sounds sorta gay, Kagetone's creepy like that).

Rentaro shot him down instantly but Kagetone continues to try to persuade Rentaro by pointing out how Rentaro isn't satisfied with the way the world is. He then promised Rentaro that if he joined him Rentaro can achieve anything he would like. He also points out that Enju shouldn't be going to school. Since human's can't appreciate the power of the "curse children" and how cursed children are the evolved humans destined for greatness.

As a show of his goodwill he offers Rentaro a suitcase filled with money.

Enough money that Rentaro can easily turn around his shitty living condition.

In response to that Rentaro shoots the suitcase filled with money as a form of rejection.

Rentaro promises to stop, Kagetone.

As they glared at each other, they hear police cars.

Apparently the shot have been to loud causing people to report it.

Kagetone retreats but not before threatening Rentaro, that something bad will happen tomorrow.

As they disappear Rentaro asks Enju how strong is the enemy initiator. She responds that she isn't sure if she can beat her.

Rentaro feels uneasy at all this.

As it turns out tomorrow, Kagetone's threat came true. Somehow (read:Kagetone) people found out that Enju is one of the "cursed children".

Rentaro hurries to Enju's school and gets greeted by one of the teacher's there.

As it turns out Enju got rejected by every single one of her classmates (which would include her friends to) for being one of the cursed children.

This is traumatizing for her and caused her to run away from school.

Rentaro goes home thinking she went home, but she wasn't home. He waits for her to come back while brooding on how lonely it was without her there.

After realizing she isn't coming back after waiting for a day he decides to head out to look for her.

He rationalized that there was no place to go for her in the inner distracts so she can only go to the outer area.

Since she's familiar with the outer area better, he reasoned that she'll hide there.

There's some explanation here. Basically the outer area is the part where a lot of the fighting with the gastrea took place and as such many, many buildings got damaged.

Instead of repairing these buildings people decided that, it's to much effort and as such decided to use this place as a nuclear power plant. That way none of the harmful effects will reach the place where people live.

There's only cursed children that got abandoned that live here.

Rentaro finds a sewer hatch and knocks a couple of times. He is greeted by a young kid (obviously a cursed child), that tells him to go away (and also accuses him of being a police and a sex offender).

Rentaro responds and tell her that he's looking for someone, she decides to get him to meet her elder.

As it turns out the elder is a middle aged man that's been taking care of the children.

Rentaro expresses his admiration for him being nice enough to take care of the cursed children. They talk about the cursed children condition and how people can't get over the war 10 years ago.

Rentaro got almost to deep in this conversation and almost forgot his original intent. Rentaro, asks him if he's seen Enju.

He responds that he haven't.

Rentaro thinks to himself that it's to be expected considering that there's a huge area for Enju to hide in.

As he's about to leave the elder asks him why he's so desperate to found Enju. After all it's not that unusual for him to get another initiator if one runs away.

Rentaro responds to tell him to stop talking nonsense. He didn't want to found Enju because she's his initiator.

The elder is shocked at Rentaro's declaration.

When Rentaro left the elder turns to the darkness and asks if it's really ok to let him leave like that.

I'll do more latter.

Yay, summarizer! Thanks for this.

[Log]

Originally Posted by Hemisphere

Fourth volume clocked in at 376 pages, and that's pretty long, not to mention heavy to hold while reading.

If it counts for anything, massive kudos for your brief summaries; not just for kindling interest for this series (which IMO carries its atmosphere, mood and tension pretty well), but also for doing that with this series' level of vocabulary in mind, and making it easier to grasp for those who do not have to face the JP head-on.

Originally Posted by XFire

Yay, summarizer! Thanks for this.

Thanks for the encouragement guys.

Anyways presenting the chapter 2 part 4.

Spoiler for chapter 2 part 4:

The next day Renato is at school.

As it turns out he couldn't find Enju, no matter where he searched. He's feeling rather restless at the moment and worried about Enju.

Suddenly he got a call from the teacher who he met before (the same one that told him about how Enju ran away yesterday). The teacher told him that Enju has come to class today.

Renato immediately rushes to Enjoys school and looks inside Enju’s classroom. All of Enju’s classmates have positioned there table to be as far away as possible. And they're all ignoring her existence.

Rentaro desperately wants to go in and comfort Enju but stops himself as he feels that this is something Enju wants to face on her own, and he has no right to interfere (or something like this, I didn’t understand the text here very well).

He gives the teacher the anti gastrea erosion medicine and instructs him to let Enju take this.

He then leaves, with mixed feelings on what to do with Enju’s dilemma and not wanting to go back to school, he decides to go see Dr. Sumire.

When he gets there she’s……….. dissecting the corpse, Charlie.

Rentaro takes note of how disorganized, the room is, plus the fact that she’s dissecting a corpse and snark’s that if the world famous universities were to see how Sumire is now they would cry out tears (not sure how accurate since Rentaro uses some pretty complex analogies here but it’s the best I can do).

Sumrie laughs it off and remarks that idiots shouldn’t have a say in what she should do. She also says that she’s a genius since her parents are geniuses, and tells about how her parents used to read Dante’s Inferno to her when she’s younger (to those of you who don’t know what Dante’s Inferno is, just Google it and you’ll find out).

Rentaro comments on how disturbing and how unbelievable her family is.

Sumire (jokingly) threatens Rentaro that she’ll turn him into human model.

Rentaro tells her to please not do that.

After that Sumire jokes around a bit (something about Lucifer and Erotic jokes) to Rentaro.


Rentaro tells her to stop screwing around while depressingly thinking about how everyone around is never serious.

Sumire again jokingly mocks Rentaro on how he’s a nervous and sensitive man, and how Kisara has bad luck to be yearned by him of all people. He then responds with the classical “shut up”.

Sumire, gets on another topic and tells Rentaro that his “benefactor” (Shiba Miora) came around here looking for him, which causes Rentaro to look around nervously because he cannot stand her. Sumire reveals that that Shiba is upset because Rentaro doesn’t come around to play with her in the student council room and that when she wants to find him he’s always ditching school.

Rentaro responds that, that’s because he’s avoiding her on purpose. Sumire questions him on why he does that considering that she’s the school idol. Rentaro responds that while it’s true that she’s a “little cute” but no one knows her real personality. She’s the type of dangerous person that when excited will start shooting randomly in school (which isn’t really accurate, Rentaro’s sorta exaggerating here, Shiba only does that around Kisara).

There’s a tiny bit of narration explanation by Rentaro who reveals that the “benefactor” in question (Shiba’s name isn’t revealed yet) is Rentaro’s supplier of guns and all sorts of dangerous weapons. He reveals that in the case of strong promoters + Initiators team, certain companies will sponsor them as a form of advertisement. Not only that but they use them to test out strong weapons.

But Rentaro couldn’t help but question out loud what Shiba sees in him.

Sumire snarks that it’s because of Rentaro’s seedy looking face that she took pity on him.

Rentaro was about to get into another comical squabble with Sumire when he remembers what he came here for.

Sumire expresses interest and Rentaro tells her everything about Enju’s dilemma. After he is finished there is a brief moment of silence which causes Rentaro to feel uneasy.
Finally Rentaro couldn’t stand it and asks her for her opinion on the matter.

Sumire tells him that she stopped listening at the midpoint of the story because his anguish is to boring.

She then goes on a nihilistic rant about how humans will all die one day. Either from the sun going nova or the earth entering the ice age, or the Gastrea overrunning the humans. They’ll all die someday and whatever accomplishments humans have made will disappear. She then concludes that compared to the scale of the universe humans are nothing.

For those of you who can’t understand why she’s going on a of topic rant, the way I see it is that she’s implying to Rentaro that his problems were to small scale to worry about by indirectly relating them to humankind.

Anyways she continues her lecture by asking Rentaro why they should stop Gastrea.

Rentaro responds with the clichéd response, “they prey on humans so they’re the enemy of mankind.”

But Sumire counters that by saying that isn’t it because humans got too arrogant on their power? They became the rulers of the world and ruthlessly preyed on other less powerful creatures. Because of human “conscious” they became convinced that humans standing at the top are an undisputable fact. However this fact is changed into a subjective opinion when faced with the overwhelming might of gastrea and humans lost in the end. In a way this can be considered karma for human arrogance.

She then continues on how humans are depleting the Earth’s resources. In a way they’re destroying the earth itself. Maybe the gastrea is more suited for choosing Earth’s fate? While it’s not that popular in Japan but outside of Japan a lot of people have started religions over the gastrea and worship them as angels sent to purge the world of filthy humans.

Rentaro enters deep thought over her words and out of curiosity asks Sumire what she considers the cursed children to be.

She responds that the cursed children can be considered the messenger of god.
However Rentaro vehemently disagrees. He says that no matter what Enju a human with her own ideals and feelings is.

Sumire promptly agrees. And Rentaro realizes that her whole rant was to get Rentaro worked up so he can admit that simple fact.

She then continues by saying that soon the cursed children generation will enter the stage of puberty. This stage is the most sensitive and most crucial to their development. Many of the cursed children due to mistreatment may experience a loss of identity and despair. When that time comes for Enju Sumire hopes that Rentaro can support her through that stage.

That not so little peep talk made Rentaro realizes that he can’t just leave Enju alone to sort out her own problems. He has to support her. He decides to go see Enju himself instead of dancing around the issue.

As he walks out the university after the pep talk he receives a call from the teacher that tells him that there’s trouble going on and he should come asap.

He comes in to witness one Enju’s classmates engaging in a verbal lynching with her as the victim.

The crowd surrounds her with condemning eyes while a kid rants about how the gastrea killed his parents, blah, blah, blah.

Rentaro forced his way through and gave Enju a hug.

He then says to Enju that she needs to transfer schools.

Enju is disheartened at this and disagrees because she has so many friends here.

Rentaro tells her that they are not her friends.
Enju sniffles and asks him if there’s a way to change this.

Rentaro responds negatively, the world still cannot accept her.

Anyways Rentaro let’s Enju mourn for a bit however soon Enju gets over it and Rentaro tells her that a least they need to make an exit with their heads up. They prepare to leave (while leaving Enju’s school bags here) but Rentaro receives a call from Kisara who tells him that he needs to prepare himself since the Gastrea containing he treasure is already tracked down.

She then talks about a contract which is paid with her school expense and how Rentaro has to complete this mission or she has to drop out of school next year.

As Rentaro wonders what contract he hears a sharp noise and sees a helicopter land.

A medical helicopter.

Needless to say Rentaro wasn’t amused at this.

I know that I promised the rest of chapter 2 but frankly part 4 was a bitch to summarize.

Lots of confusing word usage plus lots of dialogue. TBH I made a mistake of overly summarizing the dialogue portions to the point where they sound more like translations (the Sumire and Rentaro portion especially).

I'll get to the last part of chapter 2 and hopefully get some of chapter 3 done tomorrow.

[Hemisphere]

For what it's worth, I don't think that it would have been any less possible for you to simplify the dialogue any other way, considering the vocabulary level in this LN. If anything, these are as good as they come for brief summaries.

If anyone complains, just point out to them the level of word usage this series has, haha.

Once again, you have my utmost respect for kindling interest for this series.

[XFire]

Originally Posted by Log

Thanks for the encouragement guys.

Anyways presenting the chapter 2 part 4.

Spoiler for chapter 2 part 4:

The next day Renato is at school.

As it turns out he couldn't find Enju, no matter where he searched. He's feeling rather restless at the moment and worried about Enju.

Suddenly he got a call from the teacher who he met before (the same one that told him about how Enju ran away yesterday). The teacher told him that Enju has come to class today.

Renato immediately rushes to Enjoys school and looks inside Enju’s classroom. All of Enju’s classmates have positioned there table to be as far away as possible. And their all ignoring her existence.

Rentaro desperately wants to go in and comfort Enju but stops himself as he feels that this is something Enju wants to face on her own, and he has no right to interfere (or something like this, I didn’t understand the text here very well).

He gives the teacher the anti gastrea erosion medicine and instructs him to let Enju take this.

He then leaves, with mixed feelings on what to do with Enju’s dilemma and not wanting to go back to school, he decides to Dr. Sumire.

When he gets there she’s……….. dissecting the corpse, Charlie.

Rentaro takes note of how disorganized, the room is, plus the fact that she’s dissecting a corpse and snark’s that if the world famous universities were to see how Sumire is now they would cry out tears (not sure how accurate since Rentaro uses some pretty complex analogies here but it’s the best I can do).

Sumrie laughs it off and remarks that idiots shouldn’t have a say in what she should do. She also says that she’s a genius since her parents are geniuses, and tells about how her parents used to read Dante’s Inferno to her when she’s younger (to those of you who don’t know what Dante’s Inferno is, just Google it and you’ll find out).

Rentaro comments on how disturbing and how unbelievable her family is.

Sumire (jokingly) threatens Rentaro that she’ll turn him into human model.

Rentaro tells her to please not do that.

After that Sumire jokes around a bit (something about Lucifer and Erotic jokes) to Rentaro.


Rentaro tells her to stop screwing around while depressingly thinking about how everyone around is never serious.

Sumire again jokingly mocks Rentaro on how he’s a nervous and sensitive man, and how Kisara has bad luck to be yearned by him of all people. He then responds with the classical “shut up”.

Sumire, gets on another topic and tells Rentaro that his “benefactor” (Shiba Miora) came around here looking for him, which causes Rentaro to look around nervously because he cannot stand her. Sumire reveals that that Shiba is upset because Rentaro doesn’t come around to play with her in the student council room and that when she wants to find him he’s always ditching school.

Rentaro responds that, that’s because he’s avoiding her on purpose. Sumire questions him on why he does that considering that she’s the school idol. Rentaro responds that while it’s true that she’s a “little cute” but no one knows her real personality. She’s the type of dangerous person that when excited will start shooting randomly in school (which isn’t really accurate, Rentaro’s sorta exaggerating here, Shiba only does that around Kisara).

There’s a tiny bit of narration explanation by Rentaro who reveals that the “benefactor” in question (Shiba’s name isn’t revealed yet) is Rentaro’s supplier of guns and all sorts of dangerous weapons. He reveals that in the case of strong promoters + Initiators team, certain companies will sponsor them as a form of advertisement. Not only that but they use them to test out strong weapons.

But Rentaro couldn’t help but question out loud what Shiba sees in him.

Sumire snarks that it’s because of Rentaro’s seedy looking face that she took pity on him.

Rentaro was about to get into another comical squabble with Sumire when he remembers what he came here for.

Sumire expresses interest and Rentaro tells her everything about Enju’s dilemma. After he is finished there is a brief moment of silence which causes Rentaro to feel uneasy.
Finally Rentaro couldn’t stand it and asks her for her opinion on the matter.

Sumire tells him that she stopped listening at the midpoint of the story because his anguish is to boring.

She then goes on a nihilistic rant about how humans will all die one day. Either from the sun going nova or the earth entering the ice age, or the Gastrea overrunning the humans. They’ll all die someday and whatever accomplishments humans have made will disappear. She then concludes that compared to the scale of the universe humans are nothing.

For those of you who can’t understand why she’s going on a of topic rant, the way I see it is that she’s implying to Rentaro that his problems were to small scale to worry about by indirectly relating them to humankind.

Anyways she continues her lecture by asking Rentaro why they should stop Gastrea.

Rentaro responds with the clichéd response, “they prey on humans so they’re the enemy of mankind.”

But Sumire counters that by saying that isn’t it because humans got too arrogant on their power? They became the rulers of the world and ruthlessly preyed on other less powerful creatures. Because of human “conscious” they became convinced that humans standing at the top are an undisputable fact. However this fact is changed into a subjective opinion when faced with the overwhelming might of gastrea and humans lost in the end. In a way this can be considered karma for human arrogance.

She then continues on how humans are depleting the Earth’s resources. In a way they’re destroying the earth itself. Maybe the gastrea is more suited for choosing Earth’s fate? While it’s not that popular in Japan but outside of Japan a lot of people have started religions over the gastrea and worship them as angels sent to purge the world of filthy humans.

Rentaro enters deep thought over her words and out of curiosity asks Sumire what she considers the cursed children to be.

She responds that the cursed children can be considered the messenger of god.
However Rentaro vehemently disagrees. He says that no matter what Enju a human with her own ideals and feelings is.

Sumire promptly agrees. And Rentaro realizes that her whole rant was to get Rentaro worked up so he can admit that simple fact.

She then continues by saying that soon the cursed children generation will enter the stage of puberty. This stage is the most sensitive and most crucial to their development. Many of the cursed children due to mistreatment may experience a loss of identity and despair. When that time comes for Enju Sumire hopes that Rentaro can support her through that stage.

That not so little peep talk made Rentaro realizes that he can’t just leave Enju alone to sort out her own problems. He has to support her. He decides to go see Enju himself instead of dancing around the issue.

As he walks out the university after the pep talk he receives a call from the teacher that tells him that there’s trouble going on and he should come asap.

He comes in to witness one Enju’s classmates engaging in a verbal lynching with her as the victim.

The crowd surrounds her with condemning eyes while a kid rants about how the gastrea parents, blah, blah, blah.

Rentaro forced his way through and gave Enju a hug.

He then says to Enju that she needs to transfer schools.

Enju is disheartened at this and disagrees because she has so many friends here.

Rentaro tells her that they are not her friends.
Enju sniffles and asks him if there’s a way to change this.

Rentaro responds negatively, the world still cannot accept her.

Anyways Rentaro let’s Enju mourn for a bit however soon Enju gets over it and Rentaro tells her that a least they need to make an exit with their heads up. They prepare to leave (while leaving Enju’s school bags here) but Rentaro receives a call from Kisara who tells him that he needs to prepare himself since the Gastrea containing he treasure is already tracked down.

She then talks about a contract which is paid with her school expense and how Rentaro has to complete this mission or she has to drop out of school next year.

As Rentaro wonders what contract he hears a sharp noise and sees a helicopter land.

A medical helicopter.

Needless to say Rentaro wasn’t amused at this.

I know that I promised the rest of chapter 2 but frankly part 4 was a bitch to summarize.

Lots of confusing word usage plus lots of dialogue. TBH I made a mistake of overly summarizing the dialogue portions to the point where they sound more like translations (the Sumire and Rentaro portion especially).

I'll get to the last part of chapter 2 and hopefully get some of chapter 3 done tomorrow.

Thanks for the summary.

Kids are total assholes in most Japanese media, aren't they.