Clockwork Planet Vol. 4 (Manga Review)

By: I.Am.No.Man.

Missed my previous review? Find it here!

Recap

Anchor begins her attack on Naoto and the group. Huge explosions surround them and walls and walkways begin to drop away. Naoto realizes that Anchor can bend time and space around her to take down her enemies. Halter attempts to take the floor out from underneath Anchor, but she is able to jump through the empty space and attacks them with a powerful Resonance Cannon. RyuZU leaps in front of Naoto, but they fall out of reach…down….to the endless abyss.

Halter is able to use Naoto and RyuZU’s fall as a distraction to allow him and Marie to escape. Marie is devastated by the loss of her companions. Halter gets Marie to the upper levels to safety and they take refuge in a hotel. Marie tries to process her friends’ deaths and throws herself into digging deeper into the government conspiracies that led them to city grid Mie.Marie and Halter make a plan to cut the head off the snake and break into the Governor’s mansion. They take the Governor hostage and demand information in exchange for sparing the lives of his wife and child. The Governor breaks down and tells Marie the entire story of the military and government conspiracy. Government scientists had been tampering with illegal electromagnetic technology to try and harness the clockwork planet’s energy. Their experiments went awry and resulted in the Purge of Shiga. The scientists of Shiga took refuge in Mie before the purge and staged a takeover of the city. In only 12 years they built a super weapon to protect themselves from the inevitable military retaliation. Now, the military and government are in a dangerous stalemate, staring each other down the barrel of a gun. The Governor blames Marie for breaking the stalemate and launching the country into war. The super-weapon is on the move and the military plans to purge Tokyo in retaliation.

Marie leaves, and begins to lose all hope of winning this war. Just as she considers giving up, a sewer grate shoots up behind her. And incredibly, RyuZU and Naoto emerge, a little worse for wear, but alive! Naoto and RyuZU tell the story of how they fell and barely landed on the very last gear of the edge of city Mie. A desolate barrier between the core of the planet and the city above. It should have been hostile and completely uninhabitable, but miraculously, the air is breathable and a tolerable temperature. An old man, claiming to be a forgotten engineer of the city agrees to help them. In exchange for some information he helps them activate an elevator back to the surface where they popped out next to Marie.Invigorated by Naoto’s return Marie resolves to save Mie and take a stand against the military. Naoto has his own mission to save Anchor. He claims to have heard Anchor’s true voice and believes the mask she wears controls her body while her mind is trapped in limbo. Together, Marie and Naoto form a plan to use their terrorist status to attack Mie before the military can engage in war.

Using their talents combined, the group takes over the cities power grid and blows Tokyo tower to rubble. This triggers an evacuation of the city just in time for Anchor and the super-weapon’s arrival. RyuZU is there on the ground waiting to meet her sister face to face, ready to fight for Anchor’s freedom.

Review

What an action packed volume! So many ups and downs and crazy revelations. I love the layers the story is adding by revealing the scientists’ failed experiments. We keep eking closer and closer to discovering the identity of Y (the creator of the clockwork technology that saved the world) and the power behind the creation of the planet. I hope they get more into Anchor’s backstory soon! (I haven’t read the novel series the manga is based on)I want to know who made the mask that controls her, what connection does she have to the super-weapon hiding beneath Mie? The promise of an epic Automaton vs Automaton battle has me itching to start the next volume!Find Clockwork Planet Vol. 4 here!Kodansha comics provided us with a copy of Clockwork Planet vol 4 in exchange for an honest review