When we last left our...hero? Can we call Accelerator a hero? Character then. Yeah, when we last left our character, he had just heard that things were quickly going off the rails. One of the Sisters has been kidnapped by DA as a hostage, and Anti-Skill was moving in to shut down the rogue group of "Justice" warriors. Meanwhile, the suits of Academy City have decided to cover the whole thing up and have sent their own unit, a group of four esper girls who form Scavenger. Anti-Skill engaged DA and seemed to be winning, until DA whipped out a giant robot spider.
Volume 3 of this spin off of a spin off series picks up right where volume 2 left off. Fair warning, minor SPOILERS in this review, but the volume is mostly just one big fight--or perhaps 'massacre' would be more accurate.
The book opens with Anti-Skill facing off against DA's new weapon. At first they seem to be holding their own, as Yomikawa leads the charge and quickly mops the floor with a few DA members. However, it quickly becomes apparent that the teacher-filled police force doesn't have the firepower to take down the mech, so as they take cover, one of them calls the reinforcements and tells them to bring rockets.
Too bad a crazy girl answers the phone, saying that she and her friends have already KILLED all the other Anti-Skill members. Oh, and they're on their way there, and they plan to kill them too. We even get a shot of one of the girls snapping the neck of the last Anti-Skill member--while another one smiles in awe--before they hang up the phone. Dark stuff.
After that, it is all down hill for the good guys. The mech opens up with an attack that literally slices Anti-Skill to ribbons, and the Scavenger girls show up and release an explosion that blows up the few Anti-Skill members that survived. Yomikawa, having been separated from her coworkers while she saved the Sister, returns just in time to see the ruined and mangled bodies of her friends. The Scavenger girls then proceed to kill the last DA member--again, in a pretty horrifying way--before turning their sights on her.
Thankfully, Estelle and her walking corpse protector show up just in time to save her, but even they are outmatched. It quickly becomes clear that, unless someone (hint-hint, nudge-nudge) shows up in the next few minutes, Scavenger is going to wipe everyone out. And laugh while doing it.
These girls are both terrifying and annoying. The kill without remorse, and even take pleasure in slaughtering people. They are the pure definition of psychopathic. But why are they so cruel? It's because they think Academy city is completely broke and corrupted (which, let's be fair, it kind of is), and they're going to fix it. Of course, since Academy City is just one big school, who's responsible for it? Why, the teachers, of course. If they can't keep their kids in check, then it's their fault that the city is such a mess. And what is Anti-Skill made up of? Teachers.
Okay, let's stop and think about how DUMB these girls are now. They are sent out by a shadow organization to kill people without question. That seems pretty corrupt to me, but whatever. Next, let's look at who they're targeting. They specifically blame teachers for all the problems in the City, yet they just showed that teachers are NO MATCH FOR THEM. They murdered everyone in the Anti-Skill unit and didn't even break a sweat. And again, I must stress, they ENJOYED it. Tell me, how is a teacher supposed to control a person like that, when the teacher doesn't have any esper power? This is why I find these girls annoying. They preach about how right they are, and fail to realize that they are exactly what they hate--or maybe they do realize it, and just don't care. I don't know.
What I do know is that when Accelerator shows up in the next volume (yeah, he's not in this one much, and Last Order isn't in it at all), he better be putting these girls down, hard. Better yet, put them in the ground. You know Mikoto and Kamijou would only try to plead with them while fighting defensively, or fighting to subdue. But Accelerator? He doesn't pull his punches, so I'm really hoping these girls get what's coming to them.
Finally, this volume raises an interesting question for me. If Anti-Skill is made up mostly of teachers, and two whole units of Anti-Skill just got wiped out (because seriously, some of them were in pieces at the end of the fight), who takes over their classes? Like, do the students just come to school the next day and the Principle goes, "Yeah, sorry kids. Your math, science, and gym teachers were all murdered yesterday while on duty." Are there teachers on standby ready to fill in the gaps? And when this many die, is there a public mourning, or what? I've always wondered about this in the "A Certain" series, but this book really makes me wonder because there are a LOT of dead teachers at the end of it.
Bottom Line: This volume kind of feels like filler, but in a good way. Not much plot is developed. It really is just a book that contains one big fight and a little bit of character dialogue, but that's it. Next volume will see Accelerator return, and hopefully dishing out some well-deserved payback.
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