With his wife and child finally sound a sleep Eugene crept his way out of the bedroom and the house, getting into his car to drive into town.
As he drove down the empty suburb roads, he couldn’t get rid of this gut-wrenching feeling within. Something was telling him to turn back now, but he ignored it. He thought the relaxing drive into town would ease his worry.
He glanced at the rear view mirror, seeing his own wrinkled reflection staring back at him, “Christ, I look like death.” However, he still smiled, “Guess it comes with raising a family.”
“Is there anything I can get you while I’m out? Any kind of medicine or ointments?”
Eugene’s wife rolled over in bed to face him, her eyes struggling to stay open, “Just some aspirin. I’m having really bad headaches again.”
Eugene nodded and he headed for the bedroom door. Before he made it out the baby began crying. However, his wife had her ears covered, thrashing around in the bed. Without thinking, Eugene ran over and picked up the baby, slowly rocking it to try and soothe it.
“Make it stop,” his wife screeched out, “shut that fucking baby up!”
Under the bright blue sky Eugene carefully pushed the wheelchair out of the hospital, making sure his wife and son were comfortable in the seat.
“Are you feeling fine, love?” Eugene politely asked.
His wife didn’t bother looking back, keeping her eyes forward as she replied, “Yeah…”
Seeing a black car pulling up to the curb, Eugene called out to the driver. The driver quickly got out and assisted the wife and child into the backseat.
Before closing the door, Eugene noticed his wife had her hand over the child’s face, “Protecting him from the sun?”
Turning a small dial on the wall, Eugene dimmed the lighting in the room. However, even in the darkened room, he could see the faint glowing of his newborn child resting in his wife’s arms. Wrapped up in a sky blue towel with a matching baby beanie hat, Eugene smiled at his child peacefully sleeping away. Noticing his features, Eugene chuckled at the sight of his son’s nose, “It’s pointed like yours, dear.”
His wife didn’t respond, her eyes locked in a dreaded stare at the baby.
Eugene paced back and forth in the empty waiting area, the bleak-looking hallway echoing with his footsteps. Not too far away he could hear the agonizing cries of his wife coming from behind the door, hearing her begging for it all to just end.
Eugene balled up his fists, feeling guilt for having to put his loving wife through so much pain. However, he knew that everything would result in a beautiful thing.
His wife’s crying halts and a doctor comes out of the room, a bright smile on his face.
“Come welcome your newborn son into the world, Eugene.”
The door was closed, and Thomas could hear somebody sobbing on the other side. Down on the ground was the fresh trail of blood from the dragged body. With his gun ready, he kicked the door in and aimed at the first person he saw.
“Freeze, don’t move!”
However, he was the one who froze.
In the middle of an empty room was a young boy, leaning over the bloodied body from before. Knife in hand, the boy slowly carved away at bits and pieces of the body, tears flooding from his eyes while he did it.
Thomas held his firearm straight ahead, aiming down the second floor hallway. All the way at the back a body was being dragged into the last room down the hallway, the door slamming closed. Thomas kept his position behind the wall, waiting to see if that door would open again.
“Come out with your hands up,” he demanded.
No response from the end of the hallway. The eerie silence sent chills through Thomas, his hairs standing on end.
This is the kind of stuff you were waiting for.
Flashlight and gun in hand, he slowly approached the last door.
The house’s age became clear whenever it creaked under Thomas’s boot. The air grew colder the closer he got to the second floor. With every step on his way up, the floorboards almost broke under his weight.
“Did dispatch really give me the correct address?”Thomas pondered. “This house is too old to live in.”
From his brief search, Thomas knew that the house was much larger than it looked from the out side. He didn’t want to admit it, but this emergency call was too large for one officer.
However, that thrill for danger was his reason for staying alone.
“Hey, kid,” Thomas called out as he searched through the living room, “you alright?”
The living room had a thick air to it, a faint odor of trash lingering around the furniture. Wanting more light Thomas went to turn on a nearby lamp but nothing happened. He pulled out his small flashlight from his belt and scanned the room with greater attention to detail.
Illuminated by the white light, there was a large red stain on the back of the living room sofa. Thomas tapped it with his finger, feeling a cold, sticky dampness.
All the way from inside of his police car, Thomas was able to see into the first floor of the home; the front door was tossed from its hinges and thrown onto the dying, brown lawn.
He radioed in, “Dispatch, be advised. The home appeared to be broken into. I’m gonna go check it out.”
“We will have backup on standby.”
“Roger.”
Stepping out of the car and onto the brick walkway Thomas cautiously approached the house, keeping his hand on his holstered firearm. With his heart rate slowly rising Thomas couldn’t wait to feel the thrill of looming danger.
“Unit 11, come in. We have a call over at the Auburn home over on 2334 Maiden Road.”
Thomas picked up the mic on his receiver radio and responded, “Copy that. I’m on my way.”
“Please be advised that the call was from a child. His parents’ location is unknown.”
“Roger.”
Putting the mic back, Thomas turns on his sirens and makes a u-turn on the empty highway, speeding down towards his next location. Most of the day was spent driving around town, patrolling for any kind of threat.
This distress call was his only taste of action all day.
(If you didn’t read volume one of Machimao: I Messed Up and Made the Wrong Person Into a Magical Girl, it’s highly recommended that you read it. You’re missing out on the beginning of a great series.)
“I’m gonna carve your face in, Tits-for-Brains!”
A perfect line used to sum up how the latest volume of Machimaho begins.
Picking up right after where volume one of Machimaho left off, volume two opens with the continuation of the intense blow-for-blow fight scene that left me on the edge of my seat—and I wasn’t disappointed when I started reading it. On the very first page, Kayo does a spoof of a popular shonen anime/manga series that anybody would recognize.
On its own, Machimaho volume two was very enjoyable to read. The overall plot of the story continues on, giving more detail behind what happens to Kayo and her rival, Nako, when they take on their magical girl forms. Although the manga is primarily an action story, volume two throws in more comedic set-ups and situations that doesn’t deter from what the plot is trying to focus on. One such moment is when Kayo and Nako expend all of their energy fighting one another: they get hungry. Souryu, the creator of Machimaho, took this moment to break the fourth wall in a smooth, yet obvious, way. Regardless if is was a direct reference to another popular manga/anime series, or to the genre overall, it was still a comedic scene that made me laugh. After this moment, that’s when the main focus of volume two comes into play.
Splitting up into two different perspectives, the story starts to focus on Nako, showing what happened at the conclusion of her fight with Kayo. This point of the story begins to give us a small window into her own personal life, allowing us to learn about the way she thinks and her views on having magical girl powers. Just like her delinquent and arrogant rival, Nako has her own floating familiar following her around, however its origin isn’t so clear; this was most likely done as setup for a later plot development, so it’s actually an interesting thing, not a hindrance of understanding the story.
(Source: Seven Seas Entertainment)
As for the second perspective, the story swaps back to Kayo, our main badass magical girl. After being escorted back home by her personal underling, Rei, Kayo wakes up from a dream and finds herself in a bed inside of the main building of her home. Grabbing breakfast on the go and escaping, she heads on back to her room underground, the one shown in volume one. Knocking out a few demons on the way, literally one-punching everything all while having a casual conversation with Myu, Kayo starts to unwind and reflect on everything that has happened. However, as she’s trying to take it easy, her memories from an earlier time becomes her focus.
This is the part of the story where we’re given small snippets into Kayo’s life. Although this portion is only one page in length, it had me wondering what kind of person Kayo’s life had been long before she was turned into a magical girl. The fact that she quickly escaped a house where she had personal maids and butlers catering to her and lived an obvious life a luxury, that’s something most people wouldn’t just run out on. I began to wonder what possibly could have happened that made her want to live in a nearly empty room, and if she had always been the violent powerhouse she’s currently known as. For now that portion of her life is a heavily shrouded mystery, one that I can’t wait to uncover as the series continues.
The story continues on, switching back and forth between Kayo and Nako until they meet up again when another demon appears in the city, this time coming from the result of what happened in volume one. As the fight goes on, we see a side of Nako that I never would have imagined; it even pisses off Kayo to the point that she has to come in and slap the living hell out of her. And I can’t even lie, Kayo’s never end of blatant disrespectful remarks and crude cursing makes me like her even more as a character—I can see her becoming a boss or a gang or illegal organization with the way she acts.. At the conclusion of volume two, we’re treated with a new mystery, one that makes me wonder just how deep this whole magical girl stuff can reach.
At the end of it all, Machimaho volume two lives up to the hype the first volume sets up and continues it, grabbing my attention throughout, all while having me laugh when I needed to. The artwork both during fight scenes and outside of them are consistent, detailed from the clothing, down to Kayo’s veins practically busting out of her face; you can even see the large amount of cracks inside a giant rock Kayo chucks at Nako. Souryu knows how to make great actions scenes and can back that up a great story. I can’t wait to see what kind of demons Kayo will have to take on in volume three!
Want to read it for yourself? Machimaho is currently out in print and digital copies on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other major book retailers.
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