3 out of 5

In which Yoshiki Takaya stalls for time.

Look – creating anything is tough.  Creating ongoing comic book storylines is definitely tough, especially when you just started out with a vague desire to draw creatures in battle suits beating each other up, which is sort of how I imagine Guyver getting going in Takaya’s imagination.  By this point in the story – arriving at about the halfway mark – Yoshiki has established some baseline lore, he’s gone through getting his lead, Sho, up to speed with his Guyver abilities, and he’s already had a big showndown at Relics Point.  He sorta forgot to give the Guyver suit any limitations, though, so he has to sideline Guyver III in this set of issues (he’s limping in the background for most of the thing) and made Sho, y’know, too tired to Guyver-up.  Dude’s hanging out in his pajamas when all his friends get attacked.  We can’t just storm Relics Point again, so…?

So Takaya stalls.  Escape From Chronos has a lot of action taking up its page space, as Zoalords send out waves of Zoanoids to solve their little Guyver problem, and though Takaya’s backgrounds and character (and character designs) have continued to evolve, the large scale the different creatures makes all their leaping around and dodging acid and laser blasts a little stiff at points.

From this holding point in the narrative though, Takaya has some time to expand upon the Guyver lore, and it ups the stakes of the game immensely.  It’s an exposition dump, for sure (and told around a campfire…), but it’s a truly satisfying expansion on what’s just sort of been half-assed explanations up to this point, with Takaya catching himself and answering questions to potential plot holes before they go too deep.  This arc is also where the series exposes light touches of character complexity that edge it beyond some of its action-y peers, with Mizuki essentially having PTSD flashes, and Sho unaware of the psychological blocks that are preventing his Guyver transformation.  These aspects raise up the back part of Volume 3 to be on par with the excitement and WTFness of what’s come before.