4 out of 5

Volume 4 is so, so dumb, and guilty of some eye-rolling, clothes-ripping fan-service – which apparently merited featuring a naked Mizuki, clutching herself, on the cover – but that dumbness is sort of what Yoshiki Takaya’s Guyver was, in my mind, designed around: dudes yelling loudly before turning into obscene beasts and pummeling / laser-shooting each other. And we get that in spades in this collection, with Takaya’s action art getting unbearably awesome, with Zoanoids high kicking and getting knocked around like martial artists instead of stiff, lumbering creatures, but this is also where the series turns a corner and realizes that dramatic roadblocks – like Sho not being able to transform because weepy weep he killed his dad – are lame, and we just shoot forward with throwing everything under the sun at Sho and crew. After some initial foolishness where, I guess, we’re supposed to be ‘affected’ by Sho re-living killing his pa, even though we were there the first time, Guyver Reborn! is all momentum and wacky one-upping, with Aptom becoming the new big bad, thanks to some further mutations, and Sho getting that much better at kicking ass.

The fan-service is, again, groan-worthy, but it’s relatively short. Focus on all the Zoanoids a’brawlin’ instead, and you’ll be flipping pages like mad, only to flip back and admire how much action and GUYYYVVEERRRing Takaya is stuffing into his panels, even when they’re just glory shots of someone posing.