4 out of 5

It’s confusing as Hell sometimes – there are like 5 characters too many at this point, with some similar facial structures and only hair tweaks, and prone to wearing big ol’ robot suits that only differ in number, and then you toss in some flashback scenes just to add more characters to remember – but as with Blame!, taking the time to sift through it and see how the pieces interlock is massively rewarding, especially so in this volume, which concludes with a few Holy Crap! moments strung together.

Volume 3 begins with exploring some of the guanas odd developing abilities, as witnessed with their garde mimicry at the end of volume 2.  This gets into some slight yawn-worthy tentacle porn type stuff (Nihei flirting with sexualization in his books is sort of frustrating; I wish this wasn’t such a common fallback in manga), but besides that aspect the oddities that are considered – which would grant the guana more awareness than the humans had been – are fascinating.  Thereafter there’s some of the distracting love triangle stuff with Nagate, newbie Yuhata and “Mr.” Izana; I enjoy the character development for Tanikaze and Izana, but Yuhata is such a stock troublemaker / comedy relief that I can’t say she’s worth it thus far.  But these are downbeats inbetween much more important matters, like further thrilling (and followable!) guana battles, and then the flashback sequences, which explain the Kabizashis, add more mystery to the guanas, and toss in those aforementioned Holy Crap! moments, related to Tanikaze.

Nihei starts to use thought bubbles some more, which kind of breaks us out of his wordless surreal mojo magic, but it’s for the sake of guiding the story – he’s certainly not the type to over-exposit – and so although it’s a bit forced at times, I’m down with it.  Especially as the world of Sidonia and guanas keeps developing in complexity.  So volume 3 succeeds despite its subplot and boobie sidesteps, and whadya know, it succeeds because its story and main characters are damned interesting.