Masumi Yamamoto and the Blades She Has to Keep Under Control

Masumi Yamamoto and the Blades She Has to Keep Under Control Masumi can't even go home without somebody following her from the airport. She's back in Japan, carrying the demon that destroyed her family inside a pair of swords, and the first real conversation she has with a stranger ends with his head going into a fitting-room mirror. That's a fairly good introduction to how badly this visit is going to go. Spoilers for Masumi: Blades of Sin #1–4. What interested me most about her here was how little room she has to put any of this down. Legion talks to her constantly. He comments on the people around her, questions her decisions, and pushes her toward killing when she wants answers. She has him contained, but that doesn't make him cooperative. In the department store, he dismisses the attacking demons as beneath him and essentially tells her to handle it herself. Those attackers are possessed people. Masumi recognizes that, and she wants to save them. The swords can help her exorcise the demons, but getting that help means dealing with the thing inside them. She has to command Legion to obey while she's already trying to survive the fight. Then she meets Mei, a relative who has grown up hearing the family's history as bedtime stories. Mei has a fiancé, a wedding next week, and no demon-hunting training. She's excited that somebody from her family will be there. Masumi immediately wants to know how her training is going. That exchange says a lot about the difference between their lives. Masumi thinks she's checking on something essential. Mei doesn't even know there's something to prepare for. And Masumi admits to being a little jealous. The horrors that shaped her childhood have been stories for this other young woman, who has been able to plan a future without expecting a monster to take it away. Hiroto's involvement with the Yakuza makes her suspicious of both of them. She follows him, witnesses Shinobu putting a demon into a human vessel, and retrieves a family artifact after fighting that possessed man. But Hiroto wasn't selling Mei out for money. He says they'd threatened her, and he'd been trying to keep her safe. Masumi eventually understands that motive. Trying to protect someone you love is hardly foreign to her. The next warehouse fight is harder to justify to herself. Shinobu has bound demons to five followers, and Legion tells her she can't remove them while the human souls remain. She asks him outright if he's lying. He insists he isn't. She kills the possessed men, hating what it costs, and feels Legion trying to get out of the swords and into her with each death. I liked that the book leaves her conscious of what she's doing. She doesn't become casual about killing because the people involved are criminals. She knows grief, and knowing how dangerous these enemies are doesn't make the deaths feel good to her. She also tries to prepare Mei for the life she herself knows too well. After Hiroto's death in the train bombing, she starts teaching her cousin about demons. Mei wants revenge. Masumi tells her their duty isn't vengeance, even as Legion approves of the anger he's hearing. It's an uncomfortable conversation because Masumi understands exactly why Mei feels that way. Her own losses are still easy to use against her. In the Sea of Trees, she sees people from her past accusing her, including her sister, her parents, and Gerard. The Gerard apparition almost gets close enough to draw her in. Hiroto's spirit warns her that it's a demon, and she finally rejects what she's seeing. She knows these people have moved on. Their sudden return to torment her doesn't fit. I found that more interesting than another sword fight. She's had so much taken from her that somebody can still reach her by offering a few seconds with the person she misses. She works out the deception, but Ryujin uses the distraction to get one of her swords. The emotional attack has a practical cost. By the confrontation with Shinobu, she knows she's walking into a trap. She keeps Mei outside the room anyway and goes in. Shinobu has built the fight around an enormous shogi board rigged with explosives, and Ryujin now has one of the blades. Legion is quite happy to fight against her through the other man. Masumi reaches the point where she'd rather destroy Legion than let the Yakuza use him. What happens instead is worse. An explosion throws her into Shinobu and her sword impales him. When she and Ryujin clash again, the blades shatter and Legion emerges free. He thanks her before leaving. There's a lot I like about Masumi in this series, especially her insistence that human lives still matter after everything she's seen. That belief makes her vulnerable to people willing to exploit it. She knows that. She keeps trying to save people anyway. I don't think her mistakes here make that concern foolish, but they do leave her with a much bigger problem than the one she came home to solve.