Title: Dimension W Vol. 10
Author: Yuji Iwahara
Publisher: Yen Press
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 224
Genre: Sci-Fi, Action
Publication Date: May 22, 2018
The Story
Volume 10 of Dimension W concludes the story that was told by the anime and begins a new story that goes beyond it. Kyouma receives the remainder of his memories and finds out the location of the Genesis Coil. He devises a plan with Loser to stop Seameyer once and for all. With Lwai’s help, Kyouma acts as a distraction by offering Seameyer his memories. When Seameyer learns the truth, he goes berserk and threatens to eradicate the entire world, reducing it to nothingness like Easter Island. Mira is also captured by Seameyer as her coil is still in an overload state from helping Kyouma regain his memories. Mira’s coil interacts with Dimension W while in Seameyer’s grasp and receives a new coil from Yurizaki.
Ellie attached one of Loser’s numbers to one of Kyouma’s spindarts that she happened to conveniently find. Kyouma mentions this is the last spindart he will ever use and throws it into the gate, destroying it and sending Seameyer back to Dimension W. This also causes Easter Island to fully recover from nothingness.
I’ll get to the second half of the volume in a minute but the ending to this story arc made sense and didn’t make sense at the same time. I get everything about Kyouma’s memories, the Genesis Coil, etc, etc, but what I didn’t really quite get was why there were so many Deus Ex Machina plot devices strewn all over this ending? First off, Mira just jamming the business end of her tail into Kyouma’s ear to connect his memory to Dimension W made zero sense. Not in the theory of it but in the fact that Mira said she realized this back during the Lake Yasogami incident. So you’re expecting me to believe that Mira knew Kyouma needed his memories back and you waited until now to tell him you knew of a way for that to happen? It just seemed like a convenient plot device to solve a situation that seemed near impossible.
Plus, we had Seameyer and his gate tied up with specially crafted chains that could withstand the gate, yet they could be cut? That didn’t make much sense either. Add in the fact that these chains just came out of nowhere with us just assuming Prince Salva brought them along with him is kind of far-fetched. Not to mention the spindart that Ellie conveniently just found laying around somewhere. There were just way too many things introduced at once for it to be conceived as believable.
Be that as it may, the story arc is over. Seameyer was stopped, we know the fate of the Genesis Coil and Easter Island has returned fully to our plane of reality. All is well that ends well, right?
The second half of the volume takes us in a new direction. Mary and Koorogi wish to know the secrets behind Mira’s new coil, which apparently displays some of the same principles as the Genesis Coil. This also opens a new question about Yuizaki. Was he truly killed or had he been banished to Dimension W? Even though the volume doesn’t flat out say it, it’s pretty obvious that the latter is the true explanation.
Kyouma and Mira return to being collectors and their first job is protecting the owner of a car company after an anonymous post was made on their company’s internal forums stating that he would be embarrassed at the unveiling of his new car model. Turns out it wasn’t an illegal coil job at all and nothing more than a simple police matter, but Ellie makes an appearance and has taken on the role of a rogue collector who uses illegal coils to find other illegal coils.
We then get a bit of a forewarning about the next big threat. They say that if New Tesla is the Light, then The Syndicate, which makes the illegal coils, is the Shadow and that they have already begun to make moves. This is confirmed when two collectors working for Mary were murdered in the Philippines. Our volume comes to an end here with a forewarning that collectors are now being hunted.
I can believe the second half a bit more where the story returns to its roots about Kyouma being a collector hunting illegal coils in a shady underworld. Somehow, I feel that this was the story we should have gotten all along, though. I’m not saying everything involving Kyouma’s history and Seameyer wasn’t interesting, because it was and it set up the world of Dimension W more perfectly than I could imagine but the manga started out with this premise and it took ten volumes for the series to get back to that premise.
Characters
There really wasn’t much in the way of character development in this volume aside from Mira’s new coil and the implied fate of Dr. Yurizaki. That’s the only real mystery left over from the original story arc is the true fate of Yurizaki. How and when did he make Mira’s new coil and how was he thrown into Dimension W? Since Dimension W is pretty much anything goes, was Yurizaki murdered but his memories projected into Dimension W with the coil? Dimension W in and of itself makes things like this convoluted so I am hoping the series ends up explaining things in more detail in the future.
I could speak on Loser here but it would be venturing into heavy spoiler territory and I would rather let readers experience it for themselves.
Obviously, with the introduction of The Syndicate, we will get getting a whole new cast of characters soon, including one man with a cross scar over his eye which seems to be the perpetrator behind the murders of Mary’s collectors.
One thing I was saving for this section that I didn’t talk about in the story was the direction they are taking Prince Salva in. In the epilogue of the first story arc, Salva confronts New Tesla during his briefing of the events of Easter Island. When Salva can’t deliver the information they seek, they begin to threaten him in which he pushes back and says that it wouldn’t be wise because Africa and Tower 60 will become their enemies and that he has possession of numerous illegal coils which could easily counteract their shutting down of his tower. New Tesla succumbs to his threats and that’s when Salva says to himself that he will become the new president of New Tesla.
That’s a nice way to keep the character relevant. He may disappear for a while but this is not the last we will see of Salva. The fact that he has a new goal shows that there is plenty more story to tell with him and I’m excited to see what path he ends up walking on.
Final Thoughts
While the ending was a bit contrived, it was still nice to see that story arc get wrapped up. This felt like an end-of-series story which makes me wonder why they decided to pull this story now and then revert back to the manga’s original premise. I would have thought we would have learned about the Syndicate first before Seameyer. I would think that Seameyer is a much larger threat than an organization that is responsible for illegal coils. The Genesis Coil in and of itself was built up to be this coil that trumps all reality and you’re saying that The Syndicate is more important and threatening than something that could, quite literally, not only end the world but all of reality itself?
The order of events seems a bit out of place. It seems like everything should have been built up to the Seameyer story arc. Let the reader dive deeper into the world of illegal coils all while teasing Kyouma’s past. Get Loser and Ellie involved and make them rivals on different illegal coil missions all while hiding Loser’s true intentions. Iwahara did that at first but I would have loved to have seen that slowly burned with more and more interesting situations that offered bits and pieces of the overall story as we progressed.
This seems like Iwahara told the story that he wanted to tell and didn’t realize his series would become that popular and was asked to extend it by his editors so now he’s back peddling to fill in the gaps and loose ends he left during the original premise. I don’t know… it just seems all out of place to me but despite my complaints, it doesn’t mean I didn’t find any of it entertaining or interesting. It’s still a great story that I am eager to learn more about. I just feel the story could have been told in a different order.
In short, the crescendo happened way too early.
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This item was provided for review by Yen Press
