From the back cover:
Another robot has been created, but this one is designed to kill! That’s not the only complication—can Vermillion and his friends stop a programmed assassin, restore a widow’s memory and mend a broken family?
Review:
Take a good look at that blurb. They’re not even pretending that Sui is the main character anymore. Seriously, in one chapter, she literally does nothing but eat some cake.
Instead of being strictly episodic, the series now has some recurring characters and, in recent volumes, has been including flashbacks of backstory. This volume introduces AT-6, another robot created by the villainous Sakaki, who lacks the programming that makes it taboo for robots to kill humans. He’s envious of Kira, to whom Sakaki constantly compares him, and seeks to destroy him. Kira ends up removing one part the programming that forces AT-6 to obey Sakaki, but this doesn’t stop the latter from trying to please his creator. We get a glimpse of the possible goodness within him—courtesy of that old manga cliché of saving a child who’s about to get hit by a car—but he’s not redeemed just yet.
The flashback chapter deals with the first test run of Vermillion and the problems that were encountered. Sui’s dad had originally suggested that early on, Vermillion had a habit of coming on to men that necessitated some reprogramming, but this story reveals that it was actually his lack of understanding regarding the difference between living and nonliving creatures that was the real problem. This throws the “kitten rescuing” escapade from volume one into a whole new light. And, by the way, I love that the cat in question has stuck around and shows up, fully-grown, now and then.
Nothing in this volume really excited or amused me, and the less said about the last chapter, wherein someone’s mom (Gasp! A mom!) suffers a head injury and believes she’s eighteen again, the better.
Nice to see someone else reading it. I don’t seem to come across many mentions of this series. I was enjoying it but as I wrote in my review of Vol. 5 I was somewhat disappointed that Sui is disappearing as a main character, which was something I wanted to read more of.
Hi, Nausicaa! I just read your review, and it’s interesting that we were both annoyed by the same thing in volume five. I mean, I certainly like Vermillion and Kira, but I would like to like Sui, too, but she’s just so forgettable at the moment (even in the creator’s eyes, apparently) that it’s hard to do so.