D-Frag! Volume 17
ディーふらぐ!
D-Fragments 17

–> Purchase D-Frag! Volume 17 from Amazon.com

There’s just something about the world of D-Frag that I can’t get enough of. Since I had some time off, I was able to reread the entire manga series, including volume 17. While I loved the volume, I did have a couple of issues.

NOTICE!!! In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I am the adapter for the official English translation of the True Tenchi Muyo! novels, which are also published by Seven Seas.

S P O I L E R S!

The Story, in Brief

Roka allows herself to be kidnapped by another school’s gang so that Kenji has to come save her. Ohsawa-sensei summons Kenji as she’s not happy that student council president Chitose put down “exorcist” as her career choice. As such, she pressures Kenji into doing something about this. He, with a hoard of tag-alongs, find Chitose on the school roof, patting a rock (Goseki Guardian Stone). Roka and Takao are playing a game nearby.

In order to find out why Chitose wants to be an exorcist, during Chitose’s childhood, she, along with Roka and Tama participated in The Great Test of Courage event. While she gets through successfully, on her way home, she encounters a supernatural ball. Tama, Roka, and a masked boy (Kenji) capture it, but it elevates Chitose’s phobia and caused her to suppress the memory of that event.

However, Chitose has started remembering pieces of that night. To that end, the group manage to summon the supernatural ball so that Chitose can face her fears. She attempts to hide behind Funabori, but eventually does face the ball. Eventually, she and Kenji are taken to a realm of darkness. Roka eventually joins them where Chitose decides to use Kenji’s spiky hair as a weapon.

The ball attacks, taking a large amount of Chitose’s hair. However, she punches it to Kenji, who’s spiky hair defeats it for good. Back in the real world, Chitose treats everyone to food as thanks. But when Sakura initially appears as a shadow, Chitose freaks out briefly.

The Rehabilitation of Chitose: Part 2

At the end of the previous volume, it seemed that Chitose had been rehabilitated from her phobia of the supernatural. Unfortunately, Haruno-sensei wasn’t done jacking with Chitose’s character, as seen in D-Frag! Volume 17. I suppose Haruno-sensei thought it was funny to take a touch character like Chitose and run her through the ringer. And once done, well, let’s go back to the well again ’cause seeing a tough person panic is funny, right?

I never liked this change for Chitose’s character. For a start, it makes her power takeover from Tama impossible. Earlier in the manga series, the child Chitose was shown to have a weakness, and Tama helped in that. But Tama overcame it as a child. As such, it made sense that the stronger Chitose would defeat Tama. However, by giving Chitose such a fierce phobia of the supernatural, I wonder why Tama didn’t use it against her during their battle?

By the end of the volume, it seems like Chitose has conquered her fears. However, Haruno-sensei showed that he reserved the right to trot it back out again if he felt he could mine it for comedy. So while I enjoyed the story, to me, Chitose was a funnier character when she was a disdainful, girl boss amongst a group of girl bosses.

Finally, this volume seems to put Chitose into the Kenji harem with Roka, Takao, Hata, Tama (for the most part), and Funabori.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

Let me wrap up my review of D-Frag! Volume 17 with some final thoughts.

• The initial story with Roka allowing herself to be kidnapped made me chuckle. In terms of characters, Roko could have easily handled these wannabe thugs. But all she did was talk up Kenji and get him to come in person to “save” her. Funny stuff.
• Speaking of Kenji, it is mighty convenient that he was a central character when Chitose formed her phobia of the paranormal. Clearly, Haruno-sensei understood the problem, so he has the young Kenji wear a mask all the time, even though in reality, he’d probably drop it. However, the wacky story was a lot of fun, so I let that slide.

In the end, D-Frag! Volume 17 is a lot of fun, but I don’t like how Chitose went from this “badass” character to one who’s deathly afraid. And though the volume does appear to rehabilitate her character, it isn’t as complete as I’d like. But that’s a minor complaint on my part.