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Title: Kekkaishi Vol 19

Author:  Yellow Tanabe

Publisher: Viz

ISBN: 9781421526126

May Contain Spoilers

Yoshimori and Tokine successfully save the students at Karasumori High School from the butterfly invasion, getting a little help from their grandparents.  When they track down the instigator of the attack, they discover, not an evil villain, but a harmless looking medium who is only trying to deliver a warning to them.  When she sees Yoshimori and Tokine, she has a vivid vision of a horrible doom that threatens to destroy the Karasumori site.  Will her vision of the future come true?

I love this series.  Right when I think it might have hit a lull, Yellow Tanabe starts to skillfully weave in new subplots that have me impatient for the next volume.  Here, we have the terrible fate that awaits Yoshimori, Tokine, and the Karasumori site.  That’s got me pretty intrigued, but then she also starts unveiling political unrest within the Shadow Organization.  Masamori is finding himself on tenuous ground by alienating the powerful Ogi clan.  When a mystical site is desecrated, there are two very obvious suspects.  One is the powerful Masamori, and, much to the consternation of the rest of the family, the other is Yoshimori’s mother.

This story arc kept me glued to the pages.  There is so little that has been revealed about Yoshimori’s mother, so now when there’s a hint that she could be a big, bad guy, I really want to know what the deal is.  We get a very brief glimpse into her past, when she completes her first assignment for the Shadow Organization in a manner not quite to their expectations.  She is strong, dismissive of her companions, and more than willing to get the job done, in her own way.  She is like a loaded gun that somebody leaves in the hall closet.  Sooner or later it’s going to go off, and you can only hope that nobody is in the path of the wayward bullet.

Events have taken a more serious turn, and the tension is starting to escalate.  The entire Sumimura family is under suspicion, and consequences will be very dire if their enemies can present a convincing enough argument that any of them are guilty of the crimes against the mystical sites.  We’re talking major bad, because the punishment for destroying a mystical site is death!  If this was just a battle to defend the Karasumori site, Yoshimori would eventually emerge victorious.  Now that they are locked in a battle of wits and political agendas, I get a little nervous.  Yoshimori’s incredible powers aren’t going to aid him much in this scenario, and with his mother such a wild card, I’m not so sure that they are going to win this one hands down.  Now I begin the impatient countdown to the release of the next volume.

Grade:  B+