Manga-ka: Rei Toma
Publisher: Viz Media
Rating: Teen (13+)
Release Date: June 2012
Synopsis: “Princess Nakaba of Senan and Prince Caesar of Belquat only married each other for the sake of peace between their two warring countries, so no one expected there to be love between the unlikely couple. But just as feelings start growing between them, Nakaba’s power, the Arcana of Time, shows her a vision of a young woman’s murder. Has the time come for Nakaba to harness her power to change fate?”
As the characters try to come to terms with what they discovered in volume three, Nakaba has a vision of a young girls’ death on the very swords they discovered. Mere moments later, she meets the girl whose fate she has seen – the younger sister of the King’s advisor. Now the whole group is on the road to stop multiple disasters from occurring and giving us all the chance to escape that stuffy castle for a while. Yay! Meanwhile much to the volume’s benefit, the evolving importance of other characters does wonders to round out a cast originally focused entirely of the love-triangle trio. They all serve the plot well where the Nakaba/Caeser romance continues to fall rather flat.