By Duo Brand
Published by Go! Comi
Rating: Older Teen 16+

Artistically, CROSS X BREAK is effective, but the writing is a different matter. It could be summed up, in a phrase, as “a tale of two volumes”—one in which events hurtle along at a steady clip, the other slightly more meandering.

This series kicks off with one of the oldest devices in the fantasy-adventure genre: characters from our world find themselves transported to an alternate reality. In this case, the protagonists are “tweens” named Akito and Yaya, and the strange new universe is one where rivers flow upstream and land resembles giant mushrooms. There are also really tight border restrictions, and without marks showing where they come from, it doesn’t take long before Akito and Yaya are being pursued by Warlocks, rock star-looking types whose job is making sure everyone stays in their respective giant mushrooms.

Luckily for the main characters, the friendly Neon shows up to help them. He has connections to Shinkai, Akito’s older brother, who set the wheels for his and Yaya’s journey into motion. Just how a long-haired hedonist like Shinkai could end up a magical universe’s bigwig remains uncertain, but his reasons for sending Akito involve broadening the youth’s mind and, indeed, CROSS X BREAK is very much a coming-of-age tale. Akito evolves from callous, self-centered, and pissed off at the world to being able to feel empathy, and the artwork reflects these changes in his physical and emotional demeanor nicely.

As previously stated, however, the quality of the first two volumes is not necessarily even. While volume one does a good job of maintaining interest—introducing all the important characters, the fantasy world, the rules and stakes involved, even raising those stakes dramatically before the cliffhanger—volume two seems less tightly-plotted. It is also occasionally bizarre, as if creators Duo Brand decided to show off all the weird ideas they had, including plants that sprout shoes and giant cats which explode into coal. There is also the recurring theme of how complicated and occasionally frustrating brotherly love is, which adds depth to CROSS X BREAK as a whole. Now if only Duo Brand didn’t practically beat us over the head with their message of, “Your brother is still your brother, and you should love him, even if he does bad and crazy things,” especially in the second volume, where one character shows an enduring affection for his younger sibling, despite his doing bad and crazy things.

Finally, I found my interest in CROSS X BREAK waning as the action gradually became more toothless. But I could understand why this was happening: Akito, who starts off the series beating up punks with his fists, has to realize that violence is not always the best solution. What better way than by finding himself in a dimension where the enemy packs machine-gun crossbows and giant scythes? At the same time, here are the Warlocks, who wipe out entire towns of people indiscriminately, and the heroes are fighting them with music, flowers, and love—in effect, reaching out to their humanity, as opposed to trying to hurt them. Again, I can understand the choice, but it just seems too good a fate for characters practicing such subhuman tactics. As part of his coming of age, Akito is learning to survive, so shouldn’t part of his education be that survival requires getting one’s hands dirty sometimes?

Volumes one and two of CROSS X BREAK are available now.