Iruma, Matsumoto, and Kumano are high schoolers who like baseball. In fact the team they’re on completed a comeback and, alongside the rest of their teammates, celebrate the win in their school’s pool. Everything’s all delightful and fun until one of their teammates melts off the face of the earth. Then they take a look at the rest of Japan and see abnormal figures sucking up humans and rolling them out like pasta or flying jets into school buildings.
In other words, the end is here, and for Iruma, he only wonders…why’s he’s still alive half a year later.
It’s basically time to re-introduce Dolly Kill Kill since Kodansha’s now releasing it digitally. This originally made its English debut on the MangaBox service either in 2014 or 2015. This was one of the better titles on the service that…I don’t think had a good ending. It has been a while since it finished though. Maybe there was a resolution that was satisfying and the graphic novel copies showed that. I am looking forward to finding out again though, since re-reading this was a good reminder of how crazy fun it is.
It’s again your usual end-of-the-world manga, so something like Creature, Attack on Titan, High School of the Dead, etc. We follow Iruma, who’s like any other boy his age — full of spirit, had a crush, and was generally happy. Not surprisingly, this attitude changes forever when this invasion happens and his best friends die right in front of him. His usual never-give-up spirit fades at the devastation occurring all around him. And after surviving for six months, he wants to die. The issue is he can’t do it himself.
But this mentality changes when he runs into a girl, Vanilla, who’s part of a resistance group called Trial & Error who aim to actually defeat those figures (what they call “Dollies”), and then he finds his senpai and crush, Kumano, somehow still alive after everything that’s happened. He’s now fueled to get revenge, but he’ll need more than just that to take them down. And it appears the group he’s now a part of will determine how far he goes.
From what I do remember, Iruma undergoes significant changes to his body so he can fight the Dollies. Until then, only his luck, determination, and anger are what motivates him, and it’s not easy. These things are not just either ugly- or cute-looking abnormalities but powerful figures with barriers — humans can’t beat that. Iruma somehow can though, which only leads to more questions about the nature of Dollies — and Iruma himself. That also is what everyone’s trying to figure out, and we’ll find out alongside with them.
While the story isn’t original, what takes it to a new level is the art by Yukiaki Kurando. From these Dollies to the destruction of the world, it’s all drawn well and clean. The humans’ despair and anger is also drawn well too, so you’ll feel moments where absolute fury erupts from Iruma or when an ugly-looking Dollie is trapped by the humans and tries to screams its way out. So this gives it quite an edge amongst other stories of its ilk.
So with it also being a fast read (the chapters are fairly short since this originally was for phone reading), all the action is slick and has a good pace. Dolly Kill Kill has lots of questions to try and answer regarding how these Dollies are here and if they can be stopped. But for its debut volume, it does well enough to be a thrilling read. And with a strong localization, it’s certainly worth a look for anyone in need of a new manga to try.