Rejoice, Izuna fans! Once again the foul-mouthed werebeast takes center stage and stars in various misadventures! So much Izuna! You will drown in all the Izuna-ness!
I’m just kidding.
No Game No Life, Please! Volume 2 is really more of a side manga about various girls, not just Izuna. This in of itself wouldn’t be bad, but when the back cover’s first line is, “It’s Izuna’s time to shine, please!”, it feels like the manga is the one “just kidding”. Izuna does appear in every one of the volume’s five chapters (which makes up four stories), but she is the main character only in the very last. The first focuses on Chlammy and Fiel, the second is mainly from Steph’s point-of-view, and the last features the aforementioned four making sweets. Then, after all that, then you get to see Izuna trying to train to defeat Sora and Shiro and the pair discussing Izuna’s potential.
So if you were looking for about 150 pages of Izuna goodness, sorry. The opening paragraph of the review is how the book should have been, something closer — or even better — than the first volume of No Game No Life, Please!
So, aside from Izuna often taking the sideline, how is the story? For me, the best is the two-parter. Jibril creates a seemingly never-ending dungeon that’s still in beta. Although, as Steph, Azril, and Izuna find out, the game seems more like in alpha at points. Explosions, unbalanced gameplay, and unnecessarily long names and power levels are just a few problems they have to face. And, as the girls learn, there’s no bathroom around for when they need to relieve themselves. Izuna’s story is also good, but dessert chapter is pointless. Its only purpose seems to a be an excuse for a two-page spread of four naked girls squealing in ecstasy.
As you might have gathered from the last sentence, the fanservice continue to be abundant here. The volume is shrink-wrapped for good reason. You won’t go too far without seeing at least a partially-unclothed girl. I’ve always found the ecchi bits to be the weakest (and most unnecessary) part of No Game No Life. The manga, being a visual experience, just is more “in your face” about it than the original light novel. At least parts like Izuna trying to find her own method to win even in a hot spring somewhat masks this; the making ice cream chapter just makes jokes about getting fat.
In between all the boob shots, the art is still faithful to the original designs. Some characters may look a bit younger, but I think Steph’s expressions are adorable as she goes from depressed to confident. Since the series is more focused on the individuals than the world at-large, we don’t get so see a lot of Disboard’s scenery. A little more of that would be nice instead of all the character shots, as I do like Yuizaki’s art. Instead of showing Steph and company with their armor’s name and then a second page with their class name and level, why not combine them into one text box? That would have given the artist a little room to show them actually fighting.
While the dialogue being heavy on geek speak and speech quirks, David Komen does a solid job of keeping that same feeling in English. There are a few instances where I disagree with the adaptation (“epic fail” doesn’t quite capture “kusogē” in my opinion), but at least he explains the Japanese version in the end-of-volume notes — and often in great detail. The use of honorifics is also debated in a world where characters are speaking a different language, but that seems to be an in-house choice versus a personal one.
In short, if you want to see interactions between much of the female cast, you’ll like No Game No Life, Please! Volume 2. If you want to follow Izuna in her misadventures, you’ll be disappointed. If you just want naked girls, you’ll LOVE this volume.