Yuzo Takada – Dark Horse – 2004 – 40 volumes total (suspended in America at 8 volumes)
Pai finally, FINALLY gets her memory back, but not until a huge and dramatic fight scene passes involving the Wu of the other Sanjiyan and a lot of other things. The personality that has been inhabiting Pai’s body all this time is actually that of the seal in her forehead, a little worm-looking thing that forgot what it was supposed to be doing. There’s a great deal of dramatic tension built up when the worm has the option to destroy itself and save Pai or keep on living as a servant in that body.
Yakumo has his arm torn off and then sealed in a jar so that it can’t regenerate. I thought that was pretty awesome.
After Pai becomes herself again, she decides to hang out in the Sanjiyan land to keep Yakumo and the rest of humanity safe from all the evil stuff that is chasing her. Of course, this doesn’t quite work, but there is another long stretch as Yakumo patiently waits for her to rejoin him. He has a group of friends who want to start a restaurant, and Yakumo blows them away when he reveals he’s… well, a lot older than them (I think in his 20s at this point). Mostly the friends were just another device to remind the reader, yet again, that Pai and Yakumo are monsters and can’t live with regular people for too long before bad things start to happen.
And that’s all we get in English. A real shame, because as far as I read, the plot is great, the romance wasn’t overdone (and was actually quite sweet), the battles were awesome and not at all repetitive, there was a lot of gore, and the comedy slipped in every now and again was okay. It was an excellent fantasy series, and I’m sad I can’t read the other 30 volumes of it.
