A manga by Oishi Romy and Meshe

Just when I think I got a handle on the basic rules in Lockdown Zone: Level X, they threw a wrench at me at the end of volume two making me question everything I thought I understood. The first chapter is largely a basic introduction to a Groundhog Day Loop wherein the main character finds out that a monster of some sort is on top of her apartment complex and is both simultaneously mind-controlling folks with spores and killing people inside the building to act as fertilizer for said spores. The creature is finally shown to be an enormous tentacled Lovecraftian horror, complete with blades for teeth. But when we get used to that idea, the loop changes.

“Ryoka thought she was saved! She had found an old friend at her doorstep… and then he was devoured by a massive monster! As her life reset again, she is desperate to figure out what is happening and why she appears to be in a horrible time-loop. What is Sai? And who can she trust when everything seems to be to unbelievable to be “real”?”

All of the sudden, as if somehow “beating a level” in a videogame, X (Sai) is changed into an entirely different being in the final pages. Ryoka gets the same voicemails from her mother, and is able to actually look out the window for once, and the rug is pulled out from under her entirely. Now the questions will remain of how did she trigger the change, and what else has been altered? This is a quick chapter, and made me excited to read more.

Lockdown Zone: Level X by Oishi Romy and Meshe is shaping up to be more than just your typical horror story, and for that I am very excited. I was honestly assuming this was going to be the same sort of thing as a Kaiju movie just with a survival aspect to it ala a zombie story, but I was dead wrong. Someone or some thing is controlling the fate of Ryoka and we need to find out why.