A manga by Oishi Romy and Meshe

This is the chapter of Lockdown Zone Level X that changes the game entirely, and goes to cement my theory I’ve been having about the whole thing – are they in a video game? In my last review, I talked about a moment when everything seemed to be going right for Ryoka and Shuhei, only for a mysterious app to appear on Ryoka’s phone as well as an alarming message saying that they are in danger. In chapter 10, we find out what this app does, and it’s big. Apparently one can access a “store” of sorts and purchase weapons to use against ‘X” (pronounced “Sai”), the ever changing villainous creature attacking the apartment building. Now armed with a “X-Gun” and “X-Sword” the heroes look to be ready to deal some real damage.

“While trying to escape a wicked witch who is stalking their apartment
building, Ryoka and Shuhei discover a phone app that may hold the tools
to combat the Sai’s they’ve encountered.”

We are now left wondering exactly what the relationship between the witch version of “X” and Hansel and Gretel is, seeing that we almost got a confirmation that the kids may not be what they seem. With any luck this chapter wraps up in chapter 11, and I don’t have to wait an indeterminate amount of time for a new release to see exactly what is going on. Now that videogame rules are being sprinkled in, are we closer to finding out exactly what is happening? Are we going to see who the text messages or notebook came from? Time will tell, but I will be glad to see what is happening.

The best part of this chapter was easily seeing Shuhei and Ryoka being able to effectively attack “X” for the first time using the weapons. For nine previous chapters, the aim of the book was seeing some somewhat gratuitous horror-film styled kills on the kids, all while knowing that death is not permanent. With Shuhei nearly chopping “X” into ribbons with his sword, I’m scared to see how much the difficulty of the next chapters will be!

Overall, something like this is exactly what the story needed. Even though there is mystery involved, the chapters were being somewhat formulaic, so dropping some of the actual rules into focus was nice. Moving forward it will be great to see how a fully-armed group can do against “X”. This manga can be purchased by chapter on Amazon in a release format that seems somewhat irregular. For a while it was once a month, then there were a few months with no release, we will see if there is one this month or not.