A manga by Oishi Romy and Meshe

Just when I was wondering if there were going to be no more official translations of the horror/sci-fi manga Lockdown Zone Level X, chapter 12 just dropped a few days ago! It’s been a while since we last looked at the story, and the previous chapter involved introducing an entirely new villainous version of the alien lifeform known as “X” (pronounced “Sai”). The previous iteration took a page out of a Grimm’s Fairy Tale with a foe based around the events of Hansel and Gretel, and that continues into this “Level” as a quest centered around the story of The Town Musicians of Bremen is afoot. Our main characters hope that it will be a similar ordeal as to the previous “level” due to their advanced weapons making short order of the gigantic witch character that nearly killed them, but who knows what the objective is here?

“Another Sai gone and a bunch of “points” collected! But the next Sai is apparently four monsters and our young heroes have to not only discover what this new enemy is like but they’ll have to find all four entities to advance to the next ‘level!'”

This chapter is important in that it shows a sliver of what life is like in the apartment building while this is going on, and it somewhat changes my opinion of what was happening. I had fully assumed that the building was empty as our heroes traverse to the rooftops with maybe a few more “player characters” on different levels – my assumption being that this is a video game of some sort. However, upon further inspection, it seems like everyone is actually there that should be there, although comatose and asleep in some way. Now, I wonder if they are under the control of some outside force or something?

We also briefly see the presumed villains of the piece, or at least one half of them, with the introduction of a gigantic cat and dog attacking our heroes. Not yet seen are the other two “musicians”, a rooster and a horse. Shuhei tries to immediately kill these monstrous animals, only to find that they can regenerate – showing that there is likely a trick to this level that they have yet to solve. We also see more player characters, briefly introduced in the last chapter – a buxom girl named Nao, which Shuhei seems to recognize, and an as of yet unnamed male character that has quite the surveillance set-up in their room. He accuses Ryoka of being a nuisance and that’s that for the chapter.

Just when I feel like I have the story of this nailed down, they throw some more info out and make me completely re-asses what is happening! In many ways, this is getting closer and closer to being like a mish-mash of Gantz and Groundhog Day, which is a strange amalgamation for sure. The Fairy tale themed villains have been pretty cool, and I can’t wait to see where that goes from here on. Hopefully chapter 13 is out in less than two months, but stay tuned for more of these reviews as material is made available. This has been an interesting little underrated book for me, and I quite enjoy the pricing and release method for this considering I primarily use a Kindle for stuff like this. Solid chapter as always, and now I’m hungering for more.