After a moderate slowdown in the previous volume, Asadora! is back on track as the monster appears off Enoshima Light, swamping a fishing vessel. This sends the government into a panic to mobilize, especially since the opening ceremonies of the Olympics are a mere twenty-four hours away and things are already shaky with the bad weather. But as the weather is implying, it never rains but it pours, and the civilians involved in the whole monster issue are all busy with their own problems…including the agent who has been surveilling Asa, whose car with its special radio gets towed at the opening of the book. It's a mundane problem compared to everything else going on, but as always, it's the little things that slow you down more than the big ones, and his car problem is foreshadowing for the way that nothing quite goes as it ought to in this volume.

A lot of things come close to reaching their zenith this time around, which is a welcome change from volume three, and bodes well for volume five. The book opens with the creature surfacing (or partially surfacing) and causing a panic near Enoshima Light (where naturally the government has an agent), but before that plotline can go any farther, the day-to-day world Asa lives in starts to become overwhelming. In the middle of trying to get her younger siblings out the door for school – and the wonderfully realistic detail that some kids can rip everything they own just by existing – Asa's friend Yone shows up with what is definitely too big to be a school bag. In a garbled panic, Yone tells Asa that she's run away from home, but not because her parents threw her out, but because she doesn't want to wait in line for Olympics tickets when she's supposed to be having what she (probably wrongly) assumes is her big showbiz break. Completely oblivious to the turmoil around her that Asa is barely managing, Yone implores Asa to go with her to the meeting after school and is not keen to take no for an answer.

Yone's blind selfishness, which feels fairly typical of both her age and situation, is contrasted with Asa's inability to firmly say no. She clearly feels that Yone is making a mistake, but she's got her own problems that she's trying to deal with (the agent's car being towed is a small respite, since he'll have a harder time following her). Asa's past means that she's more willing to jump headlong into a situation than to explain why something's a bad idea or that she really can't accommodate someone's request, and Yone's insistence on her joining her at the meeting with the producer showcases this very well. Even Asa's reminder that she has to pick up her youngest brother because their guardian will be busy doesn't get through to Yone – she seems to take it as an excuse and personal affront. Interestingly enough, when Asa is conscripted by the government agents to help them later in the day, she shows that she can stand up to them: when they tell her that her job is to help them, she fires back that her job is to be a big sister. It's a wonderful moment and a good reminder that Asa's always going to put family first – and that, unusually, she's better at being firm with authority figures than she is with her peers.

She's almost certainly right to be leery of Yone's meeting, though. The whole thing screams “shady” as the girl is asked to meet at a restaurant and then invited elsewhere to do a “test.” By that point, however, Asa's already dealing with the sudden fever her youngest brother came down with and the fact that Kasuga, her mentor, is nowhere to be seen. That's because he's dealing with another bump in the road: a reporter desperate for a story has been snapping pictures of Asa and the special attachments on her plane with the vague idea that she and Kasuga are involved in some sort of anti-government plot. That means that when Asa and the agents reach the airfield, no one but Asa is available to fly the plane – at night. In the rain. Safe to say that everything leading up to our first glimpse of the entire kaiju is a disaster.

Asa takes off with Nikaido at night to see the monster, Kasuga pursues a reporter who has been taking photos of Asa and the plane thinking they're anarchists, the youngest brother gets sick, Yone's big break into showbiz is looking intensely shady, and Miyako, following after her, is taken by some ubiquitous manga thugs. After the minor stall of volume three, this book is undeniably packed. But that feels very much on purpose: only so many of these situations can be expected to resolve safely next time, which feels like a metaphor for the shifts the world was going through in the 1960s. Nothing that held true before WWII could really be counted on anymore, and understanding that the safe world of before is gone feels like the underlying theme of the volume. Some people, like Asa and Kasuga, already know that, but others, like Yone and Miyako (and presumably their parents), are about to find out in the hardest ways possible. Change is like a monster sometimes, and it all depends on how you approach it.

As metaphors for the 60s go, it's a pretty good one, and Urasawa is a good enough creator to really make it work. Things are building to the point where choices are going to feel much more limited, and that, too, can be a metaphor for living in uncertain times. But I think it's going to take more than peace and love to get everyone through the next book intact. With our first real look at the monster's entire being, we may finally start to understand what's really going on – and in this story, that's likely to just bring more uncertainty.