As a young man once said, life comes at you fast. Sometimes that means you don't have time to stop and really process what's coming your way. For Nanoka, that means that she has to keep moving forward, Natsuno's death notwithstanding. After all, there's still the matter of the cursed seed that's causing vines to grow out of people's bodies, the issues with the Goko Clan, and about a thousand other things. This girl barely has time to think about her homework, never mind the more important issues facing her.

The biggest wildcard in all of this is Daigo. He's been absent for over twenty volumes and a thousand-odd years, you'd think his return would be monumental. And yet, he remains missing for most of this volume, not showing up till the end of chapter eight. (The English volumes of MAO start numbering chapters anew with each book, something I have mixed feelings about.) His first act is to help Mao and Nanoka, and he asks Mao to be his friend again…but then his behavior in subsequent chapters isn't nearly so nice.

There are a few reasons this could be the case, one of which is that, stuck in Natsuno's eye, he never really had the same chance to move on from the bad old days like the rest of the Goko Clan remnants. He's essentially been stuck in his own head for centuries, and if you've ever been caught on the hamster wheel of anxiety or any other emotion, you know how exhausting it can be. Daigo's free now and back in his own body, but he's also still processing Shiranui killing him, Sana's death, and Yurako's role in it. That's a lot to handle even if you're in a good place emotionally, which Daigo objectively isn't.

All of this is a fancy way of saying that I'm not sure we can really trust Daigo to be the person he once was. Mao has managed to hang on to his good nature, and Hyakka seems relatively okay, but they've had time to process. So, importantly, has Yurako, and while I wouldn't call her “reformed,” she's at least had some (a lot) of time to think about her role in Sana's death and the general tragedy of the human kodoku project. But Daigo's actions in the last two chapters of this volume make me think that he's still drowning in his anger and grief. Granted, we didn't really know Daigo before, just what Mao told Nanoka about him. The way he pins Yurako down and accuses her of wanting Sana's death and helping to orchestrate it seems to paint a picture of a very different man. He can say that he intends to protect Nanoka in Natsuno's stead all he wants; the proof is in the pudding of his actions, which aren't quite as clear-cut.

While MAO as a series is about action, time travel, and stopping the bad guys (among other things), philosophically, I feel like it has themes of whether or not people can change. Mao himself has had to adapt to the times, and Nanoka has had to cope with a lot of changes in her own life and sense of self. Mei, one of the new Goko Clan members, definitely has been having second thoughts about her actions, as we see in the resolution of the cursed seed storyline. She seems to be really thinking about what it means to be part of this group and how that aligns with her own philosophy, moral or otherwise. Yurako has definitely changed as well, although she never wished harm on Mao in the past. But now she thinks about what it means to like someone, to the point where Daigo's assault on her feels cruel. She may have done bad things in the past (although I'd argue that this is major victim blaming, because she had no control or power over her own life), but it's been nine hundred years.

Or at least it has been for everyone but Daigo.

Where things go from here is going to merit paying a lot of attention to. As Mao and Nanoka grow closer in more ways than just friendship, Yurako is going to have to do some more soul-searching. And Daigo is going to have to understand that life has moved on. That's going to have to come at him fast, because otherwise he and the rest of the original apprentices are going to find themselves in a trap a thousand years in the making.