World Embryo Vol. 10

This volume is the tenth installment of Daisuke Moriyama's science-fiction battle manga World Embryo (Japanese title: ワールドエンブリオ), whose Japanese edition bears the subtitle "Sensen," and was published by Shonen Gahosha in May 2013. The story takes place in a modern Japan surrounded by lies: Riku Amami, a cold sixteen-year-old high school student accustomed to lying, receives an email from Sister Amane, who was supposed to have died in a fire two years earlier. Following the photo of an abandoned hospital, he heads there and is drawn into a world beyond the everyday. There he meets Yohei Takebe and Rena Arisugawa, who wield weapons called Blade Banners against monsters known as Coffin Guardians, and picks up a mysterious cocoon from which hatches Nana, a girl identical to Amane as a child. The Coffin Guardians spread through cellphone signals and devour human memories, and the secret organization F.L.A.G. fights against them. As the infection spreads and various factions contend, Riku Amami, a boy who once protected himself only through lies, is gradually pushed to the center of battle and choice. This volume continues the attacks, defenses, and conspiracies of the preceding installments; the subtitle Sensen hints at declaration of war and infection advancing in tandem. The plot remains within the middle-to-later main storyline of the original thirteen-volume work, and readers need to have read the previous volumes to follow it smoothly.