The Manga Shelf is a column where I go over whatever I’ve been reading recently in the world of manga. Ongoing or complete, good or bad. These articles contain spoilers.

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Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. His codename is “Spade”, real name unknown and unknowable. He’s an assassin, a stalker in the shadows and a kiss of death to the unwary. He will kill anyone, anywhere, for the right price.

And unfortunately for him, this is not his story.

Kindergarten Wars doesn’t care much about Spade, who gets capped in the head not long after this and is not an important player in this story. The other person in that image, the woman who blocks his sniper bullet with a shovel, is our real protagonist. And I have to start this column with a confession; this was originally a completely different Manga Shelf article. I want to survey the recent rise in manga that take at least some degree of inspiration from Spy x Family and examine what they did with that influence. I still might write that column someday, but Kindergarten Wars deserves a spotlighting of its own. This is some good stuff. Of just 21 currently-available chapters, it does take a little while to find its footing, but once it does, it hits hard. This is a little surprising given its premise, which is goofy even by the standards of this emerging subgenre.

Speaking of, even though this column is no longer about the Spy x Family….Family, we should at least briefly define what “this subgenre” actually is, as there are a few common points. In particular, these manga usually juxtapose absurd, highly “genre” elements; mostly ridiculous hyperviolence, leagues of assassins, international conspiracies, a sprawling criminal underworld, etc. with down-to-earth concerns, and a particular focus on domesticity; romance, family, friendships, and finding one’s place in the world. The simple and slow things in life. Without fail, they come to the conclusion that the latter is better (and in this sense they find some common ground with the rather more out-there Chainsaw Man), and is the real thing worth fighting for. No one in any of these manga has ever truly been fulfilled by being a gun-toting killing machine. They’re fulfilled by little things; dates, shoujo manga, the laughter of children, and whatever found family they manage to rustle up along the way. Other than SpyFam itself, the most successful example is probably Sakamoto Days, which, if Kindergarten Wars isn’t also taking that series as an influence, its similarities are remarkable for being convergent evolution.

As for our actual premise? Nothing too weird for an action manga these days. Rita—that’s the lady blocking a bullet with a spade—works at the world’s safest kindergarten, Kindergarten Noir, where the children of the wealthy and influential are sent so they can receive a normal education away from the dangers of the world. The only problem is that the school is the frequent target of assassins and kidnappers, meaning that these teachers have to also be world-class bodyguards for their students. Rita is an ex-assassin herself, formerly a human swathe of destruction nicknamed the Witch. Not that you’d know it by looking at her, for most of the manga’s current run; despite her deadly skills, Rita is a gremlin obsessed with finding a hot boyfriend, and that contrast is where the manga gets most of its more comedic elements from.

To be honest, while this is hardly a bad gag, it is the primary reason that I way underestimated Kindergarten Wars when I first flipped it open. The series’ first several small mini-arcs are primarily comedic, and while they do still have the violence angle to supply some solid action, they’re more about humor and small-scale character developments. For example, Doug, Rita’s coworker and a secondary protagonist, develops a crush on her when she saves his life, despite a past as a swindler and a ladies’ man. This sort of setup is typical of this very early part of the manga, and is also the fuel for the manga’s “romantic” side, given that romcoms are a part of its DNA as well. You get a bit more of an idea as to where all of this is going when we’re introduced to Hana Bradley, the manga’s other main female character and who it hilariously tries to play as a comparative straight man despite the fact that her preferred method of attack is batting homeruns with live grenades. Still, where Kindergarten Wars goes from decent but unremarkable to actually feeling like it’s worth following is in its most recent half dozen or so chapters, where we get a peek at an inner darkness that may betray more ambition than might be expected.

Chapters 14-18 mark a turning point, and it’s here where we should consider two things. One, Rita’s old assassin nickname/persona of the Witch, a lingering phantom of her old self who threatens to come to the fore every now and again. Two, the character Natasha, a swordswoman just as deadly as Rita herself who is obsessed with The Witch, seeing her as a lone kindred soul in a world full of people who are otherwise nothing like herself.

Natasha, hired to attack the kindergarten just like any number of the scores of dead goons from earlier in the series, eventually confronts Rita directly, only to find herself absolutely perplexed that she doesn’t enjoy fighting this woman. If anything, she feels scared. All of this happens as we flash back through Natasha’s life as a prodigal killer. And all at once, like a bullet through the brain, a revelation hits Natasha; a blunt, heavy, deeply unsubtle and direct statement of what can only be the manga’s core theme.

This all manages to capture a very real desperation, from the mouth of someone who feels like she never had any other options in life. Trying to talk yourself into being satisfied with your place in the world is a rough thing even when that place is somewhere fairly innocuous. For Natasha, this revelation breaks her, and unfortunately, she doesn’t survive the arc. Chapter 18 is an entire postscript of her dying thoughts as Rita holds her in her arms. For just a little while, Kindergarten Wars transforms into something greater than the sum of its parts, and the spilled blood spells a plea for empathy.

It’s easy, and not at all wrong, to say that none of this is exactly revolutionary. God knows this isn’t the first manga to feed a character a line like “If I keep on killing, what will I find beyond it all?!”, but just dryly relaying the story in descriptive prose doesn’t capture its emotional impact and neither does chopping, cropping, and dropping select pages, even very good ones. There’s some real weight here, partly just from how much of a swerve this is from Kindergarten Wars‘ usual style, which is pretty lighthearted even as buildings and heads alike explode. Natasha seems like an early sign of things to come, and combined with more recent revelations about the actual nature of Kindergarten Noir it seems like the series is gearing up to tackle its first larger, more ambitious arc.

We should be taking all of this in context, of course. “Ambitious” is not a synonym for “good,” and there are plenty of ambitious manga and anime that have been done in by their own inability to stick to a single tone or topic. Most of what happens in Kindergarten Wars is still pretty cartoony, and its flashes of a more sincere and resonant emotional core are exactly that, flashes. We haven’t been handed a bombshell that turns this into a must-read just yet, even if some stories (like Natasha’s) are very good, they’re still playing with recognizable shapes. Time will tell what it eventually combines them into.

That’s what the cynical part of me says, anyway. The optimistic part says that the fact that something like this is being so well-received despite its obvious influences is evidence that there is an appetite for this kind of stuff, and that manga like Kindergarten Wars are rising to the occasion. Maybe it just wants to be loved, too.

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