Volume 2 of Choujin X, by Sui Ishida, began with the ending of the fight between Ely, Tokio and the snake Choujin Nari. This was then followed by the second arc of the story focusing on the baseball player Tezuka as the antagonist. This volume also laid some of the groundwork for future arcs in the story.

The art style continued to be very good. I really liked some of the double panels where Ishida showed Tezuka transforming into a Choujin the first time, as well as when he turned into his chaos form. These panels really convey the mental chaos in him well while using baseball imagery to perfection. I found that the design of his Choujin form stood out a lot as well.

The story this volume was good. I found that it was a slight step down from the last volume, but this was due to less interest from me in Tezuka’s story. His character was good, and I liked his backstory especially due to how it was drawn but I’d have preferred more focus on Ely and Tokio. The pacing was very good, and I found myself enjoying the humour in this volume more than the last. The character writing was also good this volume, with all the characters being distinct and sounding very consistent with their established personalities.

I found that this volume did a lot to flesh out the world that Ishida created by using Tezuka’s character as a vehicle to show how negative a Choujin manifestation can be on a successful person’s life, as well as to introduce the poorer side of Yamato Mori. The dialogue was generally very good, although I did not like how some of the fodder before the last fight’s dialogue was written, I could not figure out if it was supposed to be for comedy or not and it felt jarring.

The theme I picked up from this volume was about finding a way to live your life and I enjoyed how this was implemented with Tokio’s character. I also liked how Ely, despite not being the focus of this theme was, at the end of the volume, able to find a greater goal in the story.

The strengths of this would be the art, the story, and the characters. I also liked how the theme was implemented into this volume. Some of the subtle worldbuilding put into the chapters stood out to me as being very strong. I liked the dialogue, but I did find some towards the end jarring in a negative way. Tezuka did not interest me as a character much, but I did like what his character represented, as someone who’s life was badly affected by his Choujin abilities.

To conclude, this was a very good volume. I marginally preferred the first over this one, but some of the plot threads introduced and the development in Ely and Tokio have me very interested to see how the story will continue from here.

I’d give this a 4.6/5

You can check out Choujin X Volume 2 on Amazon via my affiliate link here.