C.M.B. 44 Final Notes

Ok, I know that I mentioned a week or two ago that I was going to stop writing up summaries of the manga I read. But, this is a special case.

C.M.B. 44 and Q.E.D. iff 16 both came out in Japan on the 17th, but didn't get down to Kyushu until 2-3 days later. I finished Q.E.D. first, then got to C.M.B., and there's a bit of an announcement to make, if you haven't already heard.

----- Spoilers -----

In this volume, Shinra discovered that there's been a lot of complaints in the natural history world about a "child" having all three C., M. and B. rings, and the current leader of the Royal History Museum of London has decided to "right some wrongs." The boy has to go to London to face a council meeting, where 5 of the current department heads will declare the fate of the rings. Shinra is joined by his three "step-fathers", and initially, it looks like a stand-off. However, a masked figure attacks Shinra in a park, and the boy recognizes a scent on his clothes as being reminiscent of mummy embalming chemicals. He goes to the antiquities department to check on one of the five members acting against him, discovers the guy dead in an MRI room, and is accused of being the murderer. This kind of mayhem continues through the entire book, with one of the other council members also being stabbed to death, and two of the remaining ones getting hospitalized in a car attack. The attacker sets Shinra's museum on fire in an attempt to get the boy to bring the three rings out of hiding. By the end of the book, the killer gets crushed under the weight of his own expectations, Shinra's class has its Christmas party at Tatsuki's family's public baths, and Shinra decides to throw the rings into the ocean so that they can't cause any further problems like this.

The announcement, then, is that the C.M.B. manga will end with volume 45, which will come out sometime mid-October. The teaser page shows just about everyone that's ever appeared in the pages, from Mao, Bea Brust and the classmates, and Tatsuki's grandfather. Loki and his girlfriend are missing, and the Bill Gates parody guy and his wife are also not in the teaser. But, we'll see. The tag line is that Shinra has some loose ends he has to tidy up before he goes.