The beginning of a new week can only mean one thing: time for new Weekly Shonen Jump! This is where Jacob investigates the latest and greatest in the magazine, telling you what’s worth your time and what’s not. You can find coverage of other series under the tag Jump Time. Here’s i tell c chapter 10.
It’d be the understatement of the century to say that i tell c has had a bit of a bumpy ride. Since debuting back in February with an intriguing premise, it has jumped the gun big time by revealing far too many key plot elements too soon at such an early juncture in the story: this didn’t give me faith that series author Kazusa Inaoka knew what they were doing, but i tell c chapter 10 saves face somewhat.
This isn’t a life-or-death confrontation between Aioi and her kidnapper, Hikaru: i tell c chapter 10 just tells a straightforward A-to-B crime story, utilizing Aioi’s unique character profile and managing to keep things fresh along the way. Subsequent to police chief Akiraka’s introduction last week, the new underground investigation division ‘i’ has its first mission: resolve a hostage standoff situation at a bank that has been going on for 24 hours.
Only, this is Aioi we’re talking about, so she doesn’t solve it in the most normal way: she falls in love with the criminal and tries to get him to run away. When another hostage intervenes in the situation, telling her to calm down, she shoots him, absolutely mortifying the chief of police. Later on, it turns out that this was just Sakon in disguise, with the gunshot wound being a fake. He helps Aioi take the criminal down, but only after she reveals his back story.
There are plenty of twists and turns in i tell c chapter 10 that serve to make an otherwise standard hostage situation into a unique one. We also see some mystery-solving for once: Aioi manages to work out the criminal’s real name and motivations from a sticker on his laptop reflected in his eyes during a livestream where he told the police his demands. It’s not something we could work out on our own, but the logic stacks up.
As a result, i tell c chapter 10 manages to be a surprisingly competent crime/detective story, a far cry from the amateurishness of previous chapters. If the change in the series’ status quo and the formation of ‘i’ is going to lead to more stories like this, then so be it.
You can read i tell c chapter 10 for free via VIZ Media.