The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated! Volume 5 Review

While Jahy’s subordinate Druj has been out collecting mana crystals, our heroine has been busy working to pay her rent and setting traps against the magical girl. Maybe her fate will finally change for the better in this fifth volume of The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated!

As we reunite with Jahy we find her growing tomatoes, having been inspired by her boss. After all, if she can grow her own produce, then she’ll spend less money on food and have more time to hunt for those elusive mana crystals! Naturally, she’s completely underestimated how much work it is to keep plants alive, but never mind that… 

Elsewhere in this volume, Jahy saves her friend Kokoro from two suspicious-looking adults (and then gets carted off by the police for wearing skimpy clothing!) and takes a trip to the beach where her boss wants her to work some shifts at her uncle’s beach house. Business at the beach has been dwindling, thanks to the customers facing bouts of bad luck, such as bad weather or swarms of jellyfish in the water. With this much bad fortune, surely a mana crystal is behind it? At least Jahy hopes so as she slacks off work to find it! 

The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated! is filled with the slices of Jahy’s daily life that we’re used to. Until halfway through it remains fairly episodic, which is fine since there’s quite a lot of variation in the storylines this time around. But the real meat of the volume is the back half where Jahy has obtained enough mana crystals to challenge the magical girl to a rematch. 

Yes, buried underneath the daily antics of our heroine, the main story finally moves along. The rematch with the magical girl changes the trajectory of the plot quite significantly and on top of that, a new character is introduced at the end of the volume. Having watched the anime adaptation back in 2021, I’m confident that their arrival will shake up the formula. 

Five volumes into the series seems like a good time to adjust the flow of the story, too. One of my biggest criticisms of The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated! is the fact that it’s quite repetitive and a lot of the jokes were beginning to grow stale. Luckily, the variety on show for the first few chapters already helps alleviate this problem, aided by the change of scenery to the beach. These small adjustments make a big difference in the grand scheme of things. 

The other nice thing is that the jokes have not returned to making fun of Jahy for being poor. Now that the cast is better-established, author Wakame Konbu drives the comedy through the character interactions and that works so much better in the long term as it offers opportunities to develop the characters. And we see that here with both the magical girl and Saurva, one of Jahy’s rivals from the dark realm. Certainly, if it continues like this, the series will become a lot more entertaining from volume to volume, as opposed to the rut it was beginning to fall into. 

The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated! Volume 5 comes to the West thanks to Square Enix Manga and continues to be translated by Amanda Haley with lettering by Ken Kamura. As always, this is a release that reads well and offers plenty of value for buyers with its large print size and colour page. Volume 6 of the series is currently scheduled for an English release in August, so not too long to go before we get to see how the events of the end of this instalment play out. 

Overall, The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated! Volume 5 successfully begins shaking up the series with more variation in the chapter settings and moving the main story along. If you’ve held on long enough to get here, you’ll certainly be happy with what this instalment brings to the table. 

A free preview can be read on the Square Enix website here. 

Our review copy from Square Enix Manga was supplied by Turnaround Comics (Turnaround Publisher Services).