The fight between Zeus and Adam comes to a poignant end, and a new battle is ready to begin, this time between Poseidon and Sasaki Kojiro, a fabled Japanese swordsman of "questionable historical veracity" according to Wikipedia. There's not a whole lot more to say that won't give away spoilers, so I'm leaving it at that. What a fight though!
Look, I'm not gonna pretend this series is deep, it's an excuse to have gods and human heroes of legend fight it out, and it doesn't need to be more than that. The art is great, the story is good for a fight-fight story, and it's kinda funny sometimes. Works for me!

#RecordofRagnarokVol3 #NetGalley

Record of Ragnarok, Vol. 3 picks up with the fight between Zeus and Adam. The fight goes back and forth with Adam managing to force Zeus to use his final form to try and take Adam down for good. Then comes the preparation for round three - Poseidon, the older brother of Zeus and god of the seas, versus the great Japanese swordsman - Sasaki Kojiro! The reader will need to wait for volume 4 to find out how this fight ends!

Thanks to Netgalley for allowing me access to this title!

Record of Ragnarok Volume Three focuses heavily on the fight between Adam and Zeus.

Record of Ragnarok Volume Three
Written by: Shinya Umemura and Takumi Fukui
Publisher: COAMIX, Inc.
English Publisher: VIZ Media
Release Date: July 19, 2022

During the first chapter of Volume Three, it really looks like Adam has overpowered Zeus and potentially won the match. But before seeing the end result, Brunhilde gives an explanation about Adam and his hatred of the gods. Obviously, it’s the story from the Bible about how Eve was tempted by the serpent to eat the Forbidden Fruit, but the telling is quite different here. The serpent is shown as being a humanoid serpent who was trying to get Eve for his own. When she rebuffed his advances, he frames her for the act of eating the Forbidden Fruit. We see a trial being held by the gods, who all find her guilty and order her to be banished from Eden. Adam comes in, bearing some of the Forbidden Fruit, which he eats in front of the gods… which, of course, causes him to the banished as well. To be honest, I thought this was an interesting take on the Bible story, and it fits in with the style of Record of Ragnarok.

But remember how I said it looked like Adam had overpowered Zeus? Right near the end of the first chapter, Zeus gets back up and starts transforming into a stronger form. Quite a bit of the second chapter focuses on the transformation, though, and Adam’s fight with Zeus in his new form just gets going in that chapter. But the third chapter focuses exclusively on this fight, and it just gets intense. When it looks like humanity has finally gotten its first win, there’s a twist regarding Adam that tips the scales back to the gods. But Adam did put up an impressive fight, and this section of the volume was quite exciting to read.

After this round is over, Brunhilde gets word that the gods’ next representative is going to be Poseidon, Zeus’ older brother. This is the gods’ third heavyweight in a row, and Brunhilde is feeling like their backs are against the wall. She struggles to determine which human to send out next, and she ultimately chooses Kojiro Sasaki. When he appears, though, he surprises everyone because of how old he looks. The souls who are summoned for Ragnarok appear in their prime, regardless of their age when they die. Kojiro makes it clear that even in the afterlife, he’s been training to get better… so at his older age, he is at his prime in his strength. I thought this was an interesting enough element to include, and it makes the reader wonder if Kojiro will really have what it takes to not only put up a good fight against Poseidon, but to also be able to attain humanity’s first win.

It’s then revealed that Kojiro isn’t necessarily the strongest swordsman from his era that could have been chosen. This fact is especially emphasized by the swordsmen in the audience wondering why Kojiro was chosen over them. This leads to a lot of confusion to the humans as to why Kojiro was chosen, which is kind of rough after the positive impact Adam’s fight had on humanity. Volume Three ends with Poseidon and Kojiro entering the ring, with their fight about to begin.

While most of Record of Ragnarok Volume Three focuses on Zeus and Adam’s fight, it overall doesn’t feel drawn out to make things last longer. The main exception to this would be how much time was spent focusing on Zeus’ transformation in Chapter Two. Yes, it catches the audience off-guard, but I thought the authors could have tightened that up just a little bit. After that, though, the third chapter was an especially quick read, since a lot of the chapter focused on the action of the fight. Of the two battles that have appeared in the series up to this point, I would have to say that I enjoyed the Zeus vs. Adam fight more than the first one. It’ll be interesting to see if future fights in the series can impress me even more than this one did.

Overall, I found Volume Three to be a strong continuation for Record of Ragnarok. If you’ve read and enjoyed the previous two volumes of the series, I expect you’ll enjoy this volume just as much, if not more, than the previous two.

In this volume we get to see the conclusion of the Adam vs. Zeus fight and it doesn't disappoint! No spoilers here but they really push each other to their limit and it is an even fight right to the end! Then we get to see a little bit of the next fight, which I'm excited to see the conclusion to in the next volume! Overall a great volume and I'm excited for the next one!

Awesome! The action is so good, so epic and there is also the humor behind it all that always make me laugh!

It's Adam against Zeus this round and I have to say, I really liked this interpretation of Adam. I liked the twist on the Garden of Eden story, and the fight scenes were engaging. The ending was... unexpected. Awesome, but unexpected.

The battle of the first human versus Zeus concludes, and both sides are amped for the next fight. Anyone who likes the tournament trope in manga will be too. Somehow they make each fight more exciting, and I can't wait to see the next one get going.