"Read Or Die" volume 12 by Kurata Hideyuki. It was all battles from beginning to end.
It has been 10 years since volume 11. After this much time, almost any new "Read Or Die" content would make me happy. I actually got a kick out of just looking at how the white spine of volume 12 matches the faded bright yellow spines of previous volumes, any text that appear between the covers would automatically be awesome as long as the author didn't just kill off all characters.
So the author did not kill all characters, no. Though it was really fight after fight from beginning to end, with plenty of blood and gore to go around, and some people perished. It was very exciting to read as far as action scenes go, and definitely worthy of another OVA. Between the battles, there are still various bits that come through to remind us that it's still the same "Read Or Die" world: Yomiko seriously weighs the choices between saving lives (including her own) versus reading more books, while few other humans and superhumans shape the course of human history.
One such superhuman was Gentlemen, and note that his name is intentionally the plural "Gentlemen" (ジェントルメン) as opposed to the seemly more correct "Gentleman" (ジェントルマン). The plural sense was put to good use in one of the battles, but honestly I think this is the author patching all the unintentional quirks. Like the Yomiko statue from volume 11, where I thought "the author definitely wrote himself into a corner now" -- that was easily explained away in this volume as well. Seems like all loose ends are being cleaned up in preparation for the grand finale.
This volume was pretty much the "Read Or Die" that I expected, not disappointed at all. I hope it's a shorter delay to volume 13.
Previous (2016-08-28): "Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo!" volume 9 by Akatsuki Natsume
Next (2016-09-12): "Thunderbolt Fantasy"