And now for the part where I do what I did for the features, except more in depth. (Wow you'd think I'd be better at bringing in this section by now...)
Let me start off by saying that Sugiyama's artwork may be an acquired taste, but the guy is improving week to week and has always known his way around some scenery as the opening of this chapter illustrates. To the chapter itself, Ayla has stumbled upon a huge underground cavern --large enough to be a soccer field in and of itself.
This chapter could have been just that, but we get real forward momentum this week as reveal after reveal hits the page. Hina's alive, and we know now that it's the fallen soldier who kidnapped her. Not only that but Yayoi makes it pretty clear that Xeno's presence isn't wanted --especially if he's going to keep poking around in the affairs of the Kuga clan. He wouldn't be much of a detective if that's all it took for him to leave though! Meanwhile Manami takes the lead role in a flashback where she speaks to none other than the lynchpin of the entire series --Shichiro Kai! He asks her if she's afraid of the darkness, (metaphorical darkness), and she replies as a Kuga she fears nothing. Surprisingly Kai says he is, and enigmatically says she'll understand soon enough. Kai's presence has been all but handed down to us throughout the case, so seeing him interact with one of the people involved is great. Not only that, Manami and Hina's conversation is filled with it's own sense of intrigue. They are the most important parts of this and with their meeting it's like the two parts of the case have overlapped and become one unit.
As for the identity of our masked solider, Hina seems to know who it is by the end of the chapter, and Manami is catching on. There are several people it could be, and perhaps it could even be two people? You've got a whole family of suspects, so there's no end to guesses, but the motivation is the thing I'm most interested in. Manami's words on that final chapter are pretty telling --she seems pretty galled that this person would think she wouldn't be able to figure out who they are. So now that the characters have figured out what's going on, maybe it's time to clue us in? Please?
Evans ended on a kind of quiet note to my surprise. I mean, we didn't even get to see what the faker's face looked like after all of this. I'm almost disappointed. Granted it's really hard to tell if this little arc is truly over at this point so I'm hoping Kuriyama has a lot more going on than what we got this week. What we do know is that they seemingly look completely different when the faker is unmasked. After all that however, the ladies aren't so willing to leave the faker behind even after Pheebs tries to explain what's going on to them. Evans suggests having the faker go clean up this mess, but he's not surprisingly against that idea. Also not surprising is the faker's motivation --he just wanted to be popular. Obviously we know Evans and that this is what he wants too, so this just speaks to his whole approach overall and I really like that meta.
Like the actual Evans isn't popular, but a guy who's a faker and has a bit more moxy is. Maybe Evans should consider changing his approach? Though of course what really gets me is how Evans does have pretty cool lines at the least --he says that he's not the type to lead thirty women around on a whim, and thus he's not imitating him but what he thinks he is. This is enough to get the faker to own up to his identity theft and show the women what he looks like --and again Kuriyama takes the interesting direction of doing so from behind so we don't see his face. The women don't take this lightly however and give him a sound thrashing. My thought is Kuriyama thinks this set up is worth using again at some point, and thus didn't want to play the cards too fast and loose. Otherwise why go through all of this just for a quiet conclusion? At the very least Evans thanks Pheebs for seeing through him and being on his side --sort of. She's a good woman dude, you gotta see it for yourself.
Marry Grave is all action this week, and I'm down for it. Yamaji's great at monsters and scenery, so it's great to see he can also draw an action sequence as well as his medium will allow. Of course it also means there's not a whole lot I can talk about here, but I'll take what I can get. I do like that Sawyer is finally given proper agency in his story after being benched by Dante and Rosalie --I'd assume his years at Capeside are what we can attribute to his sudden last action hero-ness, but it's great to see, if only because now it does feel like he matters in the story of which he is the protagonist. Though on the note of Rosalie's sudden power down, there's no explanation this week either, though the question I had last week rears it's ugly face (literally) at the end of this chapter.
Iiiiits Sergei. I had asked if the being from last week has some kind of personal vendetta against Sawyer and Rosalie and yup, that would explain it. Like I said before, Yamaji is great at drawing people, and Sergei's new look is as terrifying as his personality now. I'm not sure yet how I feel about him being a central force in the series again, but he's here and for now we're just going to to have to go with it. I do wonder if he'll ultimately be the final boss of the series, hm.
Saike on the other hand is back into unknown territory and it's great to be left in the dark as to how things will proceed. I may still be kind of cold on Will's existence as the villain of this arc itself, but Fukuchi's story telling keeps topping itself every week to the point that it's almost a non issue. Saike is exciting and honestly that's all I need it to be on a weekly basis. So picking up from last week, Hizu's in a bad place after being coerced by the evil that is Will via brainwashing to kill his best friend Saike. Will gets a laugh out of this and presses the button to begin the transfer of data and thus kill Hizu, but there's a little snag in his plan...
Johann being the one to come to the rescue is such a good development. It's part of what I like about Saike overall --as broken as his ability is, he's still functionally powerless and thus other characters with seemingly weaker abilities not only have to step in and thus remain relevant, but due to the functions of their powers have to be smart about it too. Johann used Bax's abilities to shrink himself into a child so that he could escape his constraints, and attack Will where he least expects it. Although this is tame by shounen standards, it's still pretty brutal for Fukuchi who up until now has been...well not tame, but not "Slam someone's face into a wall at 50 miles per-hour and watch them bleed out" either. Still, as monstrous as Will has been during this whole arc, I can't really say he doesn't deserve this.
And that's it for this week --all things considered not much happened, but it was enough that I had a really good time with it! Now Bax is using his ability to restore Saike to a point of being alive, but that's weird, his power just makes things younger not so much reverse their "time". So that technically shouldn't work on Saike, right? He'd be younger but still dead....speaking of dead, it seems Will may not be out of the picture quite yet if that final panel is anything to go by.
Memesis is going to the demon world next, and while I feel like this would be a perfect time for them to have a crossover with Maoujo, it's unlikely that's going to happen as much as that's a missed opportunity. Still, I'm just happy that the series still has some life left in it, and at least for now is safe despite it's worrisome sales. Though I guess most WSS manga at least get five volumes to make their case, so that's something. After being left at the alter by Leon, Ash and Kijira are angry and aren't going to take this anymore. Linda informs them that Leon has headed to the demon world, which....admittedly does sound pretty last-boss ish, so maybe I should be worried after all, hmm. Especially since they get to the gate almost immediately. I love that Rose is pretty tactless and calls them stalkers (though this goes right over their heads), as they decide to chase Leon down again. I also like the design of the nameless guard as seen above --he looks kind of cool, too cool to be just a one off character. He's also pretty good at his job because he won't let Kijira and Ash into the gate just because they wanna go, that is until Linda says she has the seal to let them in. Why she'd decide to help them at all (also her sudden change from friendly warrior to aloof princess isn't explained either), is something we'll probably find out next week, but I do hope Yagyuu isn't being rushed since there's potential for a lot here.
I'm down with Souboutei having a little bit of breathing room --it's pretty much been hit after hit since the escape from the hospital, and it's during downtime that we really get to see a different side of the characters. In short, Kaerikuro trying out sweets from Takoha for the first time is mostly adorable, and I want more of it. Seiichi also getting excited over snacks is something I didn't realize I needed until now either, so this chapter was filled with sweet content for me and the characters in the series. Unfortunately the fun times can't last as Rokuro's hand --the one burnt by Shino way back has the power to alert him to the presence of something headed their way.
I mostly threw this in because despite it being a single page, Fujita packs it with as much info as he does his double page spreads, and the angle of which he uses on the page is great --notice the upper panel is from the bottom as if what we should be anticipating is coming from below, but the panel immediately underneath comes from the side windows instead. It's a great bait and switch.
The chapter ends with a new woman making a flashy appearance and talking like she's on friendly terms with Seiichi --or so she says as she swats him away leaving the others to wonder who she is. Think it's not a stretch to say she's not the friendly woman she appears to be...
I was thinking Yuugami was wrapping things up after the last installment, but it appears I was wrong! This chapter seems to be back to business as usual for the most part. I think it is fair to say that Yuugami's high school career is ending soon, however. I dunno if Sakurai will decide to continue the series through college since that is outside the magazine's demographic traditionally speaking. I know that people of all ages read and enjoy shounen manga. Though I could very well see Yuugami continuing until the author grows tired of it too. This month is about planning for the future. Many of Yuugami's friends are trying to figure out what kind of career they'd like to go into beyond their high school curriclum, and as one would figure, Yuugami is totally not taking this seriously. In fact he's still really into Rakugo to the point that he wants to be a storyteller --a career choice his aunt quickly shoots down simply because that kind of training takes 15 years (or more) and she won't be alive to see him succeed after that, hahah. You'd think he'd want to go into being a pro baseball player, but I can see Yuugami not being interested simply because it'd mean interacting with people at some point. (I haven't read the start of the series, but I have to wonder what made him decide to play in the first place...)
The other part of this chapter is Yuugami's phone number getting out to the school thanks to a friend's(?) careless error, and due to his lackadasical answering of people's questions he becomes a celebrity Q&A section, hah. It started off with him simply answering questions about people's future plans, but turned into something way more involved as time went on. The guy apologizes, but Yuugami responds by throwing his phone into the pool at full strength and saying he doesn't need to interact with people anyway. The above page is his response when the kid says he'll buy Yuugami a new phone --and it's probably my favorite page of this week's Sunday. That's it for this month, but you can't keep kicking your career path down the road Yuugami --unless you're going to be a politician, and the idea of a guy like this with the powers of the state is more scary than any villian in Shounen Sunday.
For every greeting there most be a farewell. While we've had several weeks of fun flashbacks and family time, now Seiji has to head overseas --his return date unknown. Knowing the time period of Youkai Giga during the time of the world war, it's a scary thought to consider that he may not come back at all, which Satou has kind of implied with all of this extra time with him. Granted I can be wrong and perhaps he'll return perfectly fine, but flashbacks usually come in concert with tragedy...especially when Seiji who can't see Kuro takes a walk with the youkai and asks that he protect his fledgling family in his place. A favor he can only ask his childhood friend.
And that's it for the editorial! Are you enjoying this split format? Let me know in the comments, and stay tuned for more ramblings (in a good way?) Next week!
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