October 9th, 2013 
AstroNerdBoy ユーキューホルダー!/UQ Holder Chapter 7 Review
SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
Touta is impressed by the limo that carries him, Kuroumaru, Yukihime, and Basago, but is surprised when the limo drops them off at a boat. He is further surprised when instead of going to the tower, as he’d expected, he’s taken to the large complex that is the headquarters for UQ Holder. They are greeted by a large number of yakuza types, who gang rush Yukihime in happiness to see their “ane-san” again. Yukihime starts punching them all into the air away from her as a result.
Touta decides he’s going to make friends with everyone and approaches the first yakuza guy he sees. The guy is not interested in Touta and irritated that Touta is ruining a happy reunion. Touta gets knocked away, but as usual, he’s not letting that stop him. He comes back at all of the yakuza types, telling them his and Kuroumaru’s name and how they are Yukihime’s greatest disciples. The yakuza guys blow this off, and while Basago is somewhat amused by Touta, he tells the boy in no uncertain terms that no one said they’d be his friend.
MAKABE Gengorou arrives with fellow UQ Holder members AMEYA Ikkuu and Karin, and he silences Basago and introduces the trio to Touta. Touta is excited by this, but when he approaches Karin, she simply gives him a hard stare and blows him off. Gengorou asks if Touta wants to be one of them, to which Touta enthusiastically answers yes, citing how anyone in Yukihime’s yakuza clan is OK with him. Touta continues his arrogant demands for folks to be his friend whether they want to or not.
Gengorou says that for an immortal to enter UQ Holder, they must pass an entrance exam, namely, they must escape a labyrinth underneath the capital within eight years. With that, the ground underneath Touta and Kuroumaru opens up and to ensure they fall in properly, Karin whacks both with her mallet. Both fall into the darkness, eventually landing in shallow waters. After making sure they both are OK, Kuroumaru laments being dragged into Touta’s issue. Kuroumaru asks if Touta actually thought through anything when demanding UQ Holder be his friend. Touta blows this off, saying that once he’s made up his mind, that’s it.
Touta does wonder if Gengorou was right about there being an eight year time limit to escape this place. As they splash through the waters, Touta notices some sort of creature in the somewhat deeper waters. Kuroumaru summons a sword to dispatch this mystical beast, but a man fishing off a nearby rocky outcrop warns against it, saying that even if they killed it, the creature would summon others. Further, being eaten by one would not be good as it would take 30 years to digest. With that, he introduces himself as SHISHIDO Jinbee, leader of UQ Holder. He then asks them if they have food or fire with them.
Thoughts/Review:
As I expected, Touta and company get to UQ Holder in this chapter…well, most of them.
Touta’s annoying aspects of forcing himself on others, to hell with what they want, has moved into the really annoying category. Frankly, I wish Karin had whacked him harder with that croquet mallet of hers. (Yeah, I know it isn’t a croquet mallet, but I would have liked to have seen her whack Touta around like a croquet ball.) He is in desperate need of a massive schooling on why being stupid is stupid.
The big question from this chapter is whether or not this entrance exam will actually take years to complete or not. If Akamatsu-sensei does decide that Kuroumaru and Touta will be down there for years, then we’ll have “lovely” time skips in the manga, since obviously we’re not going to spend years of our time exploring these depths with them. I don’t mind time skips with purpose, but I fear that if we do get a time skip here, we’ll end up getting more, which I’m not so keep on at the moment. It may become necessary though, considering this is a story about immortals/undying.
At the moment, I’m going to lean toward them not being down there for years, but the implications are that Jinbee has been down there for a while, so who knows.
As for the creature in the water, I had a feeling it was similar to the ones that Nagi rescued Arika from in Negima.
The UQ Holder HQ is pretty impressive as a facility. Naturally, Akamatsu-sensei lets it be known that they have an onsen there. Well, it wouldn’t be an Akamatsu title without obligatory bath/onsen scenes.
As to Eva, beyond her punching all those yakuza-type admirers, she was pretty much back seat. I did note that she was probably aware of what was in store for Touta and Kuroumaru. Considering how she is about tossing the cubs to the wild and seeing how they fare (Negi and Kotaro for example), she wouldn’t object to this little test.
Beyond that, not a lot to say. We’ll see how things go next chapter.
Update: Akamatsu-sensei isn’t happy with the early scanlation releases of UQ Holder. Hata put out the notice that Akamatsu-sensei has been tweeting as such on October 7. Check out a couple of tweets (in Japanese ) here and here.
Whether the Japanese try for a massive crackdown or not remains to be seen.
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Wonder if going to the tower will be like erens basement, Shit keeps getting in the way
I figure they’ll eventually get to the tower, but yeah, stuff gets in the way.
Touta’s annoying aspects of forcing himself on others, to hell with what they want, has moved into the really annoying category. Frankly, I wish Karin had whacked him harder with that croquet mallet of hers. He is in desperate need of a massive schooling on why being stupid is stupid.
Oh, good. I thought I was the only one who thought that.
The big question from this chapter is whether or not this entrance exam will actually take years to complete or not.
Well, it is a test for immortals, after all. Although I think you just barely pass if you really need eight years. I bet it turns out, Touta and co. only need a few days or weeks and think they’re awesome, only to be told that someone else only needed a few hours or so. I do not mind timeskips though.
About the rest of the chapter:
I don’t know why, but I don’t like how Ken tosses out so many characters again in this chapter. I think it’s probably because I’m still used to the slow pace two chapters before. I didn’t see the point of introducing Ikkuu now, for instance. Now this probably sounds hypocritical because we got characters dumps in Ken’s other works too, especially Negima was an extreme case, but I think Ken handled it better back then.
And is it just me or does Ken draw about 16 pages per chapter now (excluding chapter covers)?
Update: Akamatsu-sensei isn’t happy with the early scanlation releases of UQ Holder.
Yeah, it’s not an absolutely new problem though, as I remember something similar happened during Negima’s early releases. I think I earlier expressed my disturbance of UQH’s early scans to you on Twitter already. :S
>I do not mind timeskips though.
I guess it depends on the situation to me, but I’m just not feeling like dealing with one for whatever reason. ^_^;;;
>And is it just me or does Ken draw about 16 pages per chapter now (excluding chapter covers)?
No, I noticed that too. That no doubt helps him maintain his weekly schedule. ^_^;
>Yeah, it’s not an absolutely new problem though, as I remember something similar happened during Negima’s early releases. I think I earlier expressed my disturbance of UQH’s early scans to you on Twitter already. :S
I’m not sure if the chapter comes out Wednesday or not, but I’m hearing that the raws for 8 haven’t been received yet.
I’m not sure if the chapter comes out Wednesday or not, but I’m hearing that the raws for 8 haven’t been received yet.
Oh, even if it does, one of the scanlation groups won’t release the chapter too early.
“As for myself… I’d be lying if I said I liked the current situation, both in terms of the quality of the translation […] and in terms of, you know, not pissing off Akamatsu. But at the same time, I want the version people see to be an accurate one. I don’t like spending weeks where I have to constantly correct people’s misconceptions because they read a flawed translation.
So… yeah. I dunno. […] Well, I’ve decided to wait until the official release date (which winds up being Tues. afternoon US time), but I can’t speak for MS. ” –Dowolf
MS didn’t have raws yet from what I understand.
Hit “enter” too soon. ^_^;;;
Thanks for the info.
Oh, and here is a translation of the tweets, if someone’s interested (thanks to Dowolf):
“First off, a translation of that tweet: “Weekly Shounen Magazine comes out on Wednesdays, but it appears on the ‘Net by Friday night of the week before. And at around the same time, illegal foreign translations also show up. Friday is the day when the editors make the sample magazine to proof, so I guess things might get unexpectedly dangerous.”
(he later elaborates that the “danger” here is that the people connected with the magazine might be arrested(?)[sic])
EDIT: The second tweet says: “These illegal translations, called scanlations, appear to be done in 2-3 hours after the makers acquire the illegal leaked Japanese scans. Chapter 7 of my own work, UQ Holder, goes on sale tomorrow [TL/N: The tweet was posted yesterday], but a foreign version of chapter 7 was posted late Friday night.”
[…] Always being polite in public is more [Ken’s] style/a Japanese thing than it is a lack of emotion on the issue. If he’s posting about it at all, I imagine he’s livid. “
Thanks! ^_^
It would be interesting if AKamatsu took a direction similar to Mnemosyne (http://myanimelist.net/anime/3342/Mnemosyne:_Mnemosyne_no_Musume-tachi)
Said anime also revolves around immortals, and between each OVA there’s a huge time leap, and part of the theme is how much of the world is changing around them, and how they change as well.
I’ll have to look more into that series.
Everyone’s comments on Touta have reminded me of what Eva said during the tournament. Something about how happy people are all alike (and boring) but unhappy people are all unhappy in different ways.
Heh. I remember her saying that. I don’t related Touta with “happy”, but just stupidity.
Glad we can both agree on Touta being annoying ^_^; I’ve always hated characters like him. There’s nothing more dangerous than an idiot with power even if he is good-hearted.
I suspect Touta will get out much sooner than they expect if Akamatsu-sensei keeps up his image of a main character in action manga. Touta and Kuroumaru will probably escape early and gain attention from some of those other characters we saw. Though the time skip seems just as likely.
Main, I have high expectations of Shishido, that guy looks awesome. I just want him to basically be Oshino Meme from the Monogatari series. Looks like a bum but insanely strong, always cool-headed and seemingly all-knowing.
http://i.imgur.com/PavoJOA.jpg
>I suspect Touta will get out much sooner than they expect if Akamatsu-sensei keeps up his image of a main character in action manga. Touta and Kuroumaru will probably escape early and gain attention from some of those other characters we saw.
Yeah, I can see that happening as well.
Well…. I was expecting more onsen hilarity and the featuring of Hinata House…..
Maybe Akamatsu will use some chapters for the introduction of the other characters, giving us some backstory on them or episodic gags or sepparate parallel plots, while Touta and Kuroumaru can have 2 or 3 pages per chapter… Like some sort of mini-chapters between side stories…. Then with proper (and maybe several) time skips he can merge all the roads into one… With a “new” start with a big team, heading into space and beyond…. XD.
On a side note: Karin has the cursed sword….. what the hell are doing the Urashima and Aoyama families doing? Wait….. she has no last name? suspicious…
For more info: http://lovehina.wikia.com/wiki/Hina_Blade
>On a side note: Karin has the cursed sword….. what the hell are doing the Urashima and Aoyama families doing? Wait….. she has no last name? suspicious…
I know she had a sword, but I didn’t notice it as Hina Blade.
Whether the Japanese try for a massive crackdown or not remains to be seen.
I kind of doubt there will be a massive crack down. This has kind of been a known problem for Weekly Magazine for a while thanks to people rushing to scanlate Fairy Tail. Especially since Mashima joined twitter last year allowing people to send him tweets about chapters not officially out yet. The only apparent reaction on WSM’s end is that due to unspecified “reasons” some announcements have been made on Twitter on Thursdays, rather than waiting for the following week’s issue containing the announcement.
Like KA suggests, I would expect any crackdown to focus on the printing house and early distribution chain. They’d have much greater control over that, and it’d be much more effective in shutting down early leaks. Even if they don’t catch whoever is providing the leaked raws, it will likely be because the person is forced to be more circumspect. Which is pretty much the same end result.
Apparently, the super early scan came in as usual, but everyone refrained from posting an early scanlation.
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