ユーキューホルダー! Manga Review
UQ Holder Chapter 19

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis: 

Kuroumaru faces Kaito and Nagumo, knowing there’s no one else to protect the children. Kuroumaru does a valiant job of holding them off, but the massive speed of Kaito and the skills of both Kaito and Nagumo are too much. Kuroumaru loses the hand holding the sword in the fight, but manages to get both back. With sword in mouth, Kuroumaru manages to slice Kaito’s arm off.

With Kuroumaru’s arm back in place, Kaito also places his arm back in place as both regenerate to reattach their limbs. Kaito now knows Kuroumaru’s kind of immortality and that he has to pummel Kuroumaru faster that Kuroumaru can regenerate the damage.  With that, Kaito promises to show Kuroumaru what a real shundo is, as Kuroumaru had earlier performed one, and gets behind Kuroumaru so fast, Kuroumaru could not react.  With a furry, Kaito beats Kuroumaru, then slices Kuroumaru’s body in half and the waste.

Ruki desperately tries to get Touta to revive. Touta can hear Ruki, but can do nothing. Kuroumaru’s top half lands near Ruki, where Kuroumaru tells the boy to run. The, Kuroumaru quietly apologizes to Touta.

Thoughts/Review:

OK, I’m confused.  Touta was shown to have a kind of immortality whereby a hacked off limb had to be reattached, otherwise it wouldn’t grow. Kuroumaru’s immortality was supposed to be the kind whereby hacked off limbs and such just grew back. Yet here, Kuroumaru slaps the hand back in place to cause it to reattach to the arm rather than grow a new hand.

I suppose this is supposed to be a faster method for repairing damage, but if regeneration causes limbs to regrow, it seems to me that a limb would no longer fit. Maybe Kuroumaru reattached the hand to the arm before the arm could start growing a new hand. ^_^;

Everyone is predicting that Touta will somehow overcome the seal on him, and I’ve no reason to doubt this theory. After all, Touta is the lead of this manga and has to be the hero that saves the day.

Nevertheless, as I said last chapter, I would LOVE to see Karin come in and bring some pain to Kaito and Nagumo, free Touta, which causes Touta to finally learn that leaping before one looks is not the way to go.

*sigh* A man can dream, can’t he?

I did notice that Kuroumaru didn’t get off one Shinmeiryuu technique at all. Other than the shundo, and a ninja-like escape maneuver, Kuroumaru didn’t do any special techniques. In some ways, that makes Kuroumaru taking a page out of One Piece‘s Roronoa Zoro’s playbook (the sword in the mouth attack) more impressive.

Since Kuroumaru’s shundo is not a bad one, Kaito is showing a superior shundo be being connected to the ground with bare feet. I really hope we don’t start getting a lot of bare feet in the face fights just so we can have superior shundo jumps.

As to Nagumo, I couldn’t get a good feel for him in this fight, but I did think of the blind samurai, Zatoichi. I should review some of those movies here, but I’m already behind enough on my anime. ^_^;;;

Finally, Akamatsu-sensei may have dropped the trap gags, but he’s still angling for the trap fetish with this splash page.

*lol* Well, I’ve seen many a Western fan crossing their fingers and hoping that Kuroumaru turns girl. Well, Kuroumaru did consider Karin’s words again about being a girl (after being sliced in half).

So, a battle chapter that pushes the limits of what would be OK in a shounen title. I wish Kuroumaru could have done more, but oh well. We’ll see what Akamatsu-sensei has in store for us next.