UQ Holder Chapter 19 Manga Review (A blind man, a werewolf, and a girly youkai.)

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

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis: 

UQ Holder Chapter 19Kuroumaru 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.

UQ Holder Chapter 19

*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.

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5 Responses to “UQ Holder Chapter 19 Manga Review (A blind man, a werewolf, and a girly youkai.)”

  1. […] the upcoming UQ Holder chapter 19, courtesy of the VERY gracious Southrop. (Those looking for my chapter review can find it […]

  2. This chapter was truly incredible , The Battle scenes was just epic , This is Ken Akamatsu we`re talking about after all.

    But hopefully we`ll get more in the next chapter and Somehow , Touta snapping and breaking off the seal and Perhaps him raising hell.

  3. shadowofthevoid says:

    Dat splash page. *swoon*

    Ahem! So, uh, yeah. Things are definitely getting pretty damn brutal in UQ Holder quickly. I still remember being shocked when, after many volumes of generally lighthearted content, Negi gets impaled on arrival to the Magic World and then not too much later gets an arm cut off. I guess having characters that are immortal necessitates upping the “Holy s***!” quotient quite a bit. You’re going to have to up the ante somehow if shooting, decapitating, or bifurcating someone isn’t enough to stop them. UQH is definitely one of the more graphic shounen series I’ve seen in a while, though I’ve seen some with violence as graphic if not more so. I remember Dragonball could get quite graphic at times, and of course you had Fist of the North Star, which was a shounen series despite all the exploding heads. Even more recent series like Bleach can get quite brutal. Still, it’s been a while since I’ve seen characters literally cut to pieces this frequently. It’s a good thing they can heal.

    • AstroNerdBoy says:

      I guess having characters that are immortal necessitates upping the “Holy s***!” quotient quite a bit.

      Well, there may be that element as well, but I think Akamatsu-sensei would like to make things as close to seinen territory as possible. Having the characters be immortal means he can do a more brutal, dark tale without being kicked out of the shounen genre.

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