April 23rd, 2014 
AstroNerdBoy ユーキューホルダー! Manga Review
UQ Holder Chapter 32
SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
Gengorou is joined by Yukihime at the dock after Touta, Kuroumaru, Ikkuu, and Kirie leave for the tower. Yukihime notices Kirie’s save point and wonders how things will go.
Touta is ultra excited by the trip to the tower. When Ikkuu gets a little praise from Ikkuu over his recent fight, Touta is modest and thanks the others who helped him. When he mentions the “weird black stuff” that came out of him, Kuroumaru expresses frustration at Touta’s not taking things like that seriously and not having asked about it already.
At Touta’s request, Ikkuu speaks of his immortality through science, having once been human who at 13 fell into a 72 year coma. After he got an android body, Yukihime enlisted him into UQ Holder. Kuroumaru’s reasons for joining UQ Holder are given after a question from Ikkuu, but Kuroumaru gets upset that Ikkuu and the others address “her” with the “-chan” honorific and consider Kuroumaru to be a girl.
After they reach the base of the tower, Ikkuu and Kuroumaru head in to fill out paperwork for Karin’s entry, leaving Kirie in Touta’s hands. Once Touta and Kirie are alone, Kirie takes off her glasses and changes her attitude toward him. She demands he sit, which he goes into the seiza position. She makes him bark like a dog, but when she wants to step on his face, he stops her and holds her up by the scruff of the neck.
Kirie is upset and tells Touta that he has failed to protect her six times. Touta is confused and thinks Kirie is joking, but Kirie is suddenly very serious as to the danger they are in. Before she can say more, one of the thick braids is sliced off and blood comes from Kirie’s neck as she falls to the ground.
Thoughts/Review:
After complaining last chapter about how there was no resolution or even mention of Touta’s Magia Erebea, Akamatsu-sensei decides to acknowledge this via Kuroumaru’s character. Basically, Sensei is saying, “I know you have questions, but I’m not going to answer. Up yours!”
*lol* OK, it may not be that severe, but the message I took from this was that Akamatsu-sensei has zero intent of explaining things until he’s good and ready, which may not be for months or even years. That does annoy me because people who aren’t mindless idiots like Touta would be very curious and want to know what the heck that “black stuff” is. Kuroumaru or others should be asking too, but I suspect this will just be swept aside for a while and no one will ask, thus we fans shouldn’t ask either (but I just might just to be an arse).
Unfortunately, based on how Akamatsu-sensei did things in Negima (which had a much better scripted plotline), explanations are pretty low on his list of things to do. Granted, he ended Negima rather abruptly, but that aside, there were a TON of questions that remained from that series, some of which had to do with the backgrounds of characters. Not answering questions gives Sensei a lot of wiggle room to change his mind if he wants.
Akamatsu-sensei continues the “Kuroumaru is a girl” joke. At least here, we know that Kuroumaru has no gender, thus is not male nor female. Kuroumaru protests too much and should just become a girl already (not that this will happen). ^_~
Ikkuu being picked by Eva is not surprising, considering her love of dolls and her having had an android servant before (Chachamaru). It seems to me that Ikkuu’s brain was probably transferred from his human body to the android body, or at the very least, his memories and soul were sent over. I suspect that this is the only background information we’ll get about him for a very long time.
Finally, there’s Kirie, who came off all shy and sweet, but who’s really a jerk. Still, I did enjoy her making Touta go down and bark like a dog. I even laughed at her desire to step on Touta’s face. But seriously, did she have time for this when she KNEW she had died six times before and Touta had stood there looking like a giant smeg for brains each of those six previous times?
Sorry Akamatsu-sensei. I know you are trying to go for the surprise, and you achieved that. However, from a story perspective, it makes no sense. If Kirie knew she was going to be wiped out and that she’d be replaying the same events over and over again, one thinks she would say SOMETHING to try to change the outcome of said events. Otherwise, this is a case of Groundhog Day, where you just repeat a day over and over, but only you remember things, and nothing you do matters, especially if you don’t actually do anything to change the outcome.
Instead, Kirie says nothing on the boat but just gives Touta ugly looks. When they are alone, instead of immediately giving the lowdown of the situation, she attempts to abuse Touta some before suddenly getting worried that they don’t have time for this and then apparently being killed. Yeah, right. Being a jerk is one thing, but Kirie being a moron is just too much, save point immortality aside. As a result, something invisible or the like slices off one of her thick braids and through her neck.
Somehow, it wouldn’t surprise me if Touta ends up with a skill by which he starts noticing things because in the previous six times that Kirie died, she didn’t actually say anything to Touta. Then Touta can take off his shirt, show off his big “S”, and sing, “Here I come to save the day!” ^_~
Speaking of Touta, I am pretty hard on the character because I just don’t like the idiot character that can do anything, but is still pretty much a happy go lucky airhead. HOWEVER (and I’m adding this back in as it somehow got removed), I did like that Touta showed appreciation to others for their part in the recent combat.
In the end, there are things about the chapter I liked, but in terms of execution, I don’t like that as logic is flushed down the toilet in favor of having a twist.
Note: There’s no UQ Holder chapter 33 next week due to Golden Week. I’ll be keeping an eye open for spoilers, whenever they appear over the next two weeks.
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It’s entirely possible that Kirie did try to warn Touta earlier in the other iterations, but he just blew her off. She might be trying a different method each time to get Touta to take it seriously, like the current mean attempt, perhaps a puppy dog eyes attempt, or even a no nonsense attempt.
I’d be unsurprised if Touta refused to take her seriously on each of the previous iterations.
That’s certainly possible, but Touta isn’t the only one on this trip. Eva seems to know what Kirie’s immortality is, and I would guess the others do as well. Even if they don’t, I have a hard time believing that Kirie couldn’t convince others.
I completely agree about Kirie. It’s like she’s a complete idiot… Actually, unless there’s a really good explanation to her not doing anything about it, she might be even more stupid than Touta… (And I had high hopes of her too).
At least Ikkuu was pretty fun.
About the things she could do, considering her save point is in UQ Holder’s base, she could easily ask for a different team too. I really don’t see what’s stopping her from saying “Hey, Yukihime, I’ve had to load X times already because of your incompetent idiot-son. Come kick some arse, would you?”
And then there’s everything she could do on the boat or after getting off it, like you said.
And that’s my thought on this. There were thirty minutes (or however long the boat ride was) to formulate something.
I think we have way too little information on Kirie. What if during one of those six times she did try to stay calm and still got killed? Maybe she thought making a big fuss would have subtly changed when she would be killed (Butterfly effect)? Maybe she automatically told Touta the truth and he didn’t believe her? Or she told everybody and it still didn’t work.
That’s certainly possible, but Touta isn’t the only one on the trip. Why didn’t she tell Ikkuu? One would think that Kirie could have told Eva or others about what happened on each reset and set things in motion to prevent the death.
Perhaps she’s not capable of directly informing the people around of upcoming events and can only cause things to happen that indirectly change stuff. For instance, in a video game when you load a save point, what the npc’s say never changes but you may be able to be better equipped or approach it slightly different to change the outcome.
Its possible the random stuff she made Touta do was things that prevented the first 6 deaths from happening somehow. Just a thought.
It is possible. From a gaming point of view, taking things slightly different sometimes is the way to go. However, after six failures, I’m going a radically different route. I don’t know what would stop Kirie from doing that.
I’m guessing Kirie didn’t say anything because, honestly, it doesn’t matter to her.
Assuming her Save Point is unlimited, she can just go and reload from there, so really, no reason to care at all.
I guess. Personally, I would hate the Groundhog Day element of this in having a near infinite loop of time to go through repeatedly.
My thoughts exactly! When you have infinite time (and/or infinite chances, in Kirie’s case), everything tends to become meaningless in a certain point. “Dying? What, again? Pff”. Something like that.
P.S. And your theory was correct about her memories, Astro. Knowing the stocks market’s flow, she can easily buy and sell better. Good benefit of a time loop, huh?
Oh yeah. ^_^
Like I said on AQS, I do think Kirie’s approach is to go with the familiar route trying to change it in small amounts until you’re able to go through. That may be influenced by her past experiences, or even by how the past 5 interactions went. I think that also showed on the way she choose to hold the two falling cups instead of trying to avoid the situation where they were throw from happening.
She’s choosing the known instead of the unknown. As she already went with Touta, she knows at least a few ways how things would turn bad in those interactions. If she told everyone early on they would act differently resulting in another unknown route.
That could also reflect her lack of confidence in them. She don’t trust them to be capable of fighting those enemies and keeping her alive with just the knowledge she was able to gather in those interactions so far.
Interesting. So she’s exploring possibilities until she knows as much as possible, is that correct?
I like the theory, but her actions would seem to go against this course of action (and that may just be a scripting problem on Akamatsu-sensei’s part since he’s going for the surprise). She learned nothing on this seventh trip to the tower. Instead, she takes the time to belittle Touta, but then she’s suddenly worried that they have no time and apparently dies.
I agree, it doesn’t have any sense: she’s wasting time showing her true nature and then suddenly: “Shut up! We’re in dange…ack!”.
I guess it cannot be helped, he deserves it: he’s an annoying incompetent brat and she died 6 times already.
If she can reload an unlimited number of times, who cares if she has to die one more time: who wouldn’t want to punch him in the face ? Hell, I would even want to kill him! XD
Yep. That’s the biggest problem with her in this scene.
*LOL* OK, you’ve got a good point there.
My theory is that Kirie want to be the first one to greet Karin and if she tell the others she probably be send to the boat or back to the house. She tell Touta because he dumb and strong and won’t send her back. The problem is that Touta is dumb, she probably did explain what was going on in the first five loops. But Touta didn’t understand what was going on and she pretty much lost her temper in the seventh loop. That the well I see it, sorry for the typos
It seems that they are being targeted by an assassin, unless you think Karin is doing this somehow in cooperation with Kirie to test Touta somehow.
Unless Kirie’s immortality works like in the Star Trek TNG episode ’cause and effect’ (i.e. her resets leave her with a sense of deja vu more than ‘I know the future’ [i.e. she knows she died and she has a feeling Touta makes a complete hash of saving her life BUT she isn’t sure of exactly how/what/where/why killed her or what Touta can do about it]
….of course still raises the question why not TRY to warn people, esp as UQ holder MUST surely know about her immortality…
Heh! I remember that episode. But it is an interesting theory you bring up.
2 newest members of Baka ranger :
one barks when people ask him to
one messes around when someone tries to kill her
Even at their worst (Well, except Makie, but she boarded on being a bubble brained tard anyway), the baka rangers showed more sense then…well, most of this series has actually. Despite being book dumb (Or in Yue’s case, apathetic as hell), they really weren’t that idiotic.
I agree. But even Makie I’d put above Touta and Kirie at this point.
i thinking about the things Nagumo old guy said before send Karin to moon , maybe the immortal type of Kirie is too strong and she not even cares about protect herself or being killed till getting killed 6 times in a round and seem to be the assassin aiming to kill her not Touta make her likely unavoidable him all 6 times (the assassin might not know her power but all he needs is follows her and kills her somewhere he can)and getting really annoyed by it (-> blame Touta)
Hmmm. That’s possible. We’ll see how things pan out.
*lol* Well, even the Baka Rangers were better than this. ^_~
really ?
Konoka : and it also says … “repeating the name of the guy you like ten times and then barking is effective … ”
Some Baka Ranger : for real ?
Konoka : Take a look right here
Some Baka Ranger : Takahata Sensei! (x5) – WOOF !
That was just Asuna showing her complete devotion to Takahata-sensei. ^_^
I’m starting to think Touta’s got some kind of mental block on his ME. Something tied to his amnesia that makes him blow off and forget about ME every time it comes up. Nobody’s that stupid.
Speaking of, you’d think Kirie would want to do something other than waste time on her domination and foot fetishes (giggity), like maybe explaining what her immortality does and how because of that she knows someone is trying to kill her.
I hope you are right. I could actually buy that.
You’d think.
Perhaps her immortality only sends her back a certain amount of time? So, for example, it only sends her back 30 minutes or too her save point, whichever is shorter.
Also, if raising a fuss got her killed in one or more of the previous goes, that would explain why she wanted to be in private: if she did otherwise, she gets killed early.
At this point, anything is possible. We’ll have to see where things go and hopefully get more answers.