October 22nd, 2014 
AstroNerdBoy ユーキューホルダー! Manga Review
UQ Holder Chapter 55
SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
Santa is surprised that Touta is torn in half while Sayoko is surprised that she’s not able to put Touta to sleep, meaning he’s no ordinary high level vampire. Ikkuu tries to get Santa to help him save the survivors, but Sayoko rips Ikkuu apart.
Realizing Santa is watching, Sayoko puts on her cute, friendly facade and apologizes to him before telling him she’s going to take over the world. Before she can leave, Santa asks why, so she reminds him that this was his wish. With that, she leaves
A survivor comes to plead for help from Santa, who forces a hoard of zombies back. Santa recognizes the man he saved as one of the punks who were bullying an old man. Santa says that people like the guy turned Sayoko into what she is and he kicks the guy to the zombies. However, he has second thoughts about it and saves the guy again. Ikkuu apologizes to Santa for suspecting him, then begs him to help as well as warning him about Kuroumaru and Touta. With that, Ikkuu self destructs rather than be bitten.
Ikkuu get the bully, named Shinji, to safety. Santa tries to leave him, but Shinji finds a broom and follows Santa. Santa tunes into the radio to discover reports of outbreaks all over the world. He realizes that this is what Sayoko had been doing all this time. Santa is impressed with Sayoko’s power. However, Shinji going on angers Santa, causing him to throw Shinji to the ground. He tells Shinji that he’s not worth protecting, but Santa’s going to stop Sayoko just the same.
Thoughts/Review:
Looks like Akamatsu-sensei is again paying tribute to Aliens with how Ikkuu was pierced from behind, then torn apart. Heck, he even threw in the term “Bishop,” which was the name of the android (artificial person, as he liked to be called) in Aliens. Well, it is a classic movie and an iconic scene in the movie.
And can a zombie really infect a machine? Considering Ikkuu’s self destruction, I suppose that he wasn’t taking a chance. Plus, I suspect that he’ll download into another body, where he can alert Eva and company.
Regardless, Santa is being set up to say or do something that turns the tide, after which he joins UQ Holder. However, Touta is waiting in the wings to regenerate and ultimately save the day, though Santa will get the assist.
I still see a possibility of Eva showing up. She almost has to since this has become a global crisis. Whether we get to see a loli battle remains to be seen.
Otherwise, not a lot for me to comment on. We have two weeks until the next chapter. Feel free to speculate or comment on how things are going in this arc.
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Shinji. Of course his name is Shinji. Every effing anime character that gets on my nerves is named Shinji!
*anime/manga
Har!
Self-destruct? I thought he exploded because he was split in two and attacked by multiple zombies. Self-destruct makes sense though.
I see at least 2 possibilities here:
1. Kirie is somehow saved and they reset.
2. UQ Holder in other countries will make a move.
But man, two weeks? I was starting to forget that Akamatsu-sensei occasionally does that..
I think they will ultimately reset. In any case to contain the problem at hand I can see UQ Holder and Fate’s Ala Alba working together, considering this is an unprecedented crisis.
And ANB, sorry was a bit busy and forgot to translate the spoilers.
Interesting theory. I hadn’t thought about Fate’s group getting involved.
I understand. I’ve been so busy of late, it isn’t even funny, more so with all my trips to NJ for work. ^_^;
I admit that I’m taking a big leap there, but since Ikkuu was just about to be bitten, I figured he destroyed himself to prevent himself from becoming Sayoko’s puppet. Of course, I’m still wondering how a machine gets infected, but since this is magic we are talking about, anything’s possible.
Yeah, he hasn’t been nearly as bad with UQ Holder.
I do agree that Kirie will do a reset before all is said and done. And that is a good theory on UQH outside of Japan coming into play.
The problem with ‘Kirie’ resetting things is that she has to be healed/cured first to be able to use her powers to “Reset” things. If i understood her powers properly, then she basically sends the soul and the consciousness (of herself and people in contact) to the point of time she created her “Save Point”,
But now that she has become a Zombie, it would be difficult to kill her. There is the also fact that ‘Sayoko’ must have used that “Soul Infecting Virus” on her as well. Which means that even by chance she is killed, it is highly possible that she would carry her Zombified persona back in the past as well (since that virus has affected her soul and it is the very soul that would be sent to the past).
I wouldn’t be surprised if Kirie had taken some kind of magic pill, as she did when Fate petrified her, to negate Sayoko’s infection.
I get the feeling that Touta would be the key in healing everyone (even the ones infected by that Soul Virus). This is based on the fact that Sayoko commented that the miasma wasn’t affecting him.
Also, as i mentioned before this spreading of Virus around the world is a lot similar to what we see in the “Resident Evil” Series.
In the “Resident Evil” series (movie franchise), we have a company called the ‘Umbrella Corporation’, who was trying to make use off and develop a virus (called the ‘T-Virus’), in the form of Bio-Weapon and Super-Solider program. But an outbreak of that virus has caused most of the planet to die out and almost 90% population of the earth (be it humans or animals or insects) being either turned into zombies or are either dead. The remaining are now fighting in what is considered to be the last stand (it would be covered in the last movie set to be released in next year i think). And the one who would be spearheading it would be the only human (a woman named ‘Alice’) to successfully bond with the ‘T-Virus’ and thus becoming immune to its zombifying affect as well as gaining heightened physical & psychic powers (and is also considered to be the one whose blood can be used to make a antidote against the virus).
On another note, wanted to give you a heads up on the release of the scanlated version of the 4th chapter of ‘FT Zero’ and ‘FT Ice Trail’.
Interesting theory. I still think Kirie will be the one to “fix” things as I can’t see Akamatsu-sensei being allowed to have so many people killed for real in a shounen manga.
As to Touta’s misama thing, I figure that’s the clue that says, “Touta’s coming back.”
Still, you may be right and Touta gets to save the day in an unusual way.
Yeah, I saw that. I need to squeeze time in to get stuff written. ^_^;
Sayoko is even worse that Fate lol
Maybe destroying to Sayoko everything go back to being as it was before… Or the control about Kuroumaru and Kirie disappear and Kirie kills herself for go back to the save point
Sayoko is very fast, isn’t she?, in a moment she was around the world lol
Maybe when Santa fights with Sayoko, Evangeline appears and help to Santa
Two weeks? :'(
Meanwhile Sayoko is around the world, Santa will go to find her. The two weeks is the time that Santa needs for find her
That might be it, especially if she can teleport. That being said, she appears to have lain out the groundwork for the years since Santa last saw her, thus she’d just have to activate whatever trigger starts the ball(s) rolling.
For some reason though, i get the feeling that there isn’t just one ‘Sayoko’ out there.
I don’t know why i feel this, but its most likely because of her sometime acting odd, like she is some program or AI or some kind of robot/construct which has gone faulty/berserk for some reason.
Well if we consider the possibility of there being multiple ‘Sayoko’, then it wouldn’t be odd for this whole outbreak to occur around the whole world in such a short span.
Yeah, that’s something I’ve noticed as well. There’s something off about her, as if she has a programming glitch.
I loved the shout-out to Aliens. I’ve seen that movie probably over a hundred times, and it’s one of my top sci-fi films ever. It was the icing on the cake for what is a very dark chapter for our heroes. Looks like it’s up to Santa to save Christmas… uh, I mean the world. Sayoko is the first major boss enemy in the series, as she proved over the past couple of chapters. All the other bad guys except Fate were just warm-up mini-bosses by comparison (Fate is more of a Golbez/Sephiroth type, the presumably final boss who makes occasional appearances throughout the story).
Ditto. It is one of the best sequels ever made.
*lol*
Yeah, that’s true. She’s been pretty interesting as well, though I wish we had more info about her.
A global crisis already? Damn, she sure is a powerful being….
I have to say, even though Sayoko is a crazy b*tch, her obsession of being concerned about her appearance in front of Santa and her kindness towards him are quite touching, too bad she has….some issues. XD
Yeah, I agree. It is that part of her that makes one wish she could be redeemed as well.
Eh, like I said last time, Sayoko looks more like a middle classed mage whose only getting as far as she is due to the contrived zombie tripe, and YMMV on how asspullish it is to begin with.
I’m all for necromancy and all that, but this is action for the sake of action at this point, and it really does nothing but artificially induce a “hopeless” vibe that’s probably not going to matter in the long term anyway.
TBH i dont see a way that UQ would move this time… i rather think that we will get to see someone else in action, name AA / Fate in some way. If he wants to continue the way Negi followed he has to move in a way, so i can image that he will do something in some way, even when its from the side lines.
Also that point of the infection not working on Touta kind of reminded me on the MotB and Evas/Fate relation to him, that some things/spells didnt worked on them, due to their unique features. I think it was Negi who stated in one of the early champters that a true vampire is kind of immune to any infection… and hauling from MotB would even boost it?
And if it wouldnt work on Fate it would give some ppl the proof that Touta is a constract like Fate…. but oh well lets see what comes arround
It would have to be through Ikkuu downloading into a new body.
Well, Eva did get sick that one time that Negi took care of her.
I don’t think it would work on Fate, but he’s in a class all by himself.
That could be the case for Japan branch.
With this global zombie outbreak on the news, I think other branches will try to contain the outbreak in their respective regions.
Thinking about it, the reason we were told in the beginning of the arc that UQ Holder is international may have been exactly because we will see them acting now.
That makes sense.
I’m sure that UQH Japan has lines of communication to other places. As such, Ikkuu downloading into a new body can provide the other branches with front line information fairly quickly.
I don’t think her cute side to Santa, and her worried demeanor about her appearance in front of him was really a facade. If anything, I think she cares about him a lot(Guess even a crazy undead necromancer with powers of the dark can have a soft spot to the guy she likes, huh?). And yes, I kinda laughed at her reaction of: “Oh, oh no! Witnessing a zombie apocalypse is fine, but I don’t want you to see me turned into a giant spider-angel-of-death-like form! *changes fast* Here, that’s better. <3" LOL
I agree. I think that’s why she resurrected him and gave him powers. She truly does care about Santa. That’s why it is going to make her snap completely when he rejects her.
Just one more thing: Man, If Fate is now the strongest mage in the solar system one, and Sayoko can cause a global crisis, I wonder how much more powerful the MotB is right now, assuming he still exists(I know in Negima he was already much more powerful than anyone else in the cast(especially in his last incarnation as Nagi), but if he follows the scale of power ups in this series… Man, everyone’s screwed if he comes back again).
*Ignore that “one” right after Solar System, dunno where that came from, LOL
Understood. ^_^
MotB was always the big, bad, “final boss” in Negima. It will be interesting to see how that gets dealt with, assuming Akamatsu-sensei doesn’t punt on it again like he did in Negima. ^_^;
Hmmmm…what’s that TRASH doing, following Santa around? Oh well, I suppose he’ll join in Kirie’s reset and start to “repent”?
Oh, and Sayoko’s behavior makes her the cutest and most interesting character so far! That “whywhywhy?” part was specially good! Too bad she said she’s going to disapper soon…
Only if he goes back in time as well. Otherwise, the reset will mean nothing to her.
I hear ya.