October 21st, 2015 
AstroNerdBoy ユーキューホルダー! Manga Review
UQ Holder Chapter 98
SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
YUKIHIRO Mizore observes Touta’s interactions with Shinobu from the balcony of the inn and decides she has to do something.
A little later, Touta chats with Shinobu, who’s come to town for a race and has her own racer, built from scrap parts. Touta is impressed and says he’ll talk to Yukihime about getting Shinobu a job. This is observed by Santa, Kirie, and Kuroumaru, who see the two are getting along quite well.
Mizore burst through the window and after a haughty introduction, warns Shinobu to step away from Touta do to the danger. She also wars Kirie, Santa, and Kuroumaru, who’ve come in as well, to stay away. When Kirie asks why Touta is a menace, Mizore announces that Touta descends from a long line of lady killers, citing how his grandfather Negi seduced all thirty of his students, including Mizore’s great grandmother, and Nagi had a harem over one hundred women.
As the heir to the Yukihiro Conglomerate, Mizore challenges Touta and does a shundo to attack him. She has him spinning and is about to do a finishing blow when Touta catches her arm and tosses her out of the room and high in the air outside. Realizing he went too far, Touta leaps after her, catching her and praising her skills. She blushes and realizing she’s in the “princess carry,” starts seeing Touta in a more handsome light. She flashes out of his arms to a nearby roof, deciding that he gets 100 points and is worthy of her.
Shinobu, Kirie, Santa, and Kuroumaru join them outside, where Mizore decides that to protect other women, Touta will be her husband. She’s shocked when Touta politely declines as Kuroumaru marvels at the power of a human girl.
Touta and Kuroumaru are training later on, where Touta remarks on how Mizore threw him for a loop by proposing marriage out of the blue. Kuroumaru reminds him that he proposed to Yukihime, causing him to see how he was wrong in doing that. When Touta remarks on how impressive both Mizore and Shinobu are, Kuroumaru thinks of Yukihime’s words and then starts to confess love for Touta.
Thoughts/Review:
Let the harem begin in earnest, starting with a love confession from Kuroumaru, followed by Kuroumaru becoming a lovely girl. *nods*
It has been a long time since we’ve had a fun chapter, so I’m glad to see it. I’m not enthused about picking the tournament plot thread back up (but I see that Akamatsu-sensei may be starting another plot thread, that of Shinobu’s race). Shinobu’s return caused me to go back and reread chapter 2 of the manga. Although I thought the chances of her returning were slim, I’m glad I was wrong and that Shinobu is here.
Of course Shinobu isn’t enough of a pot stirrer. She got Kirie and Kuroumaru hot and bothered, but not enough to spring into action. That’s why we have Mizore added to the mix because unlike Shinobu, who takes the submissive spot to Touta, Mizore attempts to take the superior spot to Touta with her assertive, aggressive behavior. As such, she is the ultimate pot stirrer.
Although Akamatsu-sensei keeps throwing random things out there in an apparent desperate attempt to keep fans from guessing things as we did in Negima (and the fact that some fans could see where Akamatsu-sensei was going is not a negative mark on him as a writer, merely the fact that fans gathering online and discussing things can figure out things better), it wouldn’t surprise me if Mizore is a clone of Ayaka, and not just because Akamatsu-sensei is just reusing old character designs. I can see Negi’s top babes in his battle harem contributing to cloning experiments, which ultimately lead to the homunculus experiment that created Touta.
That aside, I do like Mizore. She is the cliched, haughty ojousama character, complete with laugh. She’s clearly mastered the Yukihiro martial arts techniques with shundo added to the mix. Unfortunately for her, she didn’t count on Touta’s skills at countering her and tossing her into the air (which Crunchyroll apparently didn’t want us to see — more on that in a bit).
Without Mizore, I don’t think Kuroumaru would start to confess to Touta. However, I’m going to call it here — something will interrupt Kuroumaru’s confession, or Touta won’t hear what Kuroumaru said.
I am disappointed that we haven’t seen Chachamaru and Ayaka meet with Eva. I’m still hoping we see that.
As to Crunchyroll…*sigh* Seriously, they need a quality control person desperately. Check out this piece of awesomeness.
And now from the raw, so you see what you missed. Note that Crunchyroll has translated text for the missing panel.
When one runs a business, one has to pay attention to these kinds of things, whether it is delayed chapters, missing pages in chapters, or jacked up pages in chapters.
In the end, this was a fun chapter, which is something UQ Holder needed at this point.
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Pls dont interupt the confession nxt chapter akumetsu sensei. imma gonna be pissed if you do. This was a pretty funny chapter tho
Looks like the confession won’t be interrupted. 🙂
Jo astro. I looked at the chapter 76 becouse of the missing page but then i saw that there was any missing page. 294 295
They fixed the problem with chapter 98 as well. Yay! Glad to see that.
Once again Scanulation 4 crunchyroll 1.
Can some American Exec kill the manga side already! It ‘s dredging Akamatsu-Sensei’s position through the mud.
I find it incomprehensible that Crunchyroll is making any significant money from this borked venture, especially when their acquisition was just a consultation prize.
Kuromaru is acting every bit like Asuna, as that tured out to be familiar lov, I ‘llsay the same applies here. That kuro and touta are related, especially since all the color art involves them holding the ying and yang fey-hina.
Don’t worry, Akamatsu is already dragging his name through the mud on his own.
“Kuromaru is acting every bit like Asuna”
Not really. Kuro is a Setsuna expy through and through. Sure, he might confess, but its at this point going to either float over that black hole of a protagonists head or end up like Nodoka’s confession.
“it wouldn’t surprise me if Mizore is a clone of Ayaka”
Well, that would paint UQ Holder in a…fitting light. A horrible clone that has neither the charm nor substances of its predecessor, that really, really shouldn’t exist in a sane or decent universe. God, I almost want it to be true, just for the sheer stupidity of the whole thing.
Crunchyroll has fixed that problem, and the missing page problem from chapter 76. Shocking, I know.
“it wouldn’t surprise me if Mizore is a clone of Ayaka”
Well, that would paint UQ Holder in a…fitting light. A horrible clone that has neither the charm nor substances of its predecessor, that really, really shouldn’t exist in a sane or decent universe. God, I almost want it to be true, just for the sheer stupidity of the whole thing.
To be fair, every character starts off one-dimensional. Granted, Ayaka already had me laughing the first time we met her, with her “bit of a slut” crack at Asuna… but back then, she was still one-dimensional. With enough screen time and some training, Mizore might level up to two like Touta, or maybe even three! (^_~)
Well, partially. The difference between Negima and UQ Holder is that its character actually had dedicated screen time with misadventures that didn’t encircle around Negi’s “story” so to speak. Unfortunately here, the only character who can make that claim is Santa and…yeah, Santa. By the time Ayaka’s single chapter was over, we realized that her and Asuna’s “rivalry” was much deeper then we were lead to believe, which ties in with what happened to her would-be brother. She was unfortunately put on a bus in the MM arc and flanderized when Akamatsu got knocked on the head and forgot how to write things in a decent manner, so there’s that.
UQ Holder is 100 chapters in, and almost the entire cast has remained in a complete stasis. Holders characterizations have been a huge flaw for this series, and hasn’t really made any attempts to try and rectify that.
I wouldn’t disagree about the “stasis” assessment. I’ve had a bad case of unjustified optimism lately, as far as Mizore’s potential goes… but I hope it was noteworthy that even so I couldn’t give the MC credit for any more than two dimensions.
I prefer to believe it’s still possible for Sensei to redeem UQH by pulling a jewel or two out of all the dross. It may be low-possibility, but it makes me happier than acknowledging that everyone is human and sometimes gets locked into trying to prove that a failed concept really didn’t fail. Even Sensei.
I didn’t have a problem with Mizore, but that’s just me. (You’re remarks make me chuckle though, due to the passion behind the words. 😀 )
I’m not sure whether it’s even possible to make Mizore an exact character copy of Ayaka, partly because a good part of Ayaka’s character for most of Negima, was defined by her friendly-rivalry with Asuna, and squeeing over Shota-Negi. That made her very, very flat and it was only in the final chapters of Negima, did Ayaka acquire any level of dimensioality to speak off.
In Touta’s case, there’s no Asuna clone (yet), the little brother angle does not apply with Touta (because of their apparent physical ages – I wouldn’t be surprised if Mizore is actually closer to 20, but matures much more slowly physically), and the harem surrounding Touta is quite different in emphasis. Kirie is a Chisame expy, Kuromaru is a Setsuna expy, and both of these individuals had little meaningful interaction on screen, in Negima. Kitty is Yukihime and will not play the game. And Shinobu has elements of Nodoka, but is slightly different from Nodoka.
So naturally, even if Mizore shares the similar personality archtype as her grandmother, I don’t think she’s going to be an exact copy of Ayaka – that just isn’t possible, because the main players of the harem are made out of people whose personalities resemble the Class 3-A members that Ayaka rarely directly interacted with, on a one to one basis.
I suppose, on the other hand, one could argue that it’s precisely because Ayaka never interacted with Chisame and Setsuna on a one to one basis within Negima, that Mizore is a way for Akamatsu to explore how Ayaka might have interacted with Chisame and Setsuna post Negima ending.
I do like the idea that Mizore is a clone of Ayaka though. I wouldn’t be surprised if many members of 3A donated genetic material, in the first generation of “Negi-clones” or “children”. It’s just that no-one in the first generation inherited either Magia Ereba, or Royal Magic. At the very least, I wouldn’t be surprised if Mizore is at minimum, a transhuman, designer baby created to Ayaka’s specifications.
Personality wise, I agree. Mizore appears more like Su and Sarah from Love Hina. Physically, it would be no problem.