November 4th, 2015 
AstroNerdBoy ユーキューホルダー! Manga Review
UQ Holder Chapter 100
SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
After having defeated Karin and paying a price for it, Shinobu shows off her pod racer to Touta, who gushes greatly over it and Shinobu’s work on it. Kirie is spying on them and is startled when Karin and Kuroumaru join her. When Shinobu offers Touta some tonjiru soup from her magic thermos, Kirie is not happy that Shinobu is a mecha girl and can cook. Mizore arrives with a large bento, which she offers to Shinobu and Touta, who find it to be delicious. Kirie spots the bandages on Mizore’s hands, indicating she made the bento herself. However, Mizore doesn’t make mention of this to Touta, meaning she’s a nice girl.
Kirie sinks in defeat as Kuroumaru sinks to a knee at the power of a human girl. Karin accuses Kirie of being in love with Touta, which she vehemently denies. Karin admits to being impressed with Shinobu and Mizore, citing how they are like fresh flowers while immortals are like artificial, plastic flowers. Ikkuu arrives, telling the girls of the legends of the annex on the Senkyoukan, whereby if a boy on the rebound from rejection gets his backed scrubbed with 50 strokes, the boy and girl will become a couple. As the girls start to absorb this information, Ikkuu says he will pass this information to the human girls.
Kirie decides to do this as a matter of honor as an immortal. Kuroumaru wonders whether to tell Touta the truth regarding not being male nor female. After wondering whether or not to stop using masculine pronouns and whether or not to become a girl, Kuroumaru decides to try to be rational about things. As both Mizore and Shinobu ponder being with Touta, Karin finds an excuse to scrub Touta’s back.
Touta and Santa are in the onsen when Karin shows up in a towel with a scrub brush, forcing Touta down with her foot and taking the brush by the handle to scrub him. Kirie jumps in to kick Karin aside, and as the two argue over the other being in love with Touta, Shinobu comes in and starts washing Touta’s back to thank him. Mizore, in a school swimsuit, launches herself at Shinobu. She and Kirie arrive at Touta’s back to rapidly wash it. Before they get to fifty, Kuroumaru leaps in and pulls Touta out of the fray.
Kuroumaru stands to defend Touta as Kirie and Mizore attack, causing Touta to fall off the roof Kuroumaru had taken him to and land in the onsen. The girls stop battling when Yukihime arrives, wanting to know what the commotion is about. When Touta says it is over washing his back with 50 strokes, Yukihime decides to do this and succeeds. She then asks what scrubbing his back was about, but he has no clue.
Thoughts/Review:
Akamatsu-sensei really has to be feeling the pressure. For chapter 100 of UQ Holder, he produced a color page and four additional pages (20 total pages, vs the 16 pages that are normally produced). However, in the same magazine, Mashima-sensei does TWO chapters (459 and 460) of Fairy Tail — one clocking in at 24 pages, including THREE color pages, and one clocking in as 20 pages (his normal chapter length). 😆
I’ve been pretty resigned to the notion that UQ Holder is going to be random and shift to wherever Akamatsu-sensei wants to go. Once it was established that the group would remain at the Senkyoukan, I wanted to see the place in action. It is supposed to be an inn, so whom do they house? I’ve been annoyed that we didn’t get to see Ayaka and Chachamaru visit Eva, but otherwise, I’m fine with the story being set at the Senkyoukan for now and I’m fine with the harem hijinks.
With Shinobu’s pod racer being introduced here, one would think that this is so she can be in a race and have a chance to shine. The problem with that is that Touta is the main character, so assuming we see the pod race at all, I can’t imagine Shinobu being allowed to take the spotlight from the MC. After all, Anakin is the chosen one Touta has to be the one to do it all. However, it would be nice for Akamatsu-sensei to put Touta on the shelf and let Shinobu have her race and do whatever, win or lose. She deserves that much.
With Shinobu showing signs of being like her Love Hina namesake in that she can cook, I was surprised to see that Mizore was allowed to be a good cook, even if she cut up her hands in the process (with small bandages that only show up when the plot demands it). Mizore further surprised me by not going down the usual route of making a giant bento for her beloved and not wanting anyone else to have any, but instead, she invited her rival Shinobu to partake as well. The fact that she didn’t brag about having made it was also a nice touch.
I also liked that Mizore is continuing to show how well trained she is. She was able to easily hang in there with Kirie when it came to the battle for Touta’s back. I know some of you guys don’t like her, but I find her to be fun. There’s a nice combination in Mizore’s character, consisting of Su and Sarah from Love Hina as well as Ayaka from Negima.
Kuroumaru continues on the path to becoming a lovely girl. I so want this to happen so I can ship Kuro x Touta. 😉
The fact that Eva got to Touta’s back and did the fifty strokes means nothing to me. After all, in Love Hina, while the Hinata Inn’s sealed annex with its legend about couples being together proved true, the spell that linked the “wrong” couple together got broken. In Negima, the legend around the World Tree and people becoming a couple was true, but it was conditional. So assuming the legend Ikkuu told here is true, I’m guessing we’ll having something happen to make sure things don’t play out as expected.
In the end, fanservice stuff aside, I have to admit that I rather enjoyed this lighthearted chapter. I’m hoping the story stays in the
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This was a topical “ken” chapter in every single panel XD
Taking the story plot things aside i laughed hard about it.
To Karin i slowly get the feeling that she will be following the motto line: If you cannot beat them, join them! – XD
And for some reason she reminded me at Chisame at the end of Negima in the first panel where she send Totoa flying… Topical Ken hinting if you ask me.
Yeppers!
For me, because of all the other Love Hina connections, it reminded me of Naru punching Keitaro.
Astro: like the previous I have to say I most enjoyed reading this chapter that through the spoils. Definitely them gives a summary rough and very imperfect of the situations situations. For example Karin is not that “Out of Character” that in the end. ^^
Otherwise Astro, I do not see why the fact of seeing the tournaments, prevent it from also see the race of Shinobu. If I had to choose I would choose to see the tournament in priority it’s true, but if I have the possibility, I really want to see them both ^^. And it is likely that this was going to happen I think.
Other hand it is VERY likely that Tota will not fight alone in tournaments and he will not be the only one to shine. Have you forgotten that this is a team tournaments? I imagine really a system similar to Yuyu Hakusho Ankoku budokai : The fighters from each team fighting in duel and this is the team that won the most battles which wins ..
It is implied that is how the tournament will unfold, According ti informations of Mana. And if is the case, each character will have ample opportunity to shine.^^
I wasn’t trying to suggest the tournament would prevent the pod race. I was thinking that since Shinobu isn’t the star, and since all the stories have had to center around Touta, it is more difficult to allow Shinobu to have her time in the spotlight.
This genre shift (or addition) is making me speechless, to be honest.. I used to read a chapter on the same day it’s out, but now I read the review before the chapter, just in case something more interesting happen that will make me want to read the chapter.
If it’s romcom(+harem), I’d rather stick to Hayate. Which reminds me, it’s been some time since the last Hayate chapter came out..
Chapter 510 should have come out today in Japan.
Kuroumaru’s comment “This feels so right…” worries me greatly. I can’t help that, given the context of him “protecting” Touta from the other girls and not pursuing him him/herself that Kuro will realize that he does prefer to just be Touta’s bro.
I’m technically fine with that, but I wanna ship them so hard haha. Please tell me you interpreted that line differently.
Yeah, I thought about that too, for a bit. In the end, I decided that I was reading too much into it since Kuroumaru is still doing the towel as a girl.
I’m still not convinced about Kuroumaru becoming a girl. Kuromaru constantly referred to himself as male and thinks of himself as male. Now, after Kuroumaru learned, that he fell in love with Touta, must be very confused about this.
So confused, that Kuroumaru started thinking about, referring to herself as female, and thus turning into a girl. But this indicates to me that Kuroumaru still thinks of himself as male.
As I calculated, Kuroumaru has about 1 year, before he turns 16 and has to take his decisicion. And this will be his ordeal.
If he turns into a Girl because of his love with Touta, but still feeling male, he will end up with the wrong body for the end of his life (that eternity!). Even if Kuroumaru becomes a girl Touta might still reject her love.
And if he becomes male, might Touta accept his love? I Think Akamats sensei has given the answer to this already, on the cover page o chapter 19.
So there might be Kuroumaru x Touta either way.
My understanding was that Kuroumaru was a year from a decision at the start of the manga. Certainly when the tournament was a thing, folks were saying that after the tournament, Kuroumaru would make a choice and at that time, the tournament was a year away. We know eight months passed at Dana’s place. Who knows how much time passed before that. I don’t think Kuroumaru’s choice is a year away. I think it is a matter of 2-3 months tops.
I highly doubt that we’ll get some yaoi/BL stuff in a shounen manga targeting young males who want to see babes. That alone is the biggest argument for Kuroumaru becoming a lovely girl. 😉
According to the UQ Holder database that Santa hacked into, Kuroumaru was born in 2072. It also said that Touta was born in 2082 and Santa commented that would make Touta four years, making it 2086 at the time and Kuroumaru 14 years old.
Taking into account the 8 month timeskip, it’s now 2087 and Kuroumaru has roughly a year to go before he makes his decision at 16 years of age.
That would line up with the tournament which takes place in 2088. Maybe they’ll return to Kuroumaru’s village after the tournament and for extra dramatic effect have his gender decision take place at the same time they confront whoever experimented on him.
You know, I’d love this a great deal. However, I’m doubtful we’ll get to see this ’cause character development and exploring character’s past to see how they got to where they are now isn’t something Akamatsu-sensei does that often. We didn’t get Eva’s story in all of Negima and only got a glimpse of it in UQ Holder.
Akamatsu showed us the village members with the distinctive bird(tengu?) masks so he’s already hinted at it. Since they’re immortal hunters they’ll probably come into contact with UQ Holder when we go to Inverse Mars at some point.
The fact that Akamatsu established that someone or a group of people experimented on Kuroumaru to make him immortal, I think means it’ll be addressed at some point.
Well, with Kuroumaru becoming a lovely girl, I really do want her past to be explored fully.
Kuromaru is 14/15, she was turned at 10 (which is strange since hyperthicaly that would’ve of been when touta was turned) she said to jinbei that she had four years experience hunting monstersaand had been immortal for over a year.
If Kuroumaru has only been immortal for a year (and judging by the tribe’s reactions to Kuroumaru, this is not a normal thing among them), then I wonder how immortality will effect the gender choice.
I dont have much to say other than…. In the beginning it looked as if Ken wasn’t intending on putting any Fanservice in the manga..
I npoticed in the last several chapters he has slowly started bringing it all in. So with that, was there a particular reason why he didn’t really put much fanservice in the beginning until recently?
The axe and sales.
Yeah, that was very unusual. There’s been small amounts, but nothing much until this recent Love Hina revival feel.
That’s a good question. I think it had more to do with the fact that he didn’t have the female characters to service. There was Yukihime, but then he put her on the shelf after volume 1 and only shows up on occasion (not counting the Kitty stuff). Kuroumaru was a joke of the the “male or female?”variety, so there wasn’t anything to service there. Karin got serviced, but because Akamatsu-sensei kept making her incompetent in order to put her on the shelf so that Touta could be the hero, there wasn’t much ability to service her. As for Kirie, she doesn’t come off as very serviceable, even for a loli-type character. Plus there too, there weren’t opportunities to do it.
In the end, I think that UQ Holder only seeming to have decent sales when there’s a strong Negima connection (like seeing Eva’s past) convinced Sensei and Kodansha that (1) he needed a harem and (2) that harem needed to be serviced heavily.
I think it’s nice to have a small “breather arc” like this where Akamatsu goes back to his harem comedy roots. I crave action and plot development as much as the next reader, but I also would like to see a bit of development in the interpersonal (and esp. romantic) relationships between the characters. Akamatsu-sensei tried to strike a balance between action and romantic comedy in Negima as well, so it’s nice to see things not being so serious all the time.
And 97 chapters after s/he was first introduced and all the ship tease over the past two years, I still want some payoff for Touta/Kuromaru.
So do I. Unfortunately, with UQ Holder, Sensei has been too random and it hasn’t helped. Combine that with the fact that he’s structured things so that Touta has to be the center of anything going on (unlike Negima, where Negi got put aside at times to flesh out other characters), and the manga has suffered. I think the fanservice and harem stuff are an attempt to boost sales. Hopefully, the manga from here on will have better character development for the supporting cast (let them have their time to take the lead) and a better story flow that isn’t worried about fans figuring out things.
It was fun light chapter, nice break from story intense chapters. This arc is calm before the storm of the actual tournment. Once that’s done, I suspect the final count down will begin w between Team Touta and Negi’s capturer.
There’s a hint that we might get something else before any tournament (the fact that the inn is about to get busy). The hint has also been dropped that they won’t do much more with the prelim stuff. We’ll see though.
After that thing in Love Hina with the building and it’s curs… I mean, its power to bring two people together no matter what, I’d run away from any legend that involves “two people getting together”, if I was a character in any Akamatsuverse.
Also, Santa… Santa, you’re a true gentleman! I bet you can’t see Karin at all, covering your eyes like that in the first page! Keep it up! HAH.
As for Kuroumaru…
“I’m not that pretty”… says the person who looks like Tokisaki Kurumi 2.0. HAH[2].
God, reading things with a deadpan snarker attitude makes it all better.
And so, the excruciatingly dull 20 pages end. Next.
Heh!heh!heh!
Chapter 100! XD the color page, It was nice, I thought Kirie’s hair was pink.
Karin in the bath, lol I thought “It seems a type of torture so that he confess” and after she stepped on Touta’s face, poor kid XD Touta will end up telling her about Evangeline’s past, just when Evangeline passes by the side of them.
When I saw Mizore and Kirie, “victory to the swiftest, survival of the fittest” I thought “The battle for the Touta’s back, the legend awaken, for the glory of immortals” XD
When Evangeline said “what do you want me to scrub your back? sure: I don’t mind” Didn’t she understand it or she knows about it? I suppose if she is the leader of the Inn, she must know about the legend, mustn’t she?
At the end of the chapter, Evangeline was the person who scrubbed his back. XD
And meantime Santa… He should have thought “This is peaceful with nobody else around” XD
That is a good point. Someone speculated that Ikkuu was trolling them, so that might be the case. Or, it may be that Eva never knew, especially if it is something Ikkuu just dug up.
He kinda had that look though. 🙂