November 24th, 2015 
AstroNerdBoy ユーキューホルダー! Manga Review
UQ Holder Chapter 103
SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
Kuroumaru finds she can’t work up her chi because she’s not used to a woman’s body and is defeated by Asura. Asura asks why Xinxai attacked when Touta’s off the capture list (of Fate’s), so Xinxai smirks and said it couldn’t be helped since Touta attacked him. Kuroumaru attacks again to save Touta, leading Xinxai to realize she’s immortal, even if he doesn’t recognize her. They throw her out of the window of the observation level of the tower and defeat her again.
As she sinks into Xinxai’s shadow trap, she decides she doesn’t want to be protected by Touta as a girl, but fight as his partner. As such, Kuroumaru emerges with her old hairstyle and no female breasts, indicating a shift out of female mode. Kuroumaru rescues Touta, but since the the police are coming, Xinxai and Asura skip out. Kuroumaru scolds Touta for allowing himself to be captured. Touta says he’s hopeless without Kuroumaru.
Kuroumaru decides that whether male or female, standing at Touta’s side is enough. Sometime later after they complete a training session, Touta remarks on how he found Kuryuu very attractive and wonders if she’ll return. This causes Kuroumaru to be unable to sleep again as her attraction to Touta remains strong, meaning nothing has changed for her.
Thoughts/Review:
Man, you just have to LOVE convenient, contrived events in order to tell a weak story to reset the status quo. This chapter had at least three of them, which started at the end of the previous chapter. (Actually, as I think about it, it may be way more than three.)
The first is the convenient attack of Xinxai and Asura on Touta and Kuroumaru. They have orders not to attack, but Xinxai being an insane whatever stages things so he can fight and have his excuse when Touta defends instinctively defend himself from a knife to the throat. Of course, the REAL purpose is so Kuroumaru will be in a bad situation as a girl.
The second is how Super Touta was suddenly super worthless. No rising up for Super Touta here as apparently, Xinxai has a big wad of Kryptonite in his pants. Of course the real reason Super Touta has to be shelved is to further the bad situation for Kuroumaru (two powerful villains on a now helpless girl) and so Touta can conveniently not see Kuroumaru undergo the magic girl transformation sequence later.
The third is how convenient it is that Kuroumaru can’t use her chi or fight properly because she’s not used to a woman’s body. Really? Kuroumaru’s body structure as a girl is roughly the same as her gender neuter body. Other than growing a pair of breasts, physically, there doesn’t seem to be any difference. So what’s the bloody holdup there?
If the reason is a biochemical one, then this should have been stated in the manga. Assuming that was the reason, then Kuroumaru didn’t become male, but rather shifted back to a gender neutral mode. After all, if Kuroumaru shifted to male, then there should be other biochemical problems negatively at work inside Kuroumaru’s body, which would prevent it from being of any use either for the same reasons.
The fourth is how convenient it is that Kuroumaru was able to become Super Kuroumaru to escape the shadow trap at the last second by apparently immediately shedding all of the female aspects of her body and attacking. How lovely that all that body chemistry changes and physical changes and be sloughed off at will. Yay!
The fifth contrived convenience is how Kuroumaru had time to do a magic girl transformation, getting back the black hair when it had been dyed blond, and of course pulling out a spare overcoat to put on, all while fending off her opponents, shifting back to gender-neuter, putting on the coat, and yanking the awesomely worthless Touta out of the shadow trap. Did I mention Kuroumaru managing to put her hair back into a ponytail while all this was going on? Oh yeah, that happened too. After all, we don’t want Touta to discover the truth.
The sixth plot contrivance is having the police show up to save the day, whereby Xinxai and Asura bug off. So these two morons had no problem starting a big fight, sending themselves and Kuroumaru out the window, and continuing the fight on the ground, but cops show up (whom they could easily beat) and, “Oh. Well, I guess we should pick up our toys and go home ’cause its cops.” Whatever.
Frankly, I’m not sure why Kuroumaru thought that as a girl, she had to be protected by Touta. Were this Shinobu, that kind of thinking would make sense seeing as how Shinobu is not a trained warrior like Touta and would thus need protecting in a bad situation. Kuroumaru is a trained warrior and shouldn’t need protecting. Again, why doesn’t Kuroumaru know about all of the other powerful Shinmeiryuu women out there, many of which have been the PARTNER of a male wizard to protect said wizard and watch his back?
There were a couple of positive elements in the chapter. First came from Xinxai, who remarked that it didn’t matter to him whether his opponent were male or female, he treated them the same. After everything was over, Kuroumaru came to the conclusion that whether male or female, it wouldn’t matter as he/she would be Touta’s partner.
The second positive thing was Touta’s remark on how he found Kuroumaru’s female persona to be very attractive and wonders if she’ll return. This is another convenient contrivance (the seventh), but it puts Kuroumaru back on the female path and attracted to Touta. Seriously Kuroumaru, learn about the awesome babes of Shinmeiryuu and how they stood by their men, then become a lovely girl once and for all.
That does lead me to another issue — “Kuryuu” had booked a room in the inn. So why doesn’t Touta ask, “I wonder when she’ll come back to get her stuff?” And where was Kirie and Ikkuu after this fiasco? Don’t expect any answers ’cause we have to move onto the next random event. Maybe it is time for another Negima reference.
In the end, this chapter only serves to put the status quo back in place so we can have more “lovely” jokes and debates on Kuroumaru’s gender choice.
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The misogynistic overtones are so blatant that it’s hard to ignore it in this chapter.
I don’t think Akamatsu-sensei hates women. I think I know what he’s trying to say — Kuroumaru is confused and doesn’t know what to do. However, how Akamatsu-sensei is going about it is terrible, in my opinion.
He certainly seems to have lost the touch on how to write female characters since Negima. UQ Holder females, other than Dana, who is okay, are either caricatures or badly developed, or, to put it bluntly, bitches.
I think Akamatsu-sensei’s desire not to be tied down by a massive story arc and to keep things random is harming characters and story. 🙁
For gods sake, Kuro was only nearly fully girl for a day, there is no way in hell she would be able instantly use her Chi that easily.
That would make her going Super Kurormaru look tame. But, I do agree with most of this.
But, I am pretty sure that all Kuro has to do is slowly get used to the Female body first. She’s going to end up turning into a girl anyway.
Think Golden Frieza, the guy got his new form and bolted without training in it, i.e; getting used to it; otherwise, he would not have lost to Goku or Vegeta. So, lets think of this chapter like that.
Kuro was only a girl for maybe 24 hours, pretty sure she would need more time in the female body before her Chi settles down with it. pretty sure this is a weakness to all of these types of people. Negi is also a good example, his M.E was eating him alive, and he literally died before becoming a Master of it. But, that is possibly a different story.
I am seeing Setsuna’s personality from Kuro. Greatly.
Oh, i forgot, wouldn’t it be cool of Kaede was still alive? you know, since she reached a level where she could travel in space in the flesh?
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But…. as far as it goes, Shinobu will win, since Kirie is a tsundere, Karin is too dense to notice her own growing feelings, and Kuro is too damn hesitant.
But, That will not stop me from liking this series… I will be more happy when they bring out Jack Rakan’s grand-daughter/son. If there is such a worthy God/Goddess.
Why? I know men and women are physically different, but how does that affect chi, other than as a contrivance?
I agree. I’ve long seen Kuroumaru to be the Setsuna of this series.
What about Mizore? 😉
I honestly think because Kuro was not either boy or girl for his entire life, His Chi would have the meld with the gender he choose, which means that if he became a full boy the same thing would happen, neither his male or female body has used Chi yet. Thats the only think i can think of with my limited thinking.
As you once replied already, she may just be confused is all. Dunno.
—-
Not going to add the girl who cut herself making a lunch, because i don’t have anything grand enough to say about that. Since she worked hard doing that. I already like her enough to not spoil it. But, certainly on Chamo’s list, she would be near the top like Shinobu.
kind of like this;
Mizore; 90
Shinobu; 86
Kirie and Kuro; 80(tied maybe, with Kuro gaining some ground)
Karin; 55 and growing.
Evangeline; Undetermined.
Young Girls at the resort; 95
thats kind of how I see it. Dunno if this is agreeable though haha.
How does ‘Chi’ work? Any way the author wants it to. Which is why ANB (and I) are so critical of this choice. Akamatsu-sensei has never given us any hard and fast rules for this. If he wanted this to be a plot point he should have spent sometime (or even just one line) preparing this development. Since there is no contextualization of gender influencing ‘Chi’ this is a contrivance. And it’s a bad one for at least two reasons: It badly undercuts Kurou’s hard training during the last few weeks and months (of our time, I mean), making for very unsatisfying, anti-climactic reading on that count alone. Even worse, though, is the unintentional mysogynism (I am sure it’s unitentional!). Since ‘Chi’ works any way the author wants it to, it was his choice to make Girl Kurou weaker than Basic Kurou. But the manga did not contextualize this at all. The central point here is that this contrivance makes Kuroumaru behave in an unconvicing fashion. Experienced warrior Kurou would have noticed a ‘Chi’-weakness due to gender-flipping and prepared to compensate for that in some way. Instead she behaves like a cliched headless teenage girl – to the exclusion of everything else she is! As a result the chapter reads like bad melodrama.
That is what I find contrived and unforgivable.
What it comes down to is what has been the central flaw of this manga from the beginning: A complete lack of necessary pacing and solid character development.
Yep.
There’s no real focus either. Touta’s goal is getting to the top of the tower. However, the stories are fairly random and mostly have served to have Touta get to Negi’s level, both in power and in harem.
Ha!ha! Very true.
I was also wondering where was the nosey Kirie and Ikkyu too, where both were watching and spying over this whole ‘date’ thing. Maybe they were having coffee at bar or something, being served by Kurōmaru’s robot.
I had thought XinXai was smashed and in small burnt pieces on the first encounter, but no, he came back. I had thought he was beaten by Ikkyu? – I can’t remember, and probably wrong, I gotta re-read that chapter. So it was more of a personal revenge attack?
I’m speculating Xinxai and Asura left when the police arrived was for a easy and usual reason, that they are ‘wanted’ criminals for other crimes, and didn’t want to be caught by the police, or blamed for any damages done to the observation deck. I’m sure there were many public bystander witnesses that would back Tōta being attacked by them. I’m wondering if Fate would punish XinXai for dis-obeying his orders if he ever found out, and for damaging his precious tower.
I’ll have to wait longer if there ever will be a Karin vs XinXai rematch, and anything more about the Konoe twins.
Kurōmaru can still be Kuryuu, stating she returned to SenKyokan somehow on her own, since she just appeared at the Inn. Kurōmaru’s chest is probably still growing, but can still be hidden, and Kurōmaru could probably sneak away to become her again easily. He has a robot to use to cover for him from Ikkyu. Ikkyuu could also now modify the robot to be Kuryuu too.
Magic appears to be a very convenient venue for clothes to appear or disappear, along with a long sword, and changing hair color. Many girls would love outfits and accessories to just appear, and to have immediate and complete hair color changes in a flash too.
The one thing that I hope was settled, is Kurōmaru has accepted being male or female, than worried and embarrassed about being a female. That the only thing is to be by Tōta’s side no matter what gender is determined. It still doesn’t stop the jokes.
Yeah, I guess they went nowhere.
There’s something not human about him. Not sure what that is though.
I don’t think we’ll see “Kuryuu” for a very long time. 🙁
I facepalmed so hard I almost broke my nose. Akamatsu has to be trolling us. The moment it seemed the Touta/Kuro ship took sail, Akamatsu drops anchor on us right before we can leave port. Chao and the multi-arm dude were basically plot devices to get Kuro to question herself. Now we’re back to “Kuro can’t make up his/her mind on what gender he/she wants to be.” When everything’s fine, Kuro gets all doki-doki over Touta and starts to turn into a girl, but when Touta gets in danger, she goes back to being genderless (or did she turn full male during this chapter’s fight?). I hope Akamatsu doesn’t intend to milk this forever and wait until the manga is almost over to have Kuro finally settle on a gender. Running gags can get tiresome after a while, especially if they impede character development.
Yeah, I think he is trolling us.
I agree — Takahashi-sensei’s works (Ranma 1/2, Inuyasha, Urusei Yatsura) are prime examples of the characters not being developed in order to maintain stupid gags. However, her works are considered classic stuff, so maybe the Japanese dig that no-growth, endless gag thing.
Oh, just got back to this comment thread and now I am probably shouting into the void but I just quickly wanted to add that in the case of Ranma 1/2 the manga was intentionally designed to be a farce – it was never really meant to go anywhere. Also, while the basic structure of most chapters was the same in Ranma, Takahashi-sensei did manage to keep things fresh for a long while, constantly coming up with new absurd scenarios to get things going again. I know that I felt surprised, when I was reading it, at just how long the manga kept me entertained and laughing hard, despite ‘the story’ not going anywhere!
Takes some real talent!
I never finished reading Ranma 1/2. I started, but unfortunately, I had grown weary of Inuyasha not going anywhere and after a while, I grew weary of Ranma 1/2 doing something similar — just keep adding new characters when you run out of things for the old ones to do.
I see where you’re coming from, but for me the perception of the basic farcicalness of Ranma mostly helped me to modify my expectations for the manga sufficiently to enjoy it for what I think it was supposed to be. Not that I wouldn’t really have enjoyed some actual resolution to at least the main character’s ‘arcs’. But then, as I said, the very impression that they even should have arcs is probably more of a testament to the general human desire for coherent stories and our bias for pattern recognition, than it is point of the manga.
I like to theorize that Takahashi was way more interested in absurdity and farce, than conventional story-telling.
I don’t want to lean to heavily on that point, though, because reconciling convincing development with the systematic deferral of final resolution is a problem of a lot of commercial, serialized narratives, especially manga!
(Naruto was a catastrophe in this regard. Bleach was even worse! World Trigger is, so far, doing the best possible job of this, that I have ever seen! That manga is pure development in every single chapter! He pays for that with a deliberately slow pace, but in the world of manga publication that will turn out to be a real virtue as it promote’s longevity and it’s working very well. The payoff in terms of entertainment value is fantastic! I hope Ashihara-sensei can keep that up!)
That consideration makes it a bit harder for me to feel entirely certain about my theory of the basic farcicality (is that a word, even?^_^) of Ranma1/2. Aaah, the joys of textual exegesis! (Don’t let anybody tell you it’s a science!)
Yeah, I totally agree with you there. All of her works that I’ve read are like that, even Inuyasha, where she went for a more conventional story process without completely losing the absurdity and farce.
Ok at least that is done and over with.
Time to get back to the real ship: Eva x Touta.
Back to the real plot please.
What’s the plot again? 😉
I hope this male form isn’t permanent
I don’t think this is a male form. I think it is Kuroumaru’s gender-neuter form, from which a male form would probably have less noticeable changes than a female one (breasts, voice).
If Holder ever gets more than one season, I pity the director that has to deal with all this nonsensical randomess, especially since it would seem that Akamtasu would demand that all of the content is covered and that their are no deviations. Well, at least that was the impression I got from his Japan-expo interview.
You could hardly blame him, after what happened with Negima.
First, the writers mostly followed the script… but some element* of the anime bothered Akamatsu-sensei so much that he yoinked permission. So they made up their own ending, and I suspect they forced him to alter his storyline because they borrowed a few elements from his notes.
Then, SHAFT came along and after a handful of episodes, threw the story out the window trying to make a meta parody of Negima and anime in general. (Not to mention showing how clever they thought their humor was.) By the end, they should have called it ” !Negima?” instead of “Negima!?”.
All I can say is that if Sensei plans to make any UQ Holder anime exactly in the image of the manga: “Right approach, wrong story”. Or to put it another way, he’s fighting the last war… which is sadly short-sighted for a man who’s proven he can accurately gauge where copyright, digital media, and authors’ rights are going.
* – A handful of things come to mind, foremost the crude / cheap-looking animation. But I doubt it helped that they tended to remove scenes where it would be difficult to make the art PG, and tried way too hard to milk scenes where the art could be censored but not the raunch – i.e. Negi falling into people’s crotches – for humor. (And it’s also quite possible that it was simply failing in the ratings.)
Akamatsu-Sensei isn’tmaking the greatest case a second series, let alone a first, at the moment from gory shounen to harem antics that just happen to be set future with loli pantsu shots that increase sales.
The only a UQ Holder anime without abridgeding events or rewriting, is if the Animation studio does that Oh so rare unicorn of a 26+ episode series, in the style of the 1996 Doctor Who movie that served as a successful backdoor pilot for the current ‘reboot’.
Via going to the touta depressed chapter and having ikkau’s explanation span 20+ episodes. In form of a flashback covering the key moments of the magical word saga by both ala alba and ala ruba when it came to negi and nagi’s key moments, making Touta’s depression a hell of a lot understandable for the audience.
I don’t think anime production teams would have any problem with the random elements so far. I would cite Fairy Tail as an example of an anime with random stories, though early on, those had some nice humor and such.
Kuroumaru is damned forever if she remains a gender-neutral or a boy if she has serious hots for Touta. He’s made it clear now, arguably finally. He like GIRLS. The end.
Kuroumaru either have work out his feelings for him or live with fact she screwed move on. First love is tough thing. Specially if he/she is gender blender. Unless her transformation thing is something she can control until time its she not allowed choose.
Yep. And as long as Kuroumaru is attracted to Touta, her body will attempt to turn female in order to reproduce.
Astro & Ghostbeetle : I’m totally agree with “NT” and I add that the Ki (or similar energy with another name) works almost the same way in every manga and other fictional work in which it appears. Is a kind of “invisible blood” which, like the physical blood, circulates in the body through the organs and the vital points. This is the case in Naruto, Bleach, Negima / UQ, Chinese fantasy novels. Akamatsu has NOT need to explain the operation of some-thing that any acupuncturist in real life could explain, for heaven’s sake!
Starting to this postulate, the female body has other internal organs that men do not have (uterus for exemple, but it’s not the only). In this case, it is PERFECTLY NORMAL that chi that used to circulate in a neutral body (or almost masculine, because concretely the only difference between an asexual being and a man, is the presence of a penis lol) to habe difficulty to flow in a body changing! No need for an explanation to understand it, it’s an evidence!
For the rest, I’m not surprised that Kuromaru did not notice, given the psychological state in which he / she was in the last days!
To the cops:
1. They are probablements, police Units trained in magical combat.
2. Although Xinkai and Asuras could probably beaten them yes but with Xinkai has disobeyed the orders of Fate is not a good idea. Already that Xinkai is expected to spend a bad-time when Asura will bring him back to Fate’s HQ, I think if he had done more damage Fate would have beheaded Chao’s head in one seconde lol^^.
For clothing and instant morphing, the rest I will say a single word “magic” literally. Especially we’ve already seen Kuro out a replacement cape with a magic spell in a previous chapter.
ps: And before it distorts my words, I say ABSOLUTELY NOT a woman can master the moin well ki a man, on the contrary. The Ki is the magic mastery in combat are all fictional universe, a field where men and women snt if is is not égualitée at moin very close to being and was fine. The akamatsuvers has also shown deLove-Hina, through Negima and even UQ.
I’m just saying that unlike Motoko, Setsuna, Kaede, ku-fei, Eva, Dana ect, Kuro was not born woman, and if you have followed my explanation above, the problem is the sudden transformation of his body. For comparison if Kaede had been turned into man in Negima, she would probably have had the same problem as Kuro.
I wanted say : ” I say ABSOLUTELY NOT that a woman can’t master thel ki as good as a man, on the contrary”.
Understood. 🙂
From martial arts, ‘chi’ is the energy force within a person. Through training it is focused and used to inflict more damage than just the physical muscular motion, and depending on the martial arts using swords (ie kendo), both chinese and japanese, chi adds to the damage of the strike (ie breaking layers of ice). So in this area, its also gender neutral and Kurōmaru shouldn’t have shown a decrease as a female.
Several BUTs:
But — physical transformations, and differences between male and female muscle and bone structure genetics wise, can affect the control of the chi. I agree with others here, and I have a idea that Kurōmaru needs to train as a female to get back to the level as a gender-neutral. Most women get tone and not bulk or larger muscles, men get tone and bulk (ie the Hulk). The center of balance is different for males and females. Kurōmaru, being not familiar with the differences of a female body – as was mentioned – one key issue in any fight is your center of balance, and Kurōmaru would not be able to balance himself if his balance point changed and he hasn’t adjusted to it. Remember (noticing) Kurōmaru tripping on a little stone. Yeah it happens when one wears wedge style sandals, but women can catch themselves most of the time, and usually don’t end up fall as bad as Kurōmaru did, showing his clumsiness as a new female. Kurōmaru is still changing to female at the end of the chapter, so all of the physical issues would get worked out with training as a developing female.
BUT — this is anime and all real life rules are out the window and nothing is set in stone or ‘cannon’.
BUT — this is a shouen, so the fine line of female ability is limited, and cannot be always equal or better than males or if the MC is a male. So far only two women/females in UQ Holder to be really powerful has been Eva and Dana that has tossed Tōta like a rag doll, and they are centuries old. I’m not so sure with Kirie, Karin, Mizore, or Shinobu.
I understand Kuroumaru has magic access to a subspace storage area (for lack of a better term), but that doesn’t explain how Kuroumaru is able to get dressed, dye her hair black, get her former hairstyle back, etc., all in .025 seconds.
Such a disappointing chapter. And feels like the ending is totally trolling, even though it is a reasonable ending. I can’t imagine Kuro getting over it all that quick. I’m glad Kuro still has feelings, but quit screwing with us Akamatsu!
And you are right.
I think we got a new a joke routine here.
In Negima we had the switching between ‘Young’ and ‘old’ females, mostly Chisame and such aswell as the ‘broken mind’ of setsuna towards Konoka (love matters).
What im thinking is that Ken tries to establish a new ‘Joke routine’, this time its not aging but genderswamping by Kuroumaru. (Would be something new XD )
Still, i can agree with your points up there.
Thought IF Ken tries to establish such a ‘genderswap’ joke, he may try to establish something like:
Male Kuroumaru: Strength, Chi etc
Female Kuroumaru: Speed, Spellcasting or such
That would be a new unique power up aswell.
Just my thoughts thought XD
I wouldn’t mind seeing Kuroumaru pick up spell casting alongside physical fighting. We do have a lack of spell casting main people so far.
I’ve also read most of people’s remarks about Akamatsu being sexist but I think that is yet to be determined (Though the massive amounts of scantly clad fan service could definitely be considered such). He’s shown that women in his world are definitely a force to be reckoned with and most characters have pointedly said that they don’t care if said person is male or female.
And I can get that Kuroumaru had trouble fighting because he wasn’t used to a female body yet. But a lot of it still seemed to be Kuroumaru struggling with self doubt and in all honesty I actually feel that Kuroumaru, the character, might be the one that’s a wee bit sexist.
*Pure speculation and over thinking warning* It may just be how he was raised too (dang I hate using the male verbiage again). Kuroumaru obviously didn’t have a home life that did well for his mental self worth. And although we have to wait until more is revealed about his clan they may be old fashioned and heavily treat males and females differently. Kuroumaru might find that Eva and the other strong female fighters are just exceptions to the rule he was brought up under.
If this is the case and Kuroumaru just has a wrapped view of genders then I see in being used as a mental growth plot. I’m okay with characters having bad ideologies(even the good guys) as long as they are used to develop character.
BTW: I’ve also noted all the ‘stalled’ KuroumaruXTouta ship posts everywhere. Am I the only one that fully sails the ship rain or shine? FemKuroumaruXTouta; NuturalKuroumaruXTouta; MaleKuroumaruXTouta. Doesn’t matter to me.
EvaXTouta: Creepy… creepy… creepy. Zero support from me. I established a mother/son vibe from them and development of anything pass that I just find… creepy. But my opinion.
Sorry for the rant!
I fully support FemKuroumaruxTouta, it’s my OTP in this series. Though I’m not into Yaoi, so I can’t say I’d like to see BL happening between them, and to be fair, I don’t think Kuro has to be male to fight side by side with Touta. Actually, s/he should be equal to him no matter the gender(And thus, this chapter was very frustrating to me, as I was satisfied with the way things were going last time). As for Touta x Eva… BLEARGH. Makes me sick. -___-‘
The thing that folks who want a male Kuroumaru hooking up with Touta don’t realize is that biologically, Kuroumaru’s attraction to Touta is turning her female in order to reproduce. After all, that is the purpose of sex. 😛
I fully sail the ship!
And shipping at all is unusual for me.
I agree. Once a mother-son (or father-daughter) relationship is established, even if they aren’t related, it is creepy for them to then become romantically involved.
I wish this didn’t make perfect sense. (･᷄︵･᷅)
Cue Touta and the harem in a Scooby Doo chase scene, to the strains of Yakety Sax.* Naturally, Kuroumaru swaps genders every time she/she appears, and sometimes drops the towel and blushes for bonus points.
* – Lucky – someone actually made a video with those two elements combined! Thank you, random person. (^_^)
Heh! I didn’t realize Johnny Bravo did stuff with Scooby and company.
In Love Hina, the running gag was Keiichi getting beat up by Naru all the time for the slightest, perceived wrongdoing. Early on in Negima, the running gag was either Negi sneezing and causing girls to reveal their panties, or Negi doing some kind of magic (including the magical sneeze), which vaporized female clothing. The age swapping thing came much later, and it didn’t come off as a running gag to me, but that’s just me.
I do think UQH’s running gag is Kuroumaru, the ultimate gender switcher.
Very frustrating chapter, indeed. I didn’t have the chance to comment last week, but I really liked chapter 102. Kuroumaru was so adorable and the best part is that this relationship DOES NOT look so forced down my throat as EvaxTouta is.
Then here comes this shadow bastard to screw things up again.
Was it so hard to make Touta and Kuroumaru pull out of this together(after all those times were Touta pulled out of worse situations by himself) and reach a better resolution?
You had one job, Akamatsu! ¬_¬’
Yes, exactly. The Kuroumaru x Touta thing has been building since their initial meeting. That’s why that ship is the most logical. Touta and Eva were son and Mother until Eva’s backstory got Touta inserted into it so that he became attracted to her in the past and vice versa.
Why does Fate employ Chao the Rapist anyway? The man is a wildcard who doesn’t play along, just wants to do whatever he pleases, and makes as much sense for a ‘world saving team’ as the Joker in the Justice League. Even if the new Ala Alba are antiheroes, there’s a line between antiheroism and all out villainy, and Chao is clearly into the psychopathic side of that border. Someone like him is more trouble than he’s worth.
Hasn’t Fate learned anything from Tsukuyomi? (And I’d like to remind everyone we aren’t sure the UQ Tsukuyomi is the same as Negima’s, not that it matters so far since the character has actually done nothing. She at least seems to take pride on being called ‘world saving’ for what that matters). Or does he just like to have psychos working for him instead of, you know, just petrifying guys who are clearly bad news and nowhere out for the greater good?
This, and your whole post, are very well said.
The only thing I can say in defense of Fate using henchmen at all is “No one can be everywhere (or everywhen) at once”. Consider what happened near the end of Negima after the battle harem had been rendered useless: Because Negi couldn’t be in all of these places at once, most of their goals in a multi-pronged approach failed. About the only things they accomplished were “give Negi time to recover from plot-itis”, “delay KE’s plan a few minutes”, and “survive” (and not even that if not for Fate unexpectedly taking out his own henchman).
But, as you said – what good are henchmen you can’t rely on, or who actually work against you? You’d think Fate would have learned that lesson several times over by now, with Tsukuyomi and Fire-Fate being only the most dramatic examples. (And that’s assuming there haven’t been worse and more examples in the intervening years.)
It’s true that there are only 24 hours in a day, and until Fate learns Naruto’s tajuu kage bunshin no jutsu he can’t be in more than one place at a time. But henchmen whose actions take time away from other goals, and require you to be somewhere else, don’t help.
Besides… what the heck is Fate actually doing now anyway, other than sitting back thinking misguided thoughts? (^_~)
Probably because he’s pretty powerful. And, Fate has shown interest in psychos before. Tsukuyomi is still in Fate’s employ to this day.