January 12th, 2016 
AstroNerdBoy ユーキューホルダー! Manga Review
UQ Holder Chapter 108
SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
As Yukihime explains the truth drug, Karin begins speaking her thoughts about stealing snacks and a bit more.
Touta escapes and visits Shinobu, expressing his love and admiration for her. Karin arrives to nail him, but he easily eludes her, expressing that her ruthlessness is another thing he likes about her.
Kirie finds herself thinking about Touta, then tries to convince herself she doesn’t like him. Touta shows up to chat with her. The pursuing Karin thinks everything will be OK, but Touta tells Kirie he deeply loves her. When she collapses in a blushing shock, he goes down with her and embraces her, expressing his concern for her and vowing to always protect and be there for her.
Karin attacks, but Touta has already vanished. Touta visits Kuroumaru, Santa, Ikkuu, and everyone else, expressing his love for all. Mizore shows up, asking Touta about his feelings for her, so he says she’s tiny.
Yukihime rolls in with powerful magic to capture Touta and put him in isolation for a while. She puts Karin there as well, which is Yukihime’s magical prison dimension. Touta comes to, finding himself in gym attire next to Karin, standing in the hall of his old school, holding two buckets of water and balancing one on his head. After Karin explains things, Touta starts to do the one thing Karin is most anxious not happen — he starts to have the conversation with her that he’s been longing to have.
Thoughts/Review:
The Karin mini arc hasn’t gone quite as expected, but so far, I’m enjoying it immensely. I’ll love it if the arc goes on long enough for us to get some info on Karin’s past.
I’d been thinking that the truth candies on Eva’s desk had to be there on purpose. While this chapter does not specifically state this, there is a strong implication that Eva may have done it to nail people stealing her food. Early on, we learned the Jinbee got thrown underground for two years for stealing Eva’s food.
That aside, as a McGuffin, the truth drug works to make Touta become humorous as he goes nuts expressing his love for everyone. While he has used “suki da” (like/love) for most of the girls, including Eva, I was surprised that Touta used the more intimate “aishiteru” form of “love” when talking to Kirie. I wasn’t too surprised that he used it for Kuroumaru. I supposed technically, he used it on Santa and Ikkuu too since he included them as an “also” after expressing his feelings for Kuroumaru.
As an aside, Touta uses “daisuki” for all the hotel residents, guests and permanent.
I did feel a bit bad for Mizore. As folks have noticed, she’s always around the action of whatever is happening. So when she presents herself, hoping to hear Touta express love for her, he simply tells her (without malice) that she’s small (chibi). Mizore isn’t the typical kind of girl, so I expect her to roll with this pretty well.
This chapter kinda mirrors the story in Negima were Negi was under the influence of the World Tree and thus could easily elude attacks. Here, Touta is able to easily elude the attacks by Karin while singing “The Sounds of Music.”
Having Eva dump both Karin and Touta into her whatever prison (I guess “magical prison dimension” is a combination of phantasmagoria and diorama magic) sets the stage to force Karin to be fully in the Touta harem. The other girls are secure, but Karin is the hard nut to crack. I can’t wait to see her fall.
In the end, I found the chapter pretty enjoyable. I’m really hoping for some Karin substance in the next chapter.
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Touta uses the word ‘love’ loosely as Westerners do 🙂
Well, he uses three forms of the word in the Japanese.
I wasn’t too big on this chapter. Mostly transitional.
But if it leads to some Karin development/backstory next chapter I’ll be happy. We’ve still got to find out about her XIII tattoo, and who “blessed” her with immortality.
It was fun seeing Karin’s facial expressions(and her falling over) this chapter compared to the early days of UQ Holder when her thing was how stoic she was.
As long as it actually /leads/ to something I’m happy with it.
Hopefully, it will lead to something.
Yes, one of the many “forgotten” things that have been teased in the manga.
Yep. Seeing Karin like this is what makes it so much fun. 😀
The whole (dai)suki, aisuru deal must be hard to translate into english. But Kurou and the rest were upgraded from suki to aisuru. I wonder if there is more behind the “upgrade”.
I wondered about that as well.
I felt some strong ‘Love Hina’ vibes with this one, and not just thematically but, if that makes sense, in Akamatsu-senseis voice once more shining through really clearly. He seemed in control in a way I have long been missing in this series! Than again, it was one of his specialties what with the slapstick and the screwball-ness of this chapter so it probably doesn’t mean all that much going forward.
But definitely a very enjoyable chapter!
And to further that Love Hina vibe, Karin really comes off like Motoko from Love Hina since Motoko long denied her feelings for Keitaro before being honest.
This was simply a good chapter, after 4 months.
I enjoyed it. 🙂
Is it me just noticing the amount of the page being consumed when Touta confessed to each girl? Like Kirie getting the most (around 3/4 of the page) Shinobu getting the 2nd and the others in equal footing?
Or am I just overthinking things? Haha good chapter nonetheless but KA can only spare a few more chapters to go back to the tournament arc until readers go wild.
It makes it easier for Akamatsu-sensei to get the 16 pages out. 😉
I also agree it was a very enjoyable chapter. It definitely made me laugh and smile. I’m always going back to re-read the beginning, to Eva in the first chapter when she talks about being a immortal and living forever, “What kind of fate… is this? This is the story of such people, who ended up being so trivial”. I’m beginning to understand this, without going to overboard or too deep into what she was saying.
I also felt sorry also for Mizore when Tōta responded to her question, but I think it will make her more stronger and determined to win over Tōta.
We will hopefully see the tournament in the short term, and see the long-term story goal to save Nagi and Negi, but I’m realizing it is also filled with trivial aspects of every day friendships, relationships, life and love situations. These are the themes I think Eva was calling ‘trivial’. Shinobu’s goal of racing, helping a orphanage, Kuromaru transformation from assassin to friend, and from male to very much female, Kirie’s loneliness, Tōta’s classmates, all are woven into this story, and now hopefully will learn about Karin. I agree with Astro, its a way to force Karin to open up and say how she honestly feels, since she had trained herself not to reveal herself or make herself vulnerable.
Karin’s (classic) reaction of falling when she hears Tōta express his love to Kirie or for the overall Tōta’s actions by way of truth drugged expression, it really shows his different levels or kinds of love he feels toward his UQ Holder friends. A mixing of Love Hina, and Negima.
In some ways, I agree it can be Yuki’s way to help Tōta to find someone else to love could be the motive, and that gentle punishment and the sign they are wearing seems appropriate and a nostalgic way of bringing back the simple beginnings to chapter 1, and getting privacy for Karin and Tōta as was mentioned.
“There is a strong implication that Eva may have done it to nail people stealing her food.”
After read this, I can’t help but laugh hard X’D
I thought Evangeline saying “24 hours working here, and the only break I have to enjoy my prized food…It turned out that people were stealing my food!… You’ll have hell to pay, you fools!”
Funny chapter,
Poor Karin, she saying aloud she had made the same thing as Touta and she also had been in the habit of snitching snacks fairly frequently in front of Evangeline XD
Why did Evangeline have those chocolates outside the box? Did she know Touta and Karin would end up eating it?
On the one hand;
I think simply she had those chocolates because somebody of the guests gave as gratitude to her, for a moment she left the box there, and Karin and Touta ate it. Then, when she knew that Karin also ate the chocolate, she thought about take advantage of the situation to send them in her magical prison dimension and, in this way, they can have a conversation.
but on the other,
It also could be she had bought the box and as she knew that Karin and Touta would eat the chocolate, she left the box there. Then, She pretended to know nothing about they had eaten the chocolate and she send them in her magical prison dimension
Each time Kirie says “Money is everything, money will never betray me” I can’t help but laugh
The part Touta said “I love you Kirie” and suddenly, Karin falls on the floor, it was comical
The expressions of Kuroumaru, Santa and Ameya XD This is Ameya’s expression “ein? :3”
And the guest that is behind Touta he must have thought “What’s wrong with this child?”
Touta: “You’re tiny” right in the kokoro… XD
The part Evangeline showed up behind Touta I tought:
“- Yukihime Ranger detected Touta!
– Yukihime used capture styler!
– Touta is very confused! (And while he says “what in blue blazes is this?!” In his mind sound the song “You spin my head right round~”)
– Touta was caught, Capture complete!”
I don’t knew Evangeline also can do that thing, I knew about the resort that she had in negima, well, she did something similar with Setsuna in the tournament, but in that situation only their minds were in an “ilussion” and this situation she catched Touta completly,
I wonder if Evangeline can hear anything they say now. because they are in her magical prison dimension
I would like to know something about Karin’s past and as Evangeline saved her.
Eva must have put her years of Poka’mon playing to good use, capturing Touta!
Heh!heh!heh!
This been a nice love chapter for UQ Holder.
The events in this arc seem bit forced in way, why suddenly be forced into working at the inn and suddenly all this romance ensues? Wasn’t Few months ago, Touta was training with Diana to defend Eva from harm? Before that he was felling rejected and was competing in Tourny on top of the World Elevator? With shadow of terrorist attacks, kidnappings, being hunted down by his own “Grandfather’s” old adventuring party?
The series seems more random than a structured bigger story with something grand running in the background.
Fun Story, but i hope we get to milestone where we know where story actually going go somewhere.
It’s sad that we have so many similar elements to Battle Angel Alita and they are all so wasted. There’s a real impression that he’s got no idea what he’s doing plot wise, the chapters at least are funnier than I expect. But that poor plot. There’s so much you COULD do with those options.
Well, I don’t think it is that he doesn’t have an idea. I think he really wants to write like Mashima-sensei for Fairy Tail. There, you had the loose story arc of Natsu’s quest to find his dragon father. However, the story arcs themselves are random adventures. However, as there’s no baggage attached to the series, he gets away with that for the most part.
The problem here is that Akamatsu-sensei has set UQ Holder in the same universe as his other manga titles and specifically, UQ Holder is a spinoff of Negima, with all of its dangling story thread baggage. So there are a lot of plot threads fans want resumed, but Akamatsu-sensei wants to do random stories, and it just doesn’t work. MotB, the “little sister” attacker, Fate, and whomever else just go to a waiting room to read magazines to kill time until they are brought back into play. So not only does it make UQH feel adrift, it doesn’t make sense to have all these folks interested in Touta just hanging around and not going to get him. It makes no sense that Eva wouldn’t be all into rescuing Negi and Nagi.
You nailed it!
Thanks. 😀
Trying to improve manga sales. 😉
Yeah, the series has been without focus for a long while. Now, I’m fine with side stories if they give us interesting information about characters, but that’s not really the purpose here. Yeah, we got a glimpse of Kirie’s past, which was nice, but that was it. I think Akamatsu-sensei doesn’t want to be tied to story arcs as he was in Negima. He’s not against story arcs, but I think he’d like to be like Mashima-sensei and tell whatever story strikes his fancy without worrying too much about the big story arc.
I agree.
Talk about an “All-loving Hero.” Touta being forced to blab about his feelings does reveal more than the fact that he’s a genuinely nice guy who likes everyone. I know you already pointed it out, but I “read” the raw (my Japanese isn’t very good; I can parse it but can’t form a cogent sentence, and I my vocab is limited and I don’t know all the important kanji) and I too noticed that Touta reserved the more serious/romantic “aishiteru” for Kirie and Kuroumaru. He didn’t even use it for Eva, using the same “suki” for her as he did everyone else. This really gives us some insight on how he currently feels for everyone deep down. He obviously regards Kuroumaru as more than just a friend, regardless of what he might have said in earlier chapters. Touta has progressed a fair amount in recent months as a character, and while he’s still a blockhead he seems to have matured a bit since settling into his role at UQH HQ.
I know things have been light on the action front for a while, but I have really enjoyed this down time in recent weeks to further flesh out the characters. Seeing Touta have some one-on-one time with each of the girls has so far been quite cute and enjoyable.
One of my complaints has been a lack of character stuff, so at least we’ve gotten a bit with Kirie (and now Karin).