April 16th, 2014 
AstroNerdBoy ユーキューホルダー! Manga Review
UQ Holder Chapter 31
SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
After saying goodbye to the kids in the slums, Kuroumaru and Touta head to their UQ Holder home (Senkyoukan), where Touta suddenly remembers his debts.
Early the following morning, Touta eagerly wakes up to an alarm, slowly followed by a sleepy Kuroumaru. After admiring the elevator tower in the distance, Touta gets to work cleaning the engawa floors surrounding the one building alongside Kuroumaru. He’s teased by the lesser members of UQ Holder for his debts. Reaching a certain room that Basago emerges from, Touta finds himself kicked into the water by Basago for disturbing the guests they have residing in this wing of the Senkyoukan. Touta wonders why anyone would want to stay in a rundown in, causing Basago to become annoyed.
They are interrupted when Ikkuu arrives with a young girl clinging to his arm. Basago becomes polite and respectful to the girl, but when Touta inquires as to whom this person is, Basago becomes incensed, stating that this girl is their most important client and a major financial backer of UQ Holder. Further, she’s a member of the Numbers a number 9, named SAKURAME Kirie. Touta is astonished by this, but his enthusiasm further irritates Basago, who kicks him off the engawa and onto the grounds.
Upon hearing just how rich Kirie is, Kuroumaru starts thinking of how they can use this to pay off Touta’s debt. However, when Kuroumaru sees Touta’s pure honesty without a trace of greed or envy, Kuroumaru feels shame and flails about. Kirie is shy and hides behind Ikkuu without saying anything.
Ikkuu tells Touta that they are going to the tower and asks him to come with them. They are going to the base station to meet Karin, and Yukihime has already given her blessing for the trip. Touta is very excited at the prospect of getting to the tower. As the others get the boat ready, Touta goes to join Kuroumaru, who’s waiting on the dock. He notices Kirie squatting nearby, so he pays her a visit. Seeing her performing a ritual, he asks what she’s making. She responds that she’s making a save point.
Thoughts/Review:
And so the save point girl arrives, looking somewhat like the pink haired glasses girl from Lucky Star, only done Akamatsu-sensei style.
Time will tell on what exactly Kirie’s save point means. Obviously, it would seem to be her type of immortality. However, the exact method of how it works is up for pure speculation at this point. My own guess would be more like a video game save point, where if your character dies, you return to said save point. Armed with the knowledge of what’s ahead and what killed you, you can now figure out how to avoid being killed.
Assuming the number system is based on power and type of immortality, her being ranked number 9 would seem to suggest something very powerful. Returning to life, armed with information about the future would make her powerful, even if she can’t fight. That would seem to explain how she is so rich. Create a save point, go out into the world, find stuff that’s going on, die, then return to your save point with the knowledge of what has happened and exploit it for massive profit. As for paradoxes, Akamatsu-sensei doesn’t worry about things like that, so that won’t be an issue.
Basago is a complete bastard and a half. Not that I mind him kicking Touta about or anything, but he’s still a jerk. I do note with some interest that he did initially address Touta as “Touta-sama” before his irritation lead him to other forms of address.
The only problem I had with this chapter was a lack of resolution to the Church Slum arc (or whatever we are calling it). We still have NO clue what happened to the three members of Powerful Hand, nor what happened to the special forces troops. Presumably, some of them were killed, but maybe Eva slaughtered them all to give her vampire nature what it needs (since Akamatsu-sensei pretty much ignores Eva and Touta are vampires).
Worse than that, Touta doesn’t even give a moments thought about his having Magia Erebea, nor do we see Eva discussing this with him. I guess because Touta is so much of an idiot, he’s like, “What Magia Erebea? I don’t know what you are talking about? That wasn’t me. I’m going to the tower after I pay off my debts. I’m Touta. I’m the bestest [sic] of the bestest [sic].”
Part of my desire to see Eva come into the fight against Nagumo was so that when the dust had settled, she could have a chinwag with Touta about ME. I guess we’ll just have to table that since Akamatsu-sensei has no intentions of telling us jack at this point, choosing instead to press ahead with the next arc. Oh well.
My understanding is that we’ll have a chapter next week, then for the 30th, there won’t be a chapter due to Golden Week in Japan. So, here’s to seeing what kind of cliffhanger Akamatsu-sensei leaves us with for two weeks.
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so the save point point girl, touta becomjng infamous and the group going the tower… karin also returning and it seems powerful hand or fate will be waiting, things should get fun.
naruto totally floored all my interest in manga this week.
Yeah, I think something will be waiting for them at the tower or on their way to the tower.
“naruto totally floored all my interest in manga this week”…
Well, yeah, Kishimoto-senseis decision to drop all character development and just go for massive deus-ex-machina in (what I hope is) the last phase of Naruto is pretty dissapointing.
But I was still hoping for a better post-battle clean-up from Akamatsu-sensei, myself.
I don’t know, it just seems like his heart isn’t really all that much in UQ Holder. I mean Negima was a fairly ambitious and accomplished piece of manga storytelling, yet UQ Holder is…just ‘meh’, in comparison, at least.
It seems like he’s just going by the shounen numbers game in terms of action and such.
Ooh ya. The thing that bothers me about that is that I don’t believe for a second Naruto (or any well-written Shounen manga for that case) would be less well-received if it actually incorporated better character development. In fact, I’d argue they could only gain from that. Kishimoto at least has proven (in my mind, anyway) that he is fully capable of this level of writing – and he, like Tite Kubo, incorporates these aspects into the early parts of his manga and then almost completely drops them. To the enormous detriment of his writing. Naruto (and Bleach) were always at their most interesting, bestest;) when they seemed to actually give a shit for their characters as people, letting them earn the things they achieved instead of just continuously, senselessly powering them up with the next deus-ex!
I mean, why integrate this material if your never going to use it? I call that intellectually dishonest.
Counterexample: Kekkaishi sticks with its character development fairly continuously and is probably the best Shounen manga I’ve come across so far, as a consequence.
Well, character growth was part of what made Negima! so interesting to me (on top of an interesting story). So far, we aren’t seeing real character growth in UQ Holder, though it is still early in the manga.
About the Powerful Hand, the UQ Holder guys said that they will make those mercenaries take full responsibility for their actions so I assume they handed them over to some authorities for proper interrogation and prosecution.
I like specifics, not vague generalities. ^_^;;;
Good chapter overall. Vasago seems to be in charge of dishing out the humorous Love Hina punches.
Kirie seems to be too shy for an immortal of her presumed age – Southrop notes after all that her name has some pretty old Kanji variant. Maybe her power was misused by someone in the past?
I’m a bit disappointed that we didn’t see how Karin good from the moon to the top of the space elevator.
I’m giving 9:1 odds that there’s gonna be some kind of fight at the base of the elevator (man, I keep typing ‘tower’ all the time…). Maybe Fate’s gonna show up? Or some more PMC fodder?
I would guess that unless she makes a save point, she’s vulnerable. Thus anyone she doesn’t know is a potential threat until she can be sure. She apparently doesn’t go out of the UQH facility that often and based off of Basago’s reaction to seeing her, she would seem to remain secluded as well.
There’s a small chance that we might get a brief flashback moment to see this, but Akamatsu-sensei doesn’t seem to be worrying too much about details in UQ Holder.
I keep using tower as well, so I understand. ^_^ But yeah, I think there’s going to be some kind of fight and that Kirie ends up getting killed and going back to her save point.
Oh my gods, you’re right…
1- Focused so much on this loli I completely forgot about the other issues (Eva, ME, PH and the like)!!!
2- You have a good point: at first, I thought Kirie would forget about everything, but all the information would explain her wealth… but that would mean so many time paradoxes…^^”’
Anyway, lets hope, at least, for a good cliffhanger next week.
P.S. No, I am NOT a lolicon!!!
True, but Akamatsu-sensei pretty much brushes off paradoxes, as seen in Negima. ^_^;
Still, I could be wrong in my interpretation of the save point immortality.
*lol* Methinks thou doth protest too much. ^_~ (Just kidding. ^_^)
Well it might be that Kirie isn’t travelling in time. She merely gets sent back to the save point much like the Respawn in Multiplayer FPS’ works. Her ability reminds me of Terry Pratchett’s Yetis who also had a save-point based immortality. They saved the game, went into a dangerous place, died and then they respawned like nothing happened.
Do you think she’d retain her memories?
Well that was the whole point of that immortality. You “save the game” get into the dangerous situation, die and then you know what to expect and be careful about. It might be actually a great way if somewhat time consuming way to explore dungeons and other places where there are treasures and traps.
I was just trying to get clarification on how you saw it. Some folks think that she might not remember anything from said save point, which is a possibility.
“Presumably, some of them were killed, but maybe Eva slaughtered them all to give her vampire nature what it needs (since Akamatsu-sensei pretty much ignores Eva and Touta are vampires).”
LOL well, I suppose that Evangeline can’t to do a bloodthirsty scene with Touta there. anyhow she is the foster parent of him.
“Worse than that, Touta doesn’t even give a moments thought about his having Magia Erebea, nor do we see Eva discussing this with him. I guess because Touta is so much of an idiot, he’s like, “What Magia Erebea? I don’t know what you are talking about? That wasn’t me. I’m going to the tower after I pay off my debts. I’m Touta. I’m the bestest [sic] of the bestest [sic].”
It did me laugh XD
Nah, it is normal that a person can turn into a monster out of control, by that, Touta didn’t go to tell Evangeline what happened him. XD
Well, about the chapter, Is interesting to see a new member of UQ holder, she has a inmortality interesting, and she seems a shy person, Basago kicks the adopted son of the Dark Evangelio by anything, he has courage
Poor Touta, everybody know about his debt XD
But, I would have liked to see Evangeline talks about the Magia Erebea with Touta, and Karin, How is it that nobody goes to look for her to the moon?
I have the feeling that Evangeline won’t appear for a many chapters again -_____-
Considering Eva’s normal sensitivity to things like this, she would have known that Touta sprouted ME.
Well, exactly.
I think you are going to be right. I’ll go one further and say that this will be a pattern — Eva will show up for a bit, then disappear for a while repeatedly.
I got LOLed on Kuroumaru rolling around. SO reminded me of Setsuna. Haha.
I know this is weird but Touta reminded me (a little bit) of Konoka in the beginning of this chapter. Why is that? Maybe he sleeps in the lower deck??? Just my imagination…
*lol* Yeah, you are right.
I didn’t get that vibe, but that’s just me. There is one of those youkai girls that does seem like Konoka though.
Haha… you’re right. Some people say it’s a mixture of KonoSetsu! ROFL
*lol* Yeah, I’d agree — that’s what she seems like.
If you go back and look at Ikkuu’s design from his earlier appearances (chapters 7 & 11) and compare him to how he’s looked since returning in ch. 28, he looks a lot girlier now. When I was reading the current chapter I had a brain fart and almost thought he was a cute new female character before realizing he’s the cyborg guy. Japan loves their androgynous male characters.
Anywho, Kirie’s form of immortality is a rather novel one. I don’t recall any other work of fiction using RPG-style save points. I hope they elaborate on it more next week.
Looks like Akamatsu is keeping Touta and Kuromaru as “best buds” for now, but considering every one of his previous manga either was a romance or had romantic subplots, I wonder if he’s ever going to have the two progress beyond “just friends.” They’re already “future official couple” material. Kuro just has to choose a gender (if he can) that’s compatible with Touta. For now, though, it’s all one-sided on Kuro’s part. Touta apparently isn’t interested in having a significant other right now. He just wants to get to the top of the space elevator.
Yeah, you are right about that.
Ditto.
Well, Akamatsu-sensei should just make Kuroumaru a girl and have done. ^_~
[…] SPOILER image from the upcoming UQ Holder chapter 31, courtesy of the VERY gracious Southrop. (My review of UQ Holder Chapter 31 should come out […]