Sunday, November 29, 2015

UQ Holder 103: Protect or be Protected?

Really not a fan of this chapter. Everything that I was afraid of last time ended up happening. Despite this universe being chock full of powerful action girls, Kuroumaru makes it pretty clear that becoming female has severely weakened her. She implies that it's mostly that she's not used to moving in that body... but in that case wouldn't becoming male have the same problem since she was genderless before? At the end, (s)he ends up winning by either forcing him/herself back to her/his original state, or into a male form. I assumed the change was permanent when it was revealed a few chapters ago, but I guess I was proven wrong.

Honestly, Kuroumaru transforming back disappoints me. Him finally falling into a gender seemed like it was going to be a serious change after his condition was hinted at ~80 chapters ago, but now we're right back into the status quo. At the end Kuroumaru even tells us that his feelings for Touta haven't changed, which makes me worry that all the development he was building up over the last few chapters is now moot. At least we know that he's decided he would rather fight beside Touta than be protected by him.

On the bright side, the action scenes in this chapter were pretty interesting to look at. Too bad it ended so quickly once Kuroumaru changed. As I thought last chapter, for all his hype immortal hunter Chao seems to only exist as an embodiment of the worf effect. I had higher hopes for Asura Tu, but he just decided to leave rather anti-climatically. A shame, as I was really hoping that this encounter would lead us out of the recent harem stuff into a more serious plotline.

No comments:

Post a Comment