SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
Touta decides he's going to make friends with everyone and approaches the first yakuza guy he sees. The guy is not interested in Touta and irritated that Touta is ruining a happy reunion. Touta gets knocked away, but as usual, he's not letting that stop him. He comes back at all of the yakuza types, telling them his and Kuroumaru's name and how they are Yukihime's greatest disciples. The yakuza guys blow this off, and while Basago is somewhat amused by Touta, he tells the boy in no uncertain terms that no one said they'd be his friend.
MAKABE Gengorou arrives with fellow UQ Holder members AMEYA Ikkuu and Karin, and he silences Basago and introduces the trio to Touta. Touta is excited by this, but when he approaches Karin, she simply gives him a hard stare and blows him off. Gengorou asks if Touta wants to be one of them, to which Touta enthusiastically answers yes, citing how anyone in Yukihime's yakuza clan is OK with him. Touta continues his arrogant demands for folks to be his friend whether they want to or not.
Gengorou says that for an immortal to enter UQ Holder, they must pass an entrance exam, namely, they must escape a labyrinth underneath the capital within eight years. With that, the ground underneath Touta and Kuroumaru opens up and to ensure they fall in properly, Karin whacks both with her mallet. Both fall into the darkness, eventually landing in shallow waters. After making sure they both are OK, Kuroumaru laments being dragged into Touta's issue. Kuroumaru asks if Touta actually thought through anything when demanding UQ Holder be his friend. Touta blows this off, saying that once he's made up his mind, that's it.
Touta does wonder if Gengorou was right about there being an eight year time limit to escape this place. As they splash through the waters, Touta notices some sort of creature in the somewhat deeper waters. Kuroumaru summons a sword to dispatch this mystical beast, but a man fishing off a nearby rocky outcrop warns against it, saying that even if they killed it, the creature would summon others. Further, being eaten by one would not be good as it would take 30 years to digest. With that, he introduces himself as SHISHIDO Jinbee, leader of UQ Holder. He then asks them if they have food or fire with them.
Thoughts/Review:
As I expected, Touta and company get to UQ Holder in this chapter...well, most of them.
Touta's annoying aspects of forcing himself on others, to hell with what they want, has moved into the really annoying category. Frankly, I wish Karin had whacked him harder with that croquet mallet of hers. (Yeah, I know it isn't a croquet mallet, but I would have liked to have seen her whack Touta around like a croquet ball.) He is in desperate need of a massive schooling on why being stupid is stupid.
The big question from this chapter is whether or not this entrance exam will actually take years to complete or not. If Akamatsu-sensei does decide that Kuroumaru and Touta will be down there for years, then we'll have "lovely" time skips in the manga, since obviously we're not going to spend years of our time exploring these depths with them. I don't mind time skips with purpose, but I fear that if we do get a time skip here, we'll end up getting more, which I'm not so keep on at the moment. It may become necessary though, considering this is a story about immortals/undying.
At the moment, I'm going to lean toward them not being down there for years, but the implications are that Jinbee has been down there for a while, so who knows.
As for the creature in the water, I had a feeling it was similar to the ones that Nagi rescued Arika from in Negima.
The UQ Holder HQ is pretty impressive as a facility. Naturally, Akamatsu-sensei lets it be known that they have an onsen there. Well, it wouldn't be an Akamatsu title without obligatory bath/onsen scenes.
As to Eva, beyond her punching all those yakuza-type admirers, she was pretty much back seat. I did note that she was probably aware of what was in store for Touta and Kuroumaru. Considering how she is about tossing the cubs to the wild and seeing how they fare (Negi and Kotaro for example), she wouldn't object to this little test.
Beyond that, not a lot to say. We'll see how things go next chapter.
Update: Akamatsu-sensei isn't happy with the early scanlation releases of UQ Holder. Hata put out the notice that Akamatsu-sensei has been tweeting as such on October 7. Check out a couple of tweets (in Japanese ) here and here.
Whether the Japanese try for a massive crackdown or not remains to be seen.
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