SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
Touta is also upset at the menial chores he does day in and out for only ¥200/hour. He wants to speak with Yukihime, but is denied at her request until he moves up to executive status by doing jobs. When Touta hears this from Basago, he thinks he has to do more cleaning, which amuses Basago, who then corrects Touta by assigning him a real mission with Kuroumaru, along with Karin as backup.
Meanwhile, Karin gets ready and goes to Touta's and Kuroumaru's room, where she discovers a naked Kuroumaru. Not only that, Karin discovers Kuroumaru is not male as she claimed. Kuroumaru desperately insists that she is male, but Karin isn't buying it, citing how improper it is for Kuroumaru and Touta to bunk together. Kuroumaru begs Karin not to tell Touta her secret, which Karin agrees to for the moment.
Now geared up and ready to go, the trio race to the job cite on foot. Karin explains they are going to the slums, an area outside the capital where the poor and undesirable are, placed there after the world decided to redistribute poverty equally among all nations. UQ Holder's mission is to protect such people from those who would attempt to slaughter the innocents living there.
They head to a church, where a nun has some small kids outside. Also outside are a group of yakuza-looking guys. Touta charges in, thinking these are the villains, and attacks. The nun tells him that they were part of UQ Holder.
Thoughts/Review:
Bwah!ha!ha!ha! I've been thinking all along that Kuroumaru was a girl, which is why my reviews of late have refused to use a gender term with her...until now. Girl it is.
I chose my catch line quote in the header from Blackadder II, where the character Nursie is recalling when Queen Elizabeth I was born and everyone initially thinking the child to be a boy.
Out you popped, out of your mummie's tumkin and everybody shouting, 'It's a boy, it's a boy!' And somebody said, 'But it hasn't got a winkle!' And then I said, 'A boy without a winkle? God be praised, it's a miracle. A boy without a winkle!' And then Sir Thomas Moore pointed out that a boy without a winkle is a girl, and everyone was really disappointed.
Besides being a funny line from a funny, British comedy, the line reflects fandom's attitude about Kuroumaru. For whatever reasons, a lot of folks wanted Kuroumaru to be a girly dude, have a romance with Touta, and so on. A lot of folks have stated how unhappy they'd be if Kuroumaru turned out to be a girl.
I never saw Kuroumaru as a dude. Everything about Kuroumaru screamed "girl" to me. As I have seen it, Kuroumaru was born a girl. She has all of the instincts of a girl in how she kept her chest covered to how she held up her arms in front of her, fists clenched below her chin, to express frustration with Touta. So for me, her whole body modification thing was an attempt to make her male, which failed.
Kuroumaru is desperate to be thought of as male. When Karin discovered her secret, Kuroumaru's initial response was to still deny her gender and insist she was a guy. When Kuroumaru saw that Karin wasn't going for it, she shifted to a plea to just not tell Touta her secret, and relief when Karin agreed, even though it was conditional.
So, I got to thinking. Why would Kuroumaru be like this? We know almost nothing about her background, but we know that she's in a clan of some sort who appear to wear masks of some kind of bird design. Then it hit me -- what if Kuroumaru's clan is not a crow-youkai clan like Setsuna's, but were instead a clan of karasu-tengu -- a different kind of youkai?
Again, this is just speculation based on very limited evidence, but tengu are almost always male, hatched from giant eggs. We only saw males talking about Kuroumaru. The bird masks the men in Kurouaru's clan wear could be karasu-tengu type masks. Tengu have great supernatural powers, and certainly we've seen Kuroumaru do something unique with the Kenfuka Bakuenheki attack (though admittedly, this could just be a previously unknown Shinmeiryuu attack, but it could be something special to Kuroumaru's tribe). Tengu can do shundo, as I understand it. Indeed, tengu martial arts skills are quite good, enough so that they've apparently taught ninja, samurai, and others. Tengu, in more modern times, are protectors shrines, temples, and even help humans. Kuroumaru's tribe may have been the ones to teach humans the Shinmeiryuu arts.
So I can easily see a clan of karasu-tengu discovering a rare female born from a clutch, who then attempt to transform said female into a male because tengu are supposed to be male, but they fail. If Kuroumaru's body was already that of an immortal, then it would make sense that their attempts would fail. (Update: As pointed out, the various translations strongly suggest Kuroumaru's immortality came from the body modification. In that case, I'd say the clan's failed attempt to transform Kuroumaru into a proper male which resulted in her not only remaining female, but also resisting any further attempts to modify her body, no wonder they'd considered her cursed.) In a clan of nothing but men, she would be raised male, but she'd feel shame about being female, and now doubt, she learned to cover herself to prevent others from learning her secret.
Anyway, it is just a theory of mine which fits with the available facts at present. I could easily be wrong.
As to Touta, he's a mixed bag to me in this chapter. I give him brownie points for deciding that if he had to scrub and clean his way to see Eva, that's what he'd do. Naturally, he loses all of his brownie points by leaping before looking, thus attacking his allies because he assumed he already knew everything. Touta's stupidity is what makes him so irritating as a character.
Regarding Touta's flashback memory-dream (which gave me a flashback to Asuna om Negima, who had similar amnesia and flashback memory-dreams), man was he torn up. No wonder Eva had to do something to save his life, otherwise he would have bled to death from his ripped off arm and leg wound. People are speculating that Eva caused Touta's memory loss, and that may be right. She would have done that to spare him the trauma, then just takes over as his guardian.
Speaking of Eva, I hope we learn what caused her to soften enough to join a group like UQ Holder, and its mission to help the weak. I'm pretty sure it was her time with Negi and the class, but I'd like to see that confirmed.
Sheeze, I've already written a ton. I'll have to be brief now. ^_^;
The slum thing is interesting, but exactly what I expect from social engineering types who think they know how to make everything equal and "fair" even though that's not possible. I wonder if the nun at the church turns out to be Cocone. That would rock. ^_^
In the end, this chapter ended up being more enjoyable than I expected, as evidenced by how much I've spewed here. Looking forward to reading more. ^_^
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