Magi 234th Night Review

Written by: Micha

Don’t you hate it when the translations are published way later after the raw? I sure do. Especially when you’ve got a psychopath (whom I love dearly) murdering your major characters. This chapter was a tearjerker for most people in the fandom, although it didn’t faze me much because I’m not a huge Sheba fan on top of me being a stone-hearted prick.

After Solomon has been weakened, Sheba has taken the throne and started running the world because that’s just the kind of gal she is. Sheba announces that ceremony of rebirth of the world was to take place soon and everyone must pledge loyalty to Solomon. And in this ceremony, all magicians must be present, including two Magi of Alma Torran, who are Ugo and Arba.

Inviting people to your funeral, are you, Sheba?

 While everyone complied with this announcement, Arba steps in and expresses her disagreement. She says that the magicians had not sorted out their feelings, and thus it was too early to announce such a thing. Whereas Sheba counters saying that everyone should be united before Solomon passes away, who doesn’t have much time. This is implication that Solomon is still alive, or that he’s just Sheba’s imagination because no one other than her has spoken to him or has been allowed to.  

Arba and Sheba breaks in to verbal aggression as Arba reasons that Sheba should listen to the hearts of her people, to which Sheba tells her to shut the fuck and obey the order. Ugo intervenes this argument and Sheba goes back inside, leaving a sobbing Arba who says that Sheba has changed a lot. This is funny because I was unaware that Arba was able to shed tears regarding matters that are not Ill-Ilah related.

That's a dick move, Sheba.

 Sheba wonders if she’s doing everything right, as it’s evident that she’s desperate to fulfill Solomon’s ideal of an equal world. They show a chanting along the lines of how nobody could achieve such an extraordinary and wonderful dream except for King Solomon; referring to the equal world. Whereas, the faces of the people looked as dead as the sunken shippers of Alibaba and Toto.

Sheba then introduces the magical tools she had developed with Ugo, which are pretty much like the Metal Vessels we know today. With a formula embedded in them, the formula activates when one sends their magoi into the tool, and these were distributed among the different species as to give them equal power. And it is also important to note that all of these tools have the Solomon’s Seal on it, which I’ll talk about later.

The species also created their own independent cities, and Sheba says to Solomon how they have created the utopia they had desired for so long. But of course, it was not utopia. Sheba was encountered by the magicians whose rukh had turned black; including her friends Falan, Wahid, Ithnan, and Arba.

Give Sheba a little taste of justice. 

Apparently, they had been doing research on how to dye the rukh black once again, along with developing creatures with it. It was at this moment that Sheba realizes her mistake. She had been so devoted to creating a world with equality that she had overlooked the feelings of the people.

An announcer announces that King Solomon was about to die, and his last moments will be spent with Queen Sheba. But the magicians had already started to revolt, with an army of creatures that they had created. Hideous, but powerful creatures.

Not only had the magicians regained their power, they had strayed from Solomon’s will by controlling the black rukh. Arba and the others were absorbing magic directly from the black rukh and white rukh, making them incredibly powerful.

Ohtaka's wild imagination at work.

And of course, the person leading this army is none other than Arba who has brainwashed the people with the name of Justice, saying that they will overthrow the justice of their arrogant King Solomon. And they will follow the reason of the “Eight Pointed Star” that governs over the truth of the world, about which I will talk later.

And that, my dear readers, is how the organization Al Thamen came in to existence.

The assault begins, and Sheba has a one-on-one with Arba, while the rest of the army destroys everything that came their way. Arba says that she has to put an end to it, and both of them fought each other back and forth for about two pages. However, Arba of course, had the upper hand with the black rukh and defeated Sheba.

That sexy look...

Sheba in the last moments of her death questions Arba why, to which she replies that it should be obvious. No longer after this, Arba goes in to her psychotic mode (which I love) and screams to the people that King Solomon had deceived Queen Sheba, who had been a devoted follower of Ill-Ilah in the past. Solomon had manipulated Sheba by using her faith.

Everyone starts pitying Sheba after this declaration, and at this point I’m suspicious if they’re being controlled or just plain unintelligent. Arba tells Sheba that she has nothing to worry about as Al Thamen will succeed her dying wish and create a pure world free of the confines of “destiny”. Arba declares that she will inherit Queen Sheba’s will.

Ugo comes running and apologizes to Sheba for being late with their troops, but Sheba was already dying. Ugo and the other species watches as Sheba ascend to rukhs. Sheba apologizes to Ugo that she was unable to protect everyone, and entrusts her unborn child to Ugo, who is somehow still alive.

Goddammit, Ugo. How many times have you pulled this shit? 

And Sheba reveals to everyone what we’ve been anxious about since the start of Solomon and Sheba romance; their child’s name is Aladdin. She expresses her love to Aladdin, whom she wasn’t able to meet; along with a heartfelt flashback where she says how happy she was that she had become a part of the big family of their friends. Also, this has to be one of the most tragic death of this series.

Ohtaka, this shit aint cool.

 The chapter ends here, where Sheba “drops dead” as Arba had said in her insanity (which have I mentioned that I love?).

My thoughts:

I'm not the biggest fan of Sheba as I have mentioned earlier, which may have something to do with me identifying myself mostly with villains rather than protagonists. And I'm going to be totally unbiased here and say that Sheba is a total cunt. As a ruler, she really is. She was so devoted to Solomon's ideal, which is good in a way that she had remained faithful to Solomon to the end, but she had forgotten to take the opinions and feelings of her people in to account in the midst of it. 

Maybe she was too naive to not have considered the situation from their perspective, but her ignorance of the people's feelings had led Arba to manipulate them easily and ultimately brought Sheba to her death.  

And we have finally confirmed that their baby is Aladdin, which was predictable but it finally being canon feels very good. And in the spirit of that, Arba being Gyouken Ren is 99.9% confirmed so we should just accept the fact that Arba stole Sheba's staff as she had "inherited Queen Sheba's will". That theory actually started out as a silly conspiracy, but it seems to be canon now. So cheers to anyone who created or supported this theory.

Now coming to more serious issues, the tools Sheba and Ugo created has Solomon's Seal on it. Which is a symbol that has been used in this manga in various places if you remember. It's two squares overlapped, creating an eight pointed star. 

These things.

I'm inclined to believe that this is a corruption of the original Star of David, or more likely the original Seal of Solomon considering the amount of Abrahamaic religion references in this manga. For the latter symbolism, this seal is said to have given Prophet Solomon powers such as command over Djinns and ability to communicate with animals, according to some of the beliefs.

But what really stuns me about this symbol in this manga is that this symbol is an eight pointed star and  according to this chapter (which says "the revolt of the Eight Pointed Stars), is apparently Al Thamen (which itself is a corruption of Eighth in Arabic), who had adopted the meaning behind it. 

What is also noticeable is that the number 8 is very significant in this manga. Solomon, including himself, has a group of eight people. Solomon, Sheba, Wahid, Falan, Setta, Ithan, Arba and Ugo. And funnily enough, most of the  names of these people are numbers in Arabic. Check the ones I have underlined.

Sinbad has eight generals that he keeps around; that is Ja'far, Masrur, Yamraiha, Sharrkan, Drakon, Pisti, Spartos, and Hinahoho. We all know this.

Maybe I'm being a little superstitious with this, but if these symbolism are intentional, Ohtaka, you're a brilliant bastard.

    

 Manga Chapter Rating:

3.5/5

You wanna say something, say it to Arba.

Bonus:

How pretty. How wonderful. How arousing.

Micha: [Co-founder]













Micha likes to broadcast her terrible drawing skills to the world on her DeviantArt account and talks about her life long ambition of making Yakushi Kabuto a woman, on her Skype; michasucks. Yes, with the dot. She will also respond to e-mails on her michamichamicha@live.com because Amber forces her to.

 Also, she now has an ask.fm and tumblr. Here's your chance   to harass her.