Written
by: Pomelote
Semi-new regular weekly feature, until
the returns of ClayDragon and Axlorg, who are currently missing, presumed
having a sleep-in!
Hitsugaya, fresh off his adult
transformation, retcons the "my Bankai ends when all of the ice petals
disappear" thing from back in the Arrancar arc by explaining that it was a
wrong assumption, while Byakuya patiently watches and listens. To compensate for
the boost in power, he had to age up to manage it, or something.
Oh, don't worry, I'm sure you'll be able to find yourself a fan or two.
Gerard asks Hitsugaya who he is, and when
Hitsugaya tells him, he seems confused about the transformation, but he
cheerfully shouts that the adult Hitsugaya is more suited for the battle with
him than child Hitsugaya. He throws his shield at Hitsugaya, discus-style, but
Hitsugaya calmly freezes and dodges it.
Hitsugaya tells Gerard off, reiterating
that he already told him to stop flinging things around and risking damaging
Soul Society below. Gerard takes a swing at Hitsugaya with his sword,
Hoffnung, and Hitsugaya just cuts it in half with a swing of his own. Gerard starts to
laugh and do some reiterating of his own about Hoffnung's power, but Hitsugaya
interrupts and informs him that by freezing it beforehand, he managed to negate
its powers.
Ice, of course! Hope's only elemental weakness! In hindsight, it's so obvious!
Gerard forms a heilig bogen and declares that he'll
just have to overwhelm Hitsugaya with a display of raw energy. As he's about to
unleash it, Hitsugaya climactically reveals that Gerard himself has already
been frozen solid.
For some reason, Gerard's new look reminds me of the Mask of Agamemnon, even though he doesn't really look like it. Poll: What does Gerard most remind YOU of?
As Hitsugaya starts to relax, the ice
suddenly shatters and Gerard breaks through, grabbing Hitsugaya in his hand. He
rants about how he's a disciple of God and can't be imprisoned by mere Earthly
elementals, and he starts to crush Hitsugaya. Suddenly, he topples over,
face-first, and it's revealed that Kenpachi dug his fingers into Gerard's heel,
and it made him fall over when he tried to step forward.
When Gerard gets distracted yelling at
Kenpachi, Hitsugaya resumes freezing him again. He switches to yelling at
Hitsugaya, as thousands of swords form in the air around him. Byakuya is revealed
to be standing behind him, using his Senkei Bankai technique. He uses a new
technique, Ikka Senjinka, and all of the blades fly directly at Gerard's head
(point-first, not handle-first, so you know Byakuya means business and isn't
just handing them to him).
It's just like sticking your fingers in a bowling ball.
The angel on Gerard's shoulder really has it in for him.
Thoughts:
Actual teamwork! That's a novelty. I'd
given up hope on seeing that a few weeks ago. That said, I doubt that this is
the end for Gerard. Maybe it'll take the combined Bankai reveals/attacks of
every single participant in this fight to take him out.
Otherwise, there's not a whole lot to really discuss. Hitsugaya's adult-form comes across as a retcon, but not the biggest ever. We're finally starting to see some of the improvements Byakuya made while he was training, which is interesting. Frankly, I haven't really been enjoying these Schutzstaffel fights very much, seeing them as mostly overly-predictable excuses to finally reveal Bankais against utterly flat opponents (with the slight exception of Askin), but this chapter was a positive turn.
The
Seven Deadly Sins 171: The Time Has Come
Come on, the Hulk's pants aren't orange.
Even I know that.
In the aftermath of Escanor's attack, the
two members of the Ten Commandments lie in rubble, smoking. And not in a
post-coital way, either, I mean they're all tattered and burned and icky. Ban
turns to Meliodas to ask him what to do, but Meliodas is already pressing the
attack.
"Foreplay"? Maybe my dumb post-coital comment wasn't that far off the mark, after all...
Meliodas
rushes straight at the Dolor, the four-armed giant-guy's face while he's still
recovering, but Dolor gets a fist up and sort-of counters Melioda's punch with
one of his own.
Ah,
they both chose rock, it's a draw.
Meliodas' punch knocks back Dolor's, and
Dolor tries to use his other three arms, but Meliodas counters those, as well,
and he hops up Dolor's abs, Shadow of Colossus-style, to uppercut him in
the face. Dolor takes a swing/s with his left arms at Meliodas just as he draws
his sword and slices, taking off both of the arms.
Dolor sticks his fingers in the graze
left on his chest by the slash and licks the blood, commenting, "So this
is what you had up your sleeve." Meliodas confirms it and explains that he
was waiting for an opportunity to make his attack when their guards were down,
by pretending to not be taking the tournament seriously and not telling anybody
his "plan" so that Dolor couldn't read their minds.
Oh, that's definitely going to affect your balance.
Gowther holds Escanor in his arms and
asks him, "Why would you do something so reckless?" Escanor weakly
smiles and tells him that even without a heart, Gowther is still one of his
comrades, and he wouldn't forgive The Ten Commandments for playing with
Gowther's heart.
Aww, that's nice. No, really, it is!
Dolor commends Meliodas, but adds that he made a mistake, while Gloxinia's rose-form of Vasquez pokes out of some rubble. Dolor waves his remaining arms about and slaps his hands together, using a technique called "Gigant Embrace", and the two stone hand platforms come together, crushing everybody between the two palms like when you try to catch a bug and you don't have a jar. Weren't his remaining hands both righties? Slapping them both together seems like it'd be really awkward and uncomfortable to do. Dolor threatens to crush his hostages unless Meliodas does what he orders, and Meliodas responds by chopping off Dolor's last two arms. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, I guess.
This week's chapter brought to you by Kubo
Tite.
Meliodas declares, "In that case, I'll just
have to butcher you first!" as he rushes at Dolor's face again. Ah, well,
a blind, thoughtless bum-rush, there's no way that can fail. Well, uh, actually, it
doesn't fail, and he punches Dolor, sending him flying. Before he can
finish him, he's hit by an attack. The attacker is revealed to be Gloxinia,
showing off another one of Vasquez's forms.
No, that looks great on you, really! *stifles snicker*
Gloxinia reassures Dolor, who looks
pretty unconscious, that they'll put Meliodas in his place, as he fails to notice the Vasquez armour
starting to crack and splinter. It shatters, shocking Gloxinia. Meliodas
threatens him once again, and the chapter ends.
Thoughts:
Actually, I haven't kept up with this series in a while and I haven't had time to properly catch up beyond the last few chapters, so I'm mostly confused about what's going on. I'll get my act together and do a better job of this column next week, I promise!
Pomelote
Pomelote is the physical embodiment of first-world millenial entitlement. You can contact her on Skype with the name suukebind or Twitter at @poorlicoricekid, if you know any good spam bots. When she has free time, she enjoys putting gross, chewed gum in people's freezers and using their floss without asking.
it was not a retcon before the arc started kubo said in an interview about toshiro mastering his bankai that before his bankai when his petals crumbled his bankai would dissapear but after he mastered it Howver... (and then he never said what would happen
ReplyDelete"
Q: Is Hitsugaya's Bankai complete?
K: His training bore fruit and it is completed. Up until now, when the flowers disappeared behind him, so would his Bankai. However..."
Thanks for reading and commenting! ( ՞ਊ՞)
ReplyDeleteAh, interesting. I wasn't aware of that. As far as I can tell, though, that's still a retcon, if that interview took place after the Arrancar arc.
I suppose it's possible that something like this was always planned, though, given that they've been talking about how much of a prodigy Hitsugaya is for years. But, to be honest, this comes across as pretty retcon-y to me, so that's what I went with.
Come to think of it, what exactly was the impetus for Hitsugaya mastering his Bankai? Becoming a zombie sex slave?
actually the interview came right before the final blood war arc started and kubo said that he mastered his bankai during the time skip and remember there was never a time where in the arc all the flowers went down until now
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