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Soul Eater Chapter 73: A sophisticated allegorical treatment of sex, gender, and No-Pants Shabushabu
You may be wondering why this month's chapter is numbered 73 when we never actually had a Chapter 72.
The answer is that there is no Chapter 72. There is no nineteenth story. There is no Miss Zarves.
There is no Giricco, either. Fandom, I'm pretty sure at this point that Giricco is nothing more than a figment of our collective imagination. Maybe he was never more than fanon after all. Maybe this is why he's never actually going to appear in canon again.
Oh well. At least we still have Noah and his collection of Lovecraftian horrors to keep us entertained: Gooey, Bratty, and soon Squishy and Freaky as well (or so Noah plans). If we throw Smarty (Eibon) and possibly two more into the mix, then Noah will have an entire set of sevendwarves Elder Gods to have his tea parties with!
So in the previous chapter we found out that Shini, Eibon, Asura, Gooberkins, and four other are actually Lovecraftian Gods (and I'm going to stick with making "Lovecraftian" jokes here because, apologies to my fellow literature nerds, but "Clark Ashton Smithian" just doesn't have the same ring to it) from beyond the abyss or wherever the fuck they originally came from. And Kid was created from a piece of Big Daddy, no surprise there. Furthermore, Noah wants to collect all of the Great Old Ones that he can have a complete set of them, just like his complete set of 1980 U.S. Men's Olympic Hockey Team bobbleheads and his complete set of Sweet Scoops My Little Ponies. Only Noah can't really have a complete set because Asura already ate three of the other Elder Gods, or something. But dammit, Noah is in full gigglefit hoarding mode now, and he's going to have every Great Old One in his collection that he possibly can have! Since he just informed us readers that the only ones missing from his collection are Shini and Asura, I guess that means that Eibon is already in the book, then? Or maybe dead. Either he's in the book (and frankly he's probably Index, in all honesty), or he's dead. There's also one more surviving Great Old One that Kid has already met, and that Noah oddly hasn't mentioned wanting or needing to collect.
So probably Excalibur, then.
Oh and Noah just did something with the Brew that is somehow, somehow going to help him acquire Big Daddy and Asura for his collection. For some reason. Because this is SUCH A GOOD IDEA ON NOAH'S PART. But I guess we're not going to find out what exactly Noah did with the Brew for another whole month, if not more. Sigh.
Anyway, Gooberkins. Gooberkins and Baby T-Rex are chillaxing together at the bottom level of Hell. It's dark... Kid thinks. A darkness so deep that it feels like it will swallow up everything... No more left, no more right... A symmetry that surpasses even bilateral symmetry... So this is 'nothing'... 'Nothing' is the ultimate objective of Order... The order imposed upon all living creatures, great and small... In other words, 'death'... Is this what I have always desired...?
Note that "I" in Kid's last line is written with the characters for "shinigami."
Also, Ohkubo is stealing this whole Death=Order, Yama=Dharma bit from Sanskrit mythology, but whatever. Oh, Kid! Yudhisthira went through the exact same angst that you're going through now, only a couple thousand years earlier and also involving comic relief provided by a talking mongoose. But, for those of you unfamiliar: In the classical Sanskrit mythos, Death (Yama) and Law/Rule/Order/Duty (Dharma) are embodied by the same god, and Yudhisthira, the half-human son of said god, had the sucktastic fate of leading a civil war against his own corrupt family members in order to restore both Order and, well, Death to his kingdom. And boy did he. And how. Yudhisthira is also noteworthy for having an obsessive devotion to upholding his very black-and-white moral view of the world, a trait of his which in the Mahabharata is played sometimes as a tragic flaw, but more often that not as comic fodder. Like that time that Yudhisthira defied the gods because he argued that it wasn't fair that doggies couldn't go to Heaven. Loyalty and devotion should be rewarded no matter what the species, at least in Yudhisthira's world view! Oh, Yudhisthira. Stay awesome, man. Stay awesome.
So, um. I believe that this is the second time that I've ever tried to connect a Soul Eater recap to the Mahabharata. If the streams ever cross like that again, just shoot me.
Anyway, back to Kid. Kill... Eliminate everything from the world... That is the Order which shinigami must obey...
INSANITY, a helpful black panel informs us. Yeah, uh, I think we got that.
"So this is the form of your insanity..." Gooberkins comments. "How is it?! Little crumb..."
It's pretty awesome, that's how it is! Predictable, but awesome. I would like to take a moment to note that the opening illustration from chapter 62 showed Kid wearing a jacket rather similar to the outfit that he's wearing now, and also with kishin-eyes on Liz and Patti. (Edited to add:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
thornheartcat pointed out in the comments that the eyes on Liz and Patti shown at the beginning of chapter 62 are the same eyes that appeared on them while they were in their Desert Eagle forms in chapter 53. So they may not be "Kishin-ish" eyes after all. But personally I think that there's enough similarity that Ohkubo has to be doing something deliberate with the eye symbolism here. We'll see.)
So, like pretty much everybody else in this entire damn fandom, I believe that this story arc will conclude with Kid learning to accept and control his own insanity without either rejecting it completely or letting it consume him, and that rather symbolically he will end up reclaiming the pattern of that coat and some of the kishin's symbols as his own. Which, by the way, makes for a really, really interesting allegory about how to deal with mental illnesses like obsessive-compulsive order in real life, but I digress. (Edited to add: And hopefully Ohkubo will be able to pull off this story arc about Kid reclaiming his own insanity without venturing into the infuriating "My mental illness is both a blessing and a curse!" Hollywood OCD Trope personified by Adrian Monk, Goddam Fucking Rainman, and almost every other fictional treatment of OCD ever. So far Ohkubo's portrayal of Kid's OCD has not only avoided this trope beautifully, but actually gone so far as to gleefully subvert it in places. I have faith that Ohkubo will continue to write Kid in such a way that crushes Monk-style Hollywood OCD Stereotypes into dust. But we'll see.)
Hokay, enough of that. Back to Hell. Fire and Thunder are clutching their genitals and looking depressed. "It looks like Fire and Thunder switched their sexes, too..." Kirikou comments. Except that, oops, he totally just ended his sentence with a feminine marker instead of with a masculine marker. Yes, you do that in Japanese. "Huh?" By the way, even his huh? is feminine. "Somehow... My speech is changing... Does this mean that my feminine instincts are awakening?"
The succubus is still there, making kissy-faces at Maka. I'm sorry, but this succubus doesn't look sexy at all, just gross. Still, Maka can't stop nosebleeding. "My... My nose won't stop bleeding..."
Soul is fuming. Then he gets his Princess on. "You're horrible... Being aroused by such a vulgar woman like that... I guess that the great Maka Albarn is just a lowly commoner after all."
Maka glares at Soul. "Soul... I don't know if you used to be a snobby little rich spoiled boy or what, but ever since you became a woman you've been totally insufferable."
Meanwhile, Black Star grabs at Tsubaki's arm and is all like "HEY TSUBAKI LISTEN TO ME OUT-GIRLY-GIRL SOUL AND KIRIKOU WITH MY SPEECH BUBBLE RIGHT HERE!" and Tsubaki's all like, BLACK STAR!! BLACK STAR'S BOOBS ARE TOUCHING ME... One of those lines is a literal translation and the other is not. Guess which one.
Yes, boys and girls. This is the chapter where we get Tsubaki think-bubbling BLACK STAR'S BOOBS ARE TOUCHING ME! in Manga Capslock. Thank you, Ohkubo. Thank you for that one. And stay classy.
"Maka is a serious little rich boy..." Liz observes. "Soul is a spoiled princess up on her high horse... Black Star is a naive, innocent little girl... Tsubaki is the type of person that Black Star is going to push around, just like before..."
"Kinda weird how we haven't changed much..." Patti comments.
"I dunno. Somehow I... I actually feel like I've gotten dumber than I used to be when I was a woman. Now that I've become a man I finally understand... Men actually do think of nothing but stupid, stupid shit all the time."
Oh, Liz. That pretty much sums up my reaction to the first time that I read Catcher in the Rye. That was the moment that I finally understood that men truly do think of nothing but stupid, stupid shit all the time. Albeit I didn't have to turn into a man to discover that. I just had to read me some J.D. Salinger.
"I know what you mean, bro!" Patti says. "I don't know why, but all of a sudden I really wanna do something violent! I don't care who it is, I just wanna beat the crap out of somebody! OH HEY INDEX," Patti says, grabbing our poor widdle guide-creature by the neck, "LEMME PUNCH YOU. JUST ONE TIME, 'KAY?!"
Index is like, oh hell noes. The succubus is like, HEY Y'ALL LOOK AT MY BOOBS WHY AREN'T YOU LOOKING?! And then Liz and Patti are like, OMG.
Thank God Ohkubo didn't draw the boners. Yeah, I think they're down for the count.
"Hey!" Kirikou protests. "We have to keep going if we're going to save Kid! We don't have time to dilly-dally around like this! What should we do..." Kirikou turns and looks at Blair. "Huh, it looks like Blair hasn't really changed at all."
"That's because I'm not really into being seduced. I'd rather be the one doing the seducing," Blair says, her speech still feminine. "That doesn't change even if I've become a tomcat." Then Blair grins evilly. "Hmph. In an erotic atmosphere like this, shouldn't I be the number one sexiest devil after all? Well, I guess there's no other choice! I'll just have to get half-naked too..."
Poof.
OMG.
Soul is like, ZOMG.
The succubus is like, ZOMG.
"What beautiful eyes you have," Blair tells the succubus. "I feel as if I could drown in them forever."
The succubus gazes up at him lovingly.
"Pum, pum, pukin, pumpkin," Blair whispers erotically.
The succubus is like, zuhwhuh?
"PUMPKIN CANNON! (HUNKY VERSION)"
Aaaaand the succubus is toast.
"Now, let's move on to the next chapter, shall we?" Blair entices the others. Still somehow being erotic about it. Somehow. And Kirikou is sparkling with love for Blair right now. Oh my god this is awesome.
"We must do as Blair has said," Soul declares, still speaking like a princess. "Index, please."
"I suppose that none of you have any more lingering attachment to the 'Lust' chapter..." Index says.
"I think it was enough for us to just skim-read this chapter..." Maka says. Good God these ellipses are getting bad. Really bad. They're just really bad in this chapter. Ugh. I mean, even worse than usual.
"Very well," Index says. And then the world starts to turn over.
"THE WORLD IS TURNING OVER?!" Black Star exclaims. Or folding over, rather.
BONK.
And that, kids, is how we turn a page when we're inside a book, apparently. "Where are we?" Tsubaki asks."And where are my boobs? Why do I still have a dick? Ohkubo, hello?"
"Oh wow, something smells really good!" Black Star exclaims.
"It's coming from over there!" Patti points out.
CHAPTER TWO: GLUTTONY.
Okay, so, nobody seems at all concerned about the fact that they've still switched sexes. Who cares about trivial little things like sex or gender when there are DUMPLINGS to be had?!
"Woooooow!" Black Star exclaims. "They look yummy---!" Patti adds.
"Welcome to the Chapter Two, Gluttony," Index says. "I suppose that any further explanation is unnecessary..."
"So after sexual desire comes gluttonous desire..." Liz says. "I guess Eibon was the type of guy who liked No-Pants Shabushabu or something, huh..."
Shabushabu is a type of Japanese meat dish, and the "No Pants" part of that actually means "No Panties." So guess what kind of a restaurant a No-Pants Shabushabu restaurant is. Go ahead, guess. I'll give you a hint: The waitresses wear short skirts, and the floors are usually mirrored. Think about that for a moment.
"Precisely," Index says. Only, uh, not? I thought that it was Noah, not Eibon, who organized the book this way. So maybe we were wrong, maybe this was Eibon's method of organization all along! Only it's not really Eibon's system, because he ripped the whole thing off from Dante's Inferno:
1. Limbo
2. Lust
3. Gluttony
4. Avarice and Prodigality (AKA hoarding and squandering)
5. Wrath and Sullenness
6. Heresy
7. Violence
8. Fraud
9. Betrayal
Aaaaand I just realized how totally hilarious Index's "Precisely" is going to be in hindsight, if it turns out that Index actually is Eibon. Or what's left of him. No-Pants Shabushabu FUCK YEAH!!! Suddenly I can imagine Shinigami-sama, Eibon, Gooberkins, and Asura hanging out eight hundred years ago during the Age of the Great Old Ones and all getting together for their usual dinner of No-Pants Shabushabu...
Philosophical question: If a god does not wear underwear Himself, is He capable of appreciating a lack of underwear on someone else? I only ask because I'm preeeeetty sure that neither Shini nor Gooberkins actually wears underwear, and Eibon, well... Eibon's kind of hard to tell.
"Look, more importantly than No-Pants Shabushabu," Tsubaki cuts in, "even though we've already left the Lust chapter behind us... Our bodies aren't returning to normal... Even though our speech patterns and our personalities have returned to how they were before."
HO SHIT
DID YOU JUST SEE THAT?!
OHKUBO ACTUALLY MADE A DISTINCTION BETWEEN SEX AND GENDER!!!
HELL TO THE FUCK YEAH!!!
So that puts this stupid, silly little Japanese manga approximately four thousand light years ahead of the entire Western medical establishment. Thank you, Ohkubo. And thank you, Tsubaki. Now I will forever remember this chapter as the one where Tsubaki said "BLACK STAR'S BOOBS ARE TOUCHING ME," and also as the chapter where Tsubaki essentially said, "So now I'm stuck being a woman with a dick. Great, Index. Just great."
"Well, obviously..." Index says. "A sin is a burden that one must bear... Once you have set foot in one of these chapters, the sin cannot be erased so easily. Shortly you should return to how you were before. However... The stronger the sin, the slower you will return... Especially in the case of Lust..."
"REALLY?!" Liz says.
"But... But..." Tsubaki says. "But that means that it's going to be humiliating for whoever is the last person to change back!"
"Whatever. It will probably be Soul," Maka declares with a sigh.
"What?! Why do you think that it's going to be me?!" Soul fumes. "You're the one whose nose kept gushing blood uncontrollably!"
"Huh. So I guess this way we'll find out which one of us is the biggest perv," Kirikou says. "How fun."
"No... No... This isn't fun at all, Kirikou-kun..." Tsubaki protests. If... If I'm the very last person to change back, what am I going to do...!!
Meanwhile, back outside the book! "Coordinate axis stable," Eruka reports. "Maintaining current levels."
Suddenly, Blair's voice! "This is Blair, this is Blair..." Blair's voice floats up from the book. "We've just exited the first chapter and now reading the second."
Meanwhile, in the Death Room! "Shinigami-sama! We've just received an incoming report from Blair!" Jackie says. "The Spartoi are currently progressing through the second chapter. Stein-sensei, Marie-sensei, Sid-sensei, and Nygus-sensei are heading toward Noah's location."
"If this all goes according to plan," Shinigami-sama states, "then we'll be able to pull off a perfect pincer attack from both sides."
Yeah, if. We saw Noah do something with the Brew last month that's prooooobably going to throw a monkey wrench into Shini's plans. On the other hand, whatever Noah did with the Brew seemed to have something to do with him wanting to add Shini and Asura to his collection - which, er, is probably going to backfire on him pretty spectacularly. Because, hey, there was also this other Soul Eater villain who somehow thought that it would be fun to huggle Asura and call him squishy and make him her squishy, and that worked out so well for her, didn't it?
Meanwhile! We cut to... Huh. Wherever the hell Noah's base is, I guess. Where is this place? Some ancient Greek ruins? The collapsed remains of the Holy Roman Empire? San Diego?!
It's San Diego, isn't it.
"This way," Tzeca beckons Stein, Marie, Sid, and Nygus. "Follow me."
Meanwhile, back in Hell! "Amazing..." Tsubaki says. "There's nothing but restaurants everywhere you turn," Maka observes.
Black Star is chowing down on some dumplings. "Patti-chan! Black Star!" Tsubaki chides them. "You can't just eat whatever you want like that!" Yeah because seriously, you'd think that at least one of these characters would be concerned by now about the possibility of a) eating Hell's food and therefore being trapped in Hell forever, like in EVERY FREAKIN' FAIRY TALE ABOUT FOOD EVER, or at least b) running up a huge restaurant bill.
But Black Star and Patti don't care. "There's more over there, too!" "Yaaaaaay, more!"
"Ooooooh," Black Star says, drooling. "Now that looks really good!"
"What's wrong with them?" Tsubaki frets. "It's like they're possessed or something..."
One by one, their sins accumulate... Index think-bubbles, "Insanity" is waiting for them at the end... Can they resist? Can they not resist? The true worth of their souls will be tested...
And here comes a giant pig with a cleaver. Of course. The pig swings his cleaver at Black Star and Patti. "How dare you steal my food!"
"A pig?" Black Star exclaims, taking a fighting stance.
"Naked Apron again!" Patti comments, raising her fists.
Liz and Tsubaki transform. "Black Star!" "Patti!"
Black Star grips Tsubaki's handle. "Hey, Tsubaki. Since you've become a dude, even your weapon form has gotten all weird and clumsy-looking."
"Onee-chan hasn't changed at all," Patti observes.
"Guns don't really change like that," Liz answers, rather stupidly, because of course they do. But whatever.
"MY MEAT IS A MEAT MORE DELICIOUS THAN THE LIKES OF YOU HAVE EVER TASTED!" the pig brags. Well, that certainly seems like a smart thing to say to a hungry ninja who's pointing something sharp in your immediate direction. "MY FLESH IS SO DELICIOUS THAT EVEN MY HOOVES ARE MORE DELICIOUS THAN THE HIGHEST-GRADE BEEF YOU COULD POSSIBLY BUY!! MY MEAT IS SO DELICIOUS THAT IT MELTS IN YOUR VERY MOUTH!!"
Black Star, Patti, and Kirikou stare at the pig, wide-eyed.
"AND NOW I'M GOING TO EAT YOU ALL!!" the pig shouts.
"NOT IF WE EAT YOU FIRST!!" Patti shouts back.
And then the pig is like, ho shit. All of those things that he just said? He probably shouldn't have said.
So Black Star slices off the pig's arm and Kirikou uses Fire to flash-roast the damn thing. Then Patti, Kirikou, and Black Star chow down while Maka and Tsubaki stare in horror.
"My arm!" the pig shrieks.
"It IS delicious!!" Black Star exclaims.
Then the pig suddenly splits in half.
Then he explodes into chunks of meat.
Then the meat spontaneously combusts.
Then the meat starts raining down upon them, perfectly roasted and ready to eat.
I cannot believe that I just typed those four sentences.
Black Star, Patti, and Kirikou dig in, looking more and more grotesque as they do so. Tsubaki stares at them, horrified. But Maka starts drooling. "I'm starting to want to eat some, too..."
"Index!" Soul shouts. "Hurry up and take us to the next chapter! If we stay here any longer, we're going to lose ourselves!"
"Understood," Index says. The page begins to turn, and...
Maka is standing alone, in a hallway, beneath a sign that says "Envy."
"Wha..." Maka says. "Where am I?" Then she realizes. "SHIBUSEN?!"
Maka, still wearing a kinda-sorta boy's uniform but with her hair in short pigtails, frowns. "What happened? I should still be inside the book... Did I come back somehow...? And where did everybody else go...?"
Well, Maka isn't totally alone. Stalker Girl is there.
"You..." Maka says.
"You don't match at all," Stalker Girl says.
"?"
"You're not good enough for Soul-sempai," the Stalker Girl continues.
Maka glares at the girl. "Wha... What the hell?"
"I won't let you have Soul-sempai!" the Stalker Girl declares.
CHAPTER THREE: ENVY.
And that's it, until May 12th!
And we are left with questions! Many questions! For example: Is the Stalker Girl really after Soul, or is she only after Soul in Maka's imagination? (I maintain that the most glorious punchline possible to this whole mess will be if, after Maka truly has returned back out of the book, she confronts the Stalker Girl only to discover that the real Stalker Girl had a crush on Maka all along.) Also! Where the hell is Giricco? What exactly did Noah do with the Brew? Why is this silly, stupid little manga about werewolves and witches and titties and dick jokes actually handling the topics of sex, gender, and mental illness in a far more sophisticated manner than 90% of most SRS BZNS literature out there? Why is Blair so hot? How did we manage to get through the entire Lust chapter without Black Star making a single dick joke? What is going to become of Noah's REALLY GOOD IDEA plot to add both the Baby T-Rex and Big Daddy T-Rex to his collection?
Well, I can answer the last question, at least:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InXXF5WZiRg
(No, I can't embed that video because of a copyright claim by NBC Universal.)
(And yes, that is the Big Daddy T-Rex in that scene. The Mommy T-Rex was the one who threw the truck at Sarah Harding's trailer and who then ate Robert Burke. Daddy T-Rex is the one who went on an angry rampage through San Diego and then ended up feeding the evil theme park tycoon who kidnapped his baby to, well, his baby. And I know this because I know my T-Rexes, yo.)
So like I failed to get through this entire recap with making at least one Mahabharata reference. But I DID manage to get through the entire recap without making a single Finnegans Wake reference, despite the fact that the Word of the Day was CANNIBALISM in Ohkubo's Playhouse. Cannibalism. Finnegans Wake. Cannibalism. Fffffffffuuuuuu---
No. I'm not going to let the streams cross again.At least not until next month.
Edited on 4/11 to correct some minor translation errors in two of Blair's lines.
The answer is that there is no Chapter 72. There is no nineteenth story. There is no Miss Zarves.
There is no Giricco, either. Fandom, I'm pretty sure at this point that Giricco is nothing more than a figment of our collective imagination. Maybe he was never more than fanon after all. Maybe this is why he's never actually going to appear in canon again.
Oh well. At least we still have Noah and his collection of Lovecraftian horrors to keep us entertained: Gooey, Bratty, and soon Squishy and Freaky as well (or so Noah plans). If we throw Smarty (Eibon) and possibly two more into the mix, then Noah will have an entire set of seven
So in the previous chapter we found out that Shini, Eibon, Asura, Gooberkins, and four other are actually Lovecraftian Gods (and I'm going to stick with making "Lovecraftian" jokes here because, apologies to my fellow literature nerds, but "Clark Ashton Smithian" just doesn't have the same ring to it) from beyond the abyss or wherever the fuck they originally came from. And Kid was created from a piece of Big Daddy, no surprise there. Furthermore, Noah wants to collect all of the Great Old Ones that he can have a complete set of them, just like his complete set of 1980 U.S. Men's Olympic Hockey Team bobbleheads and his complete set of Sweet Scoops My Little Ponies. Only Noah can't really have a complete set because Asura already ate three of the other Elder Gods, or something. But dammit, Noah is in full gigglefit hoarding mode now, and he's going to have every Great Old One in his collection that he possibly can have! Since he just informed us readers that the only ones missing from his collection are Shini and Asura, I guess that means that Eibon is already in the book, then? Or maybe dead. Either he's in the book (and frankly he's probably Index, in all honesty), or he's dead. There's also one more surviving Great Old One that Kid has already met, and that Noah oddly hasn't mentioned wanting or needing to collect.
So probably Excalibur, then.
Oh and Noah just did something with the Brew that is somehow, somehow going to help him acquire Big Daddy and Asura for his collection. For some reason. Because this is SUCH A GOOD IDEA ON NOAH'S PART. But I guess we're not going to find out what exactly Noah did with the Brew for another whole month, if not more. Sigh.
Anyway, Gooberkins. Gooberkins and Baby T-Rex are chillaxing together at the bottom level of Hell. It's dark... Kid thinks. A darkness so deep that it feels like it will swallow up everything... No more left, no more right... A symmetry that surpasses even bilateral symmetry... So this is 'nothing'... 'Nothing' is the ultimate objective of Order... The order imposed upon all living creatures, great and small... In other words, 'death'... Is this what I have always desired...?
Note that "I" in Kid's last line is written with the characters for "shinigami."
Also, Ohkubo is stealing this whole Death=Order, Yama=Dharma bit from Sanskrit mythology, but whatever. Oh, Kid! Yudhisthira went through the exact same angst that you're going through now, only a couple thousand years earlier and also involving comic relief provided by a talking mongoose. But, for those of you unfamiliar: In the classical Sanskrit mythos, Death (Yama) and Law/Rule/Order/Duty (Dharma) are embodied by the same god, and Yudhisthira, the half-human son of said god, had the sucktastic fate of leading a civil war against his own corrupt family members in order to restore both Order and, well, Death to his kingdom. And boy did he. And how. Yudhisthira is also noteworthy for having an obsessive devotion to upholding his very black-and-white moral view of the world, a trait of his which in the Mahabharata is played sometimes as a tragic flaw, but more often that not as comic fodder. Like that time that Yudhisthira defied the gods because he argued that it wasn't fair that doggies couldn't go to Heaven. Loyalty and devotion should be rewarded no matter what the species, at least in Yudhisthira's world view! Oh, Yudhisthira. Stay awesome, man. Stay awesome.
So, um. I believe that this is the second time that I've ever tried to connect a Soul Eater recap to the Mahabharata. If the streams ever cross like that again, just shoot me.
Anyway, back to Kid. Kill... Eliminate everything from the world... That is the Order which shinigami must obey...
INSANITY, a helpful black panel informs us. Yeah, uh, I think we got that.
"So this is the form of your insanity..." Gooberkins comments. "How is it?! Little crumb..."
It's pretty awesome, that's how it is! Predictable, but awesome. I would like to take a moment to note that the opening illustration from chapter 62 showed Kid wearing a jacket rather similar to the outfit that he's wearing now, and also with kishin-eyes on Liz and Patti. (Edited to add:
thornheartcat pointed out in the comments that the eyes on Liz and Patti shown at the beginning of chapter 62 are the same eyes that appeared on them while they were in their Desert Eagle forms in chapter 53. So they may not be "Kishin-ish" eyes after all. But personally I think that there's enough similarity that Ohkubo has to be doing something deliberate with the eye symbolism here. We'll see.)So, like pretty much everybody else in this entire damn fandom, I believe that this story arc will conclude with Kid learning to accept and control his own insanity without either rejecting it completely or letting it consume him, and that rather symbolically he will end up reclaiming the pattern of that coat and some of the kishin's symbols as his own. Which, by the way, makes for a really, really interesting allegory about how to deal with mental illnesses like obsessive-compulsive order in real life, but I digress. (Edited to add: And hopefully Ohkubo will be able to pull off this story arc about Kid reclaiming his own insanity without venturing into the infuriating "My mental illness is both a blessing and a curse!" Hollywood OCD Trope personified by Adrian Monk, Goddam Fucking Rainman, and almost every other fictional treatment of OCD ever. So far Ohkubo's portrayal of Kid's OCD has not only avoided this trope beautifully, but actually gone so far as to gleefully subvert it in places. I have faith that Ohkubo will continue to write Kid in such a way that crushes Monk-style Hollywood OCD Stereotypes into dust. But we'll see.)
Hokay, enough of that. Back to Hell. Fire and Thunder are clutching their genitals and looking depressed. "It looks like Fire and Thunder switched their sexes, too..." Kirikou comments. Except that, oops, he totally just ended his sentence with a feminine marker instead of with a masculine marker. Yes, you do that in Japanese. "Huh?" By the way, even his huh? is feminine. "Somehow... My speech is changing... Does this mean that my feminine instincts are awakening?"
The succubus is still there, making kissy-faces at Maka. I'm sorry, but this succubus doesn't look sexy at all, just gross. Still, Maka can't stop nosebleeding. "My... My nose won't stop bleeding..."
Soul is fuming. Then he gets his Princess on. "You're horrible... Being aroused by such a vulgar woman like that... I guess that the great Maka Albarn is just a lowly commoner after all."
Maka glares at Soul. "Soul... I don't know if you used to be a snobby little rich spoiled boy or what, but ever since you became a woman you've been totally insufferable."
Meanwhile, Black Star grabs at Tsubaki's arm and is all like "HEY TSUBAKI LISTEN TO ME OUT-GIRLY-GIRL SOUL AND KIRIKOU WITH MY SPEECH BUBBLE RIGHT HERE!" and Tsubaki's all like, BLACK STAR!! BLACK STAR'S BOOBS ARE TOUCHING ME... One of those lines is a literal translation and the other is not. Guess which one.
Yes, boys and girls. This is the chapter where we get Tsubaki think-bubbling BLACK STAR'S BOOBS ARE TOUCHING ME! in Manga Capslock. Thank you, Ohkubo. Thank you for that one. And stay classy.
"Maka is a serious little rich boy..." Liz observes. "Soul is a spoiled princess up on her high horse... Black Star is a naive, innocent little girl... Tsubaki is the type of person that Black Star is going to push around, just like before..."
"Kinda weird how we haven't changed much..." Patti comments.
"I dunno. Somehow I... I actually feel like I've gotten dumber than I used to be when I was a woman. Now that I've become a man I finally understand... Men actually do think of nothing but stupid, stupid shit all the time."
Oh, Liz. That pretty much sums up my reaction to the first time that I read Catcher in the Rye. That was the moment that I finally understood that men truly do think of nothing but stupid, stupid shit all the time. Albeit I didn't have to turn into a man to discover that. I just had to read me some J.D. Salinger.
"I know what you mean, bro!" Patti says. "I don't know why, but all of a sudden I really wanna do something violent! I don't care who it is, I just wanna beat the crap out of somebody! OH HEY INDEX," Patti says, grabbing our poor widdle guide-creature by the neck, "LEMME PUNCH YOU. JUST ONE TIME, 'KAY?!"
Index is like, oh hell noes. The succubus is like, HEY Y'ALL LOOK AT MY BOOBS WHY AREN'T YOU LOOKING?! And then Liz and Patti are like, OMG.
Thank God Ohkubo didn't draw the boners. Yeah, I think they're down for the count.
"Hey!" Kirikou protests. "We have to keep going if we're going to save Kid! We don't have time to dilly-dally around like this! What should we do..." Kirikou turns and looks at Blair. "Huh, it looks like Blair hasn't really changed at all."
"That's because I'm not really into being seduced. I'd rather be the one doing the seducing," Blair says, her speech still feminine. "That doesn't change even if I've become a tomcat." Then Blair grins evilly. "Hmph. In an erotic atmosphere like this, shouldn't I be the number one sexiest devil after all? Well, I guess there's no other choice! I'll just have to get half-naked too..."
Poof.
OMG.
Soul is like, ZOMG.
The succubus is like, ZOMG.
"What beautiful eyes you have," Blair tells the succubus. "I feel as if I could drown in them forever."
The succubus gazes up at him lovingly.
"Pum, pum, pukin, pumpkin," Blair whispers erotically.
The succubus is like, zuhwhuh?
"PUMPKIN CANNON! (HUNKY VERSION)"
Aaaaand the succubus is toast.
"Now, let's move on to the next chapter, shall we?" Blair entices the others. Still somehow being erotic about it. Somehow. And Kirikou is sparkling with love for Blair right now. Oh my god this is awesome.
"We must do as Blair has said," Soul declares, still speaking like a princess. "Index, please."
"I suppose that none of you have any more lingering attachment to the 'Lust' chapter..." Index says.
"I think it was enough for us to just skim-read this chapter..." Maka says. Good God these ellipses are getting bad. Really bad. They're just really bad in this chapter. Ugh. I mean, even worse than usual.
"Very well," Index says. And then the world starts to turn over.
"THE WORLD IS TURNING OVER?!" Black Star exclaims. Or folding over, rather.
BONK.
And that, kids, is how we turn a page when we're inside a book, apparently. "Where are we?" Tsubaki asks.
"Oh wow, something smells really good!" Black Star exclaims.
"It's coming from over there!" Patti points out.
CHAPTER TWO: GLUTTONY.
Okay, so, nobody seems at all concerned about the fact that they've still switched sexes. Who cares about trivial little things like sex or gender when there are DUMPLINGS to be had?!
"Woooooow!" Black Star exclaims. "They look yummy---!" Patti adds.
"Welcome to the Chapter Two, Gluttony," Index says. "I suppose that any further explanation is unnecessary..."
"So after sexual desire comes gluttonous desire..." Liz says. "I guess Eibon was the type of guy who liked No-Pants Shabushabu or something, huh..."
Shabushabu is a type of Japanese meat dish, and the "No Pants" part of that actually means "No Panties." So guess what kind of a restaurant a No-Pants Shabushabu restaurant is. Go ahead, guess. I'll give you a hint: The waitresses wear short skirts, and the floors are usually mirrored. Think about that for a moment.
"Precisely," Index says. Only, uh, not? I thought that it was Noah, not Eibon, who organized the book this way. So maybe we were wrong, maybe this was Eibon's method of organization all along! Only it's not really Eibon's system, because he ripped the whole thing off from Dante's Inferno:
1. Limbo
2. Lust
3. Gluttony
4. Avarice and Prodigality (AKA hoarding and squandering)
5. Wrath and Sullenness
6. Heresy
7. Violence
8. Fraud
9. Betrayal
Aaaaand I just realized how totally hilarious Index's "Precisely" is going to be in hindsight, if it turns out that Index actually is Eibon. Or what's left of him. No-Pants Shabushabu FUCK YEAH!!! Suddenly I can imagine Shinigami-sama, Eibon, Gooberkins, and Asura hanging out eight hundred years ago during the Age of the Great Old Ones and all getting together for their usual dinner of No-Pants Shabushabu...
Philosophical question: If a god does not wear underwear Himself, is He capable of appreciating a lack of underwear on someone else? I only ask because I'm preeeeetty sure that neither Shini nor Gooberkins actually wears underwear, and Eibon, well... Eibon's kind of hard to tell.
"Look, more importantly than No-Pants Shabushabu," Tsubaki cuts in, "even though we've already left the Lust chapter behind us... Our bodies aren't returning to normal... Even though our speech patterns and our personalities have returned to how they were before."
HO SHIT
DID YOU JUST SEE THAT?!
OHKUBO ACTUALLY MADE A DISTINCTION BETWEEN SEX AND GENDER!!!
HELL TO THE FUCK YEAH!!!
So that puts this stupid, silly little Japanese manga approximately four thousand light years ahead of the entire Western medical establishment. Thank you, Ohkubo. And thank you, Tsubaki. Now I will forever remember this chapter as the one where Tsubaki said "BLACK STAR'S BOOBS ARE TOUCHING ME," and also as the chapter where Tsubaki essentially said, "So now I'm stuck being a woman with a dick. Great, Index. Just great."
"Well, obviously..." Index says. "A sin is a burden that one must bear... Once you have set foot in one of these chapters, the sin cannot be erased so easily. Shortly you should return to how you were before. However... The stronger the sin, the slower you will return... Especially in the case of Lust..."
"REALLY?!" Liz says.
"But... But..." Tsubaki says. "But that means that it's going to be humiliating for whoever is the last person to change back!"
"Whatever. It will probably be Soul," Maka declares with a sigh.
"What?! Why do you think that it's going to be me?!" Soul fumes. "You're the one whose nose kept gushing blood uncontrollably!"
"Huh. So I guess this way we'll find out which one of us is the biggest perv," Kirikou says. "How fun."
"No... No... This isn't fun at all, Kirikou-kun..." Tsubaki protests. If... If I'm the very last person to change back, what am I going to do...!!
Meanwhile, back outside the book! "Coordinate axis stable," Eruka reports. "Maintaining current levels."
Suddenly, Blair's voice! "This is Blair, this is Blair..." Blair's voice floats up from the book. "We've just exited the first chapter and now reading the second."
Meanwhile, in the Death Room! "Shinigami-sama! We've just received an incoming report from Blair!" Jackie says. "The Spartoi are currently progressing through the second chapter. Stein-sensei, Marie-sensei, Sid-sensei, and Nygus-sensei are heading toward Noah's location."
"If this all goes according to plan," Shinigami-sama states, "then we'll be able to pull off a perfect pincer attack from both sides."
Yeah, if. We saw Noah do something with the Brew last month that's prooooobably going to throw a monkey wrench into Shini's plans. On the other hand, whatever Noah did with the Brew seemed to have something to do with him wanting to add Shini and Asura to his collection - which, er, is probably going to backfire on him pretty spectacularly. Because, hey, there was also this other Soul Eater villain who somehow thought that it would be fun to huggle Asura and call him squishy and make him her squishy, and that worked out so well for her, didn't it?
Meanwhile! We cut to... Huh. Wherever the hell Noah's base is, I guess. Where is this place? Some ancient Greek ruins? The collapsed remains of the Holy Roman Empire? San Diego?!
It's San Diego, isn't it.
"This way," Tzeca beckons Stein, Marie, Sid, and Nygus. "Follow me."
Meanwhile, back in Hell! "Amazing..." Tsubaki says. "There's nothing but restaurants everywhere you turn," Maka observes.
Black Star is chowing down on some dumplings. "Patti-chan! Black Star!" Tsubaki chides them. "You can't just eat whatever you want like that!" Yeah because seriously, you'd think that at least one of these characters would be concerned by now about the possibility of a) eating Hell's food and therefore being trapped in Hell forever, like in EVERY FREAKIN' FAIRY TALE ABOUT FOOD EVER, or at least b) running up a huge restaurant bill.
But Black Star and Patti don't care. "There's more over there, too!" "Yaaaaaay, more!"
"Ooooooh," Black Star says, drooling. "Now that looks really good!"
"What's wrong with them?" Tsubaki frets. "It's like they're possessed or something..."
One by one, their sins accumulate... Index think-bubbles, "Insanity" is waiting for them at the end... Can they resist? Can they not resist? The true worth of their souls will be tested...
And here comes a giant pig with a cleaver. Of course. The pig swings his cleaver at Black Star and Patti. "How dare you steal my food!"
"A pig?" Black Star exclaims, taking a fighting stance.
"Naked Apron again!" Patti comments, raising her fists.
Liz and Tsubaki transform. "Black Star!" "Patti!"
Black Star grips Tsubaki's handle. "Hey, Tsubaki. Since you've become a dude, even your weapon form has gotten all weird and clumsy-looking."
"Onee-chan hasn't changed at all," Patti observes.
"Guns don't really change like that," Liz answers, rather stupidly, because of course they do. But whatever.
"MY MEAT IS A MEAT MORE DELICIOUS THAN THE LIKES OF YOU HAVE EVER TASTED!" the pig brags. Well, that certainly seems like a smart thing to say to a hungry ninja who's pointing something sharp in your immediate direction. "MY FLESH IS SO DELICIOUS THAT EVEN MY HOOVES ARE MORE DELICIOUS THAN THE HIGHEST-GRADE BEEF YOU COULD POSSIBLY BUY!! MY MEAT IS SO DELICIOUS THAT IT MELTS IN YOUR VERY MOUTH!!"
Black Star, Patti, and Kirikou stare at the pig, wide-eyed.
"AND NOW I'M GOING TO EAT YOU ALL!!" the pig shouts.
"NOT IF WE EAT YOU FIRST!!" Patti shouts back.
And then the pig is like, ho shit. All of those things that he just said? He probably shouldn't have said.
So Black Star slices off the pig's arm and Kirikou uses Fire to flash-roast the damn thing. Then Patti, Kirikou, and Black Star chow down while Maka and Tsubaki stare in horror.
"My arm!" the pig shrieks.
"It IS delicious!!" Black Star exclaims.
Then the pig suddenly splits in half.
Then he explodes into chunks of meat.
Then the meat spontaneously combusts.
Then the meat starts raining down upon them, perfectly roasted and ready to eat.
I cannot believe that I just typed those four sentences.
Black Star, Patti, and Kirikou dig in, looking more and more grotesque as they do so. Tsubaki stares at them, horrified. But Maka starts drooling. "I'm starting to want to eat some, too..."
"Index!" Soul shouts. "Hurry up and take us to the next chapter! If we stay here any longer, we're going to lose ourselves!"
"Understood," Index says. The page begins to turn, and...
Maka is standing alone, in a hallway, beneath a sign that says "Envy."
"Wha..." Maka says. "Where am I?" Then she realizes. "SHIBUSEN?!"
Maka, still wearing a kinda-sorta boy's uniform but with her hair in short pigtails, frowns. "What happened? I should still be inside the book... Did I come back somehow...? And where did everybody else go...?"
Well, Maka isn't totally alone. Stalker Girl is there.
"You..." Maka says.
"You don't match at all," Stalker Girl says.
"?"
"You're not good enough for Soul-sempai," the Stalker Girl continues.
Maka glares at the girl. "Wha... What the hell?"
"I won't let you have Soul-sempai!" the Stalker Girl declares.
CHAPTER THREE: ENVY.
And that's it, until May 12th!
And we are left with questions! Many questions! For example: Is the Stalker Girl really after Soul, or is she only after Soul in Maka's imagination? (I maintain that the most glorious punchline possible to this whole mess will be if, after Maka truly has returned back out of the book, she confronts the Stalker Girl only to discover that the real Stalker Girl had a crush on Maka all along.) Also! Where the hell is Giricco? What exactly did Noah do with the Brew? Why is this silly, stupid little manga about werewolves and witches and titties and dick jokes actually handling the topics of sex, gender, and mental illness in a far more sophisticated manner than 90% of most SRS BZNS literature out there? Why is Blair so hot? How did we manage to get through the entire Lust chapter without Black Star making a single dick joke? What is going to become of Noah's REALLY GOOD IDEA plot to add both the Baby T-Rex and Big Daddy T-Rex to his collection?
Well, I can answer the last question, at least:
(No, I can't embed that video because of a copyright claim by NBC Universal.)
(And yes, that is the Big Daddy T-Rex in that scene. The Mommy T-Rex was the one who threw the truck at Sarah Harding's trailer and who then ate Robert Burke. Daddy T-Rex is the one who went on an angry rampage through San Diego and then ended up feeding the evil theme park tycoon who kidnapped his baby to, well, his baby. And I know this because I know my T-Rexes, yo.)
So like I failed to get through this entire recap with making at least one Mahabharata reference. But I DID manage to get through the entire recap without making a single Finnegans Wake reference, despite the fact that the Word of the Day was CANNIBALISM in Ohkubo's Playhouse. Cannibalism. Finnegans Wake. Cannibalism. Fffffffffuuuuuu---
No. I'm not going to let the streams cross again.
Edited on 4/11 to correct some minor translation errors in two of Blair's lines.
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