nenena: (Soul Eater - Blair kitty)
nenena ([personal profile] nenena) wrote2012-03-15 05:48 pm

Soul Eater Chapter 96: "Screw you guys, I'm going to the moon."

We begin, of course, with a full page of Maka's think-bubbles. Basilica di Santa Maria Novella... I remember... Even now, it still scares me... How I first met Crona here... How shocked I was back then, when I first saw Crona's soul. A weapon and a meister sharing one body. Two souls---...

Maka stares at Crona. That still hasn't changed. Crona and Ragnarok's two souls... And yet...

Maka's hand trembles. "Ah... You're Crona, aren't you..."

Crona looks down. "Maka..."

"!" Maka then breathes a sigh of relief. "Thank goodness... Crona! I've been looking everywhere for you!" Maka holds out her arms. "Let's go back to Shibusen!! Everyone's waiting for you. Nobody will make you do bad things anymore. I'll protect you no matter what!!"

Crona's face darkens. "It's too late..."

"What...?"

"Somehow... Somehow... I came here for some reason... Who are you...? What are you to me...? I don't really remember..."

Crona looks up. "But... I was waiting for you... I came here to wait for a person named 'Maka'..."

Maka smiles nervously. "Yes. That's why I came to meet you here."

"This is the last rule that I will uphold..." Crona says. "Drawing the line here..." Crona still won't look directly at Maka. "That's why I was waiting here. To be able to say those last words to Maka..."

"Wait!" Maka says. "That's not..." She tries to smile again. "Soul and Black Star and Kid and Tsubaki-chan and Liz-chan and Patti-chan, everyone... Everyone came to care about Crona so much... Especially Marie-sensei... It's still not too late... Everyone will accept you again!"

"You don't understand..." Crona says. "I killed my own mother..."

Maka is le shock!! "Me... Medusa... You killed Medusa..."

"That's right... I killed somebody who can never be replaced... The only person who I was connected to... With this very hand... And I never thought that doing so could make me feel so free..."

Maka isn't smiling anymore.

"All of my cogs are already turning..." Crona says, in what has got to be the coolest-looking panel of this entire chapter. "I can't gear with anybody else anymore..." Okay, this is a bit of a weird pun, but Crona is saying that hir "gears" can't mesh/bite into anybody else's gears anymore because they're already spinning. It's quite a bit less nonsensical in Japanese than it is in English, but I am le tired and can't come up with a more elegant translation right now, so I'm sorry for inflicting this bad translation on y'all.

Suddenly, Crona is DRAMATIC SOUL WAVELENGTH FLOURISH!!!

Outside the church: Soul, Black Star, and Tsubaki look on in alarm.

But Maka refuses to step back as Crona walks toward her...

...and then right past her.

"This is goodbye. I have to go now."

Maka reaches for Crona's arm. "Wait!!"

But her hand is repelled by a sharp sting.

Because on the next page Crona is suddenly GOING MALEFICENT on Maka and sprouting MOTHERFUCKING THORNS all over the goddamn place.

"Rules are absolute," Crona says. "Rules are everything in the world. Even animals follow rules. Even bugs. But I can't follow rules. I'm allergic to rules. I don't know how to deal with this world of nothing but rules." Crona slithers toward the church doors. "I will go to the moon. The kishin will be mine. With the kishin's insanity I will warp and bend the world. I will make all the gears in the world spin madly forever."

"That's not true!!" Maka shouts, apparently still five steps behind in the conversation. "We can heal you again!!"

Crona finally turns toward Maka. "This is not something you can fix. This is my own decision. It is something that I have decided to do." Crona puts hir hand on the door. "These doors... They opened inward, didn't they?"

BAM.

Crona sends the door exploding outward with a flick of hir fingers. It crashes right between Soul and Black Star.

"Crona!!" Black Star says, making ANGRY FACE. Oh man, Crona, you've really done it now. Remember how he flipped out when Eruka hurt his beautiful nose?!

Crona stands in the empty doorway of the church. Crona's hair is growing thorns.

"I can't uphold all the rules---... That was the first thing that I decided..."

"Tsubaki!!" Black Star shouts.

"But where's Maka-chan?!"

Maka comes running out of the church. "Wait, Crona!!"

"DON'T TOUCH ME!!" Crona shrieks, whipping Maka aside with a lash of those thorn-tentacle things.

"Maka!!" Soul dramatically shouts. "Crona, you bastard!!"

Meanwhile, in another part of the city! "What's this wavelength?!" Ox says.

"Did they find Crona?" Kim rather astutely guesses.

Back in front of the church, Maka is shakily getting back on her feet.

Crona's back is turned to Maka, but Crona still says, "I don't want to hurt anybody anymore." The Crona sprouts hir wings (now decorated with decidedly clown-like harlequin diamonds) and takes to the air.

But Black Star can "fly", remember? So Black Star gets in Crona's way! "Stop right there!" Black Star shouts. "We're not done talking to you!!" He pulls pack his fist for a punch. "Get. Back. DOWN!!"

Yeah that punch has no chance of happening. Crona lashes out with another tentacle, wraps it around Black Star's ankle, and flips him into the air. "I SAID I DON'T WANT TO HURT ANYBODY ANYMORE!"

Like a cat, Black Star manages to land on his feet. And suddenly, Ox and Company are there, too! "Where is Crona going?!" Ox asks Maka.

"To the moon!!" She runs toward Soul. "Soul!!"

"Let's go!!"

"Wait!!" Harvar interrupts them. "Shibusen is in the middle of battling the kishin's forces on the moon. If somebody as dangerous as Crona is heading toward the moon, our first priority should be to contact Shibusen and warn them!!"

"Not to mention that it would be suicide for you to chase after Crona on your own," Ox tells Maka. "Among all the Spartoi, Black Star is the most capable of fighting against Crona, and even he couldn't land a single hit."

"Sh... Shut up..." Black Star groans. "It's not that I couldn't keep up with Crona, it's that this era can't keep up with me!!"

"And we don't even know where Kirikou and his pots are!" Jackie adds. Wait, Kirikou isn't there with them? Oh yeah, because he split up into his own group last chapter. "He barely has any soul perception, so he probably hasn't even noticed anything going on over here yet."

"DAMMIT!!" Maka swears.

"What happened between you and Crona?" Harvar calmly asks. "You should make a report to Shinigami-sama right away!"

Maka flashes back to Crona's thorny face. "The kishin will be mine. With the kishin's insanity I will warp and bend the world. I will make all the gears in the world spin madly forever."

Maka turns toward the rest of her team. "Everyone, get ready!! We're going to the moon!!"

"Let's go and meet Kid there!" Soul agrees.

"I wanted to go the moon from the beginning anyway!" Black Star says.

"Crona is such an idiot!!" Maka says through gritted teeth. "I don't care about executions and I don't care about rules. Screw that crap! I just need to knock some sense into Crona!"

Meanwhile, in the Death Room!

Tezca is dead but still hanging around inside Shinigami-sama's mirror, because why the hell not. "They're fighting the kishin's clown army right now... The enemy soldiers can replenish themselves with no limit. It seems like this is going to be a close fight. Kid has connected two Lines of Sanzu but has yet to fully awaken as a shinigami..."

"Oka~~ay..." Shinigami-sama says.

Ohkubo has drawn Enrique dancing around in the background of this panel to let us readers know that he still remembers that Enrique exists.

"This is going to be difficult without the Brew..." Shinigami-sama says. His mask is significantly more riddled with cracks than it was the last time that we saw him.

"The Spartoi team has successfully made contact with Crona," Tezca continues, "but said target appears to have fled to the moon... It appears as though Crona is after the kishin..."

"'M also a bit worried about that kid named Gopher who ran off with the Book of Eibon and the Brew..." Shinigami-sama says. A bit worried. "The kishin battle might end up turning into four-sided tomoe after all." A more boring person might have said "end up being a four-way battle after all," but this is Big Daddy we're talking about, who according to canon itself is the biggest weaboo who ever weebed, so of course in the next panel we see him imagining a four-way battle on the moon as a pretty, swirly tomoe design. "Have you issued Kim the orders for the Spartoi to return to Shibusen?"

"Yes. And we are now ready to establish contact with the fifth power that has interest in this battle as well."

Meanwhile, on the moon!

Kid is getting tired. And getting his ass kicked.

A White Rabbit suddenly kicks Kid in the stomach, sending him flying. Ouch. So that means that Kid is now officially fighting on Akane's level. Pathetic.

"Onee-chan..." Patti says.

"Kid is going to run out of strength, and there's no end to them!" Liz says.

Kid looks very unhappy. Also he has that my eye is swelling shut because I just got punched in the face by a mostly-naked tentacle clown monster wearing a jaunty tophat thing going on all over his face in the next panel, but that might also just be Ohkubo trying to draw Kid looking angry and concerned at the same time. It's kind of hard to tell.

So Kaguya does her laughter-bamboo pun again and gloats, "Come, fight until you cannot fight anymore! And look and see the state of this battle now!"

Shibusen grunts are dead or dying EVERYWHERE.

"What should we do..." One nameless grunt says to another. "No matter how many of them we defeat, more of them keep coming..."

"There's no end to this battle, is there..."

Meanwhile! Justin is, I dunno, doing his Justin thing, which means laughing maniacally and growing extra arms and legs everywhere and distending his jaw so that he can scream gibberish at MAXIMUM VOLUME. "THIS IS KISHIN-SAMA'S INSANITY!! CEASE YOUR SUFFERING!! SUBMIT TO THE MADNESS!!" And in the next panel, he... Well, I don't know what the fuck that's even supposed to be. He's doing something all right. "You of all people, why do you continue to struggle against the insanity? Give in and submit!!"

I guess that was directed at Stein. I think I'm supposed to be unsettled or creeped out by the way that Stein is drawn in the next panel. But I just can't find him scary when he looks so. darn. silly.

"Never!" Marie answers Justin's taunt. "As if Stein would ever fall for such stupid traps like yours!"

"Ha ha ha," Justin laughs. "What are you talking about?! You're already in my trap! That's right - my trap is this very moon itself!! This very moon upon which you stand!! The perfect bait to lure you into the perfect trap!!"

...Okay, I'm sorry, but I have to bring this back again:



Godammit, Justin.

"THIS VERY MOON ITSELF IS MY ULTIMATE GUILLOTINE!!"

Ohkubo, that next panel is a bad visual and you should feel bad.

"One step on this moon's surface and slowly slowly you will find yourself unable to run away! You are all trapped inside my pillories already! Fear how the blood from your throat will splatter when my guillotine slices through your neck! Insanity shall forever rain from the moon!! The guillotine is coming for your heads!! The guillotine shall forever rain from the moon!! Guilloti... Guillo... Giro.... BLURGH!!"

Hey Justin, isn't it kind of hard to scream gibberish when half of your face is suddenly exploding?

"You can't keep being a pain in our ass forever," Stein says to Justin. "It's time to finish you off."

Oh please do, Mr. Stein. Please. For the love of terrible bamboo puns, please finish the asshole off. I don't know if I can take another chapter of Justin being Justin.

"Even if you kill me, you'll never turn the tide of this battle!" Justin says. "You've already lost." Then he just starts spitting out blood and screaming. "AND ISN'T IT MYSTERIOUS, STEIN-SAN, HOW YOU'RE STILL ON SHIBUSEN'S SIDE?! RULES AND RULES AND ELIMINATING ROTTEN BELIEFS AND ELIMINATING ROTTEN PEOPLE AND MAKING YOUR WORLD WHERE EVERYBODY HAS TO THINK THE SAME! DAMN! WAY! AND FRONT TO BACK YOU MAKE THEM LINE UP AND SLANTWAYS SIDEWAYS YOU STILL MAKE THEM LINE UP AND WHAT EXACTLY IS WRONG WITH LETTING THE SLANTY SIDEWAYS SLANT THEIR OWN WAY? DO WHAT YOU WANT AS MUCH AS YOU WANT! RESEARCH WHAT YOU WANT AS MUCH AS YOU WANT! KILL WHO YOU WANT AS MUCH AS YOU WANT!! THAT'S THE NATURAL WAY TO BE ISN'T IT?! ARE THE SHINIGAMI'S RULES REALLY THAT IMPORTANT?!"

Stein grips Marie. "SOUL RESONANCE!"

"He doesn't understand anything about Shinigami-sama's rules," Marie says.

"STEIN, THE MADNESS INSIDE YOU WILL NEVER BE CONTAINED BY SHIBUSEN'S RULES!!"

"Right now I have a target to attack, so the rules and I are getting along just fine!"

"THEN AFTER YOU HAVE ELIMINATED ALL HERESY AGAINST YOUR SHINIGAMI, WHAT WILL YOU DO THEN?! HOW WILL YOU LIVE WITH RULES-SAMA?! WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH THE MADNESS INSIDE OF YOU?!"

"REVENGE FOR B.J.!!" Marie screams.

Wow, Marie's ultimate attack is really, really pretty. It looks like a triquetra.

Make that a really, really BIG triquetra.

Two pages later: DING DONG, THE ASSHOLE'S DEAD!

But since a tiny portion of Justin's face is left intact, dramatic! manga! rules! dictate that he must deliver some dramatic! last! words!

How Justin is managing to speak with only half a mouth and no neck is a mystery best left unresolved. "Have no fear, Stein... Your true era is nigh. The order in this world is already crumbling."

TO BE CONTINUED NEXT MONTH.


ETA March 17th: Ha ha whoops so I managed to skip an entire panel of Tezca's dialogue. That's been fixed now, sorry! Also, a friendly reminder to the anonymice: Remember, if your comment contains a link to a scanslation, it will NOT be unscreened! You are always welcome to comment again without the links, though.

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