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Soul Eater Ch. 99: "It doesn't matter if we do it smart or do it stupid, as long as we get it done."
We open with Kid still bowing on his knees with his forehead touching the ground, begging the witches for help. "I beg of you - please lend us your strength!"
Christallfuckingmighty is that a giant paella on the title page?
"Silence, Shinigami!" the fox witch says. "You'll never understand the depths of our resentment!! You think you can flatter us with pretty words and then just use us when it's most convenient for you!! You can't bend our will just with one or two measly bowed heads!!"
Jesus Christ I'm going to have to translate more of this godawful terribly-written boring "debate," aren't I?
"This isn't the time to be stubborn..." Kim counters. With totally convincing ellipses, just to punctuate the emphaticness of her statement. "You can keep saying that we're enemies as many times as you want, but by wasting time you're just sabotaging yourselves!! We don't have time for this!! Or do you really think that the witches will be able to stop the Kishin's rampaging insanity instead of Shibusen?!"
"We're not just trying to use you because it's convenient for us!" Kid goes on, his forehead still to the ground. "Our alliance doesn't have to be temporary, either. This is an opportunity to revise the rule of law itself."
"Stop trapping us younger witches with your outdated thinking!" Kim goes on. "Cooperating with Shibusen now can benefit all of the Witch World in the future!"
"Silence, Kimial! You are no longer a witch at all, you're merely Shibusen's dog now!!"
"Grandmother Witch-sama!!" Kim begs.
Granny Witch's single eye goes wide for a moment, then it narrows with a look of determination. "Nyamu!!!"
Yeah, we saw this last chapter. Come on Ohkubo, give us some real plot movemement.
Meanwhile, in the Death Room! "I wonder if things are going okay for Kid and the rest of them..." Big Daddy says. "Convincing the witches to help us sure isn't an easy thing to nego~tiate~..."
Suddenly!
"They're back!!"
Kid steps through the portal. "I have returned..." he apparently feels the need to announce.
"And?" Big Daddy says. "How did it go? Where are Kim-chan and the others?"
"I did what I could. Kim is going to continue speaking with the witches to decide the final details in a witch-only meeting... I was forced to return early." Wait, so then what about Free? He's not a witch, so why was he allowed to stay? It's probably so that Grandmother Witch can pull a Loki and remove his eye in the most excessively gruesome and time-consuming way possible, isn't it.
"But I described to them the new rule of order that I imagine," Kid continues, "and never once told them a single falsehood. Now all I can do is hope that they will believe in me."
"You've done well, Kid," Big Daddy says.
"And I want to believe in Grandmother Witch-sama's eye and in her 'nyamu'!" Kid says.
Later, on the airship! "Armor on E-Block is completely destroyed!" "This coolant system is completely frozen!"
Well, they sound like they're having a great time fixing that thing up.
"Even if we worked at the speed of sound, it would take us four hours to make all of the necessary repairs," Gen tells Kid.
"The ones left behind on the surface of the moon can't possibly survive that long..." Kid says. "Can't you at least do something in thirty minutes?"
"Thirty minutes?! We've taken massive damage to our armor! If we take even one more hit in this condition, we're finished!"
"All I need you to be able to do is fly close enough to the moon..." Kid says. "With the witches' power on our side, you won't have to worry about taking any more hits, of course."
Well I guess that convinced him. So Gen is yelling and they're going to lift off in thirty minutes and then Kid says, "I apologize, Gen-san, for placing such an impossible burden upon you..."
"Don't be so formal, Little Master," Gen says. "We've been doing the impossible this whole time anyway!"
Meanwhile, on the moon!
"......" Sid says. "What a mess...."
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!" Noah screams in Sid's face.
"Akane... Clay... You know, this is a real problem here...." I think that Sid is trying to tell Akane and Clay that they suck and that they failed at the ONE THING that he asked them to do, but he's too flabbergasted by Noah's Noah-ness to get the words out.
"Oh yeaaaaah?! Well YOU shitheads are the REAL problem here!!!" Noah snaps back.
"We... are the Shibusen Central Intelligence Bureau," Sid says. "As members of an intelligence agency, I understand that we normally do as we please... But this time we're in the middle of a world-wide crisis situation... For you to bring an enemy in here and complicate things like this... Of course I'm going to tell you two that you failed..."
"Yes, you are certainly correct," Akane says calmly. "And there is nothing more that we can say to you."
Meanwhile, Clay is doing his best moeblob impression. "Um... um... um... Ah-ha!" Goddamit why is he still fully-clothed in his weapon form? Anywhoo. "Kishin Ashura was always a paranoid meister, or so I've heard... Such a kishin surely would have developed a strong Soul Perception ability in order to detect any danger to himself, right? If that's true, then it's highly probable that the kishin would have noticed us as we approached him anyway, so there's no point in trying to sneak around like this... And even though these two are our enemies, more importantly than the fact that they're impeding our ability to sneak around, is the fact that we can use them as decoys once we get close enough to the kishin..."
"Clay, dragging these two along would be too much trouble..." Akane says.
"We don't need them," Sid says bluntly.
"Oh, so now he can get right to the point," Akane says.
"OH YEAH?! WE'RE THE ONES WHO ARE GONNA USE YOU AS DECOYS!!" Noah yells. "DON'T GET SO FUCKING COCKY, FUCKERS!!"
"Yeah! Yeah!!" Gopher harumphs in agreement.
"Oh, whatever," Sid says, finally giving in to the stupidity of this whole subplot. "Our mission is to find the kishin's exact location. Whether we do that in a smart way or in a stupid way doesn't matter." Oh Sid, I love you so much for that line. "The insanity wavelength is definitely stronger here, but I still can't find its exact source... But as long as the insanity wavelength keeps getting stronger, that's evidence that we should keep moving forward... Let's go!"
"WE'RE GONNA GET THERE FIRST!!" Noah yells, running right past Sid.
"Yes!! Noah-sama," Gopher shouts, running right behind him.
".......They really are going to get in our way, aren't they..." Sid says.
Later! Our Intrepid Morons find themselves unable to venture any farther into the interior of the moon, having finally reached an impassable abyss.
"We've gone so far into the interior..." Akane says, stating the obvious.
"From here on out, the only way to go is down," Sid says.
"HEEEEEEY KISHIIIIIIIIN," Noah shouts into the abyss, "COOOOOOOOME OOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNN!!!"
"He's down there, isn't he," Gopher says.
"It's too dark..."
"Noah-sama!!" Gopher says. "Should I try firing my 'I Love You Cannon' down there?!"
"Don't do anything stupid!!" Sid says, shutting Gopher down. "I'll light a flare so we can see what's down there."
Sid does so, but it doesn't do much good. "I still can't see the bottom," Akane says. "This thing must be pretty deep."
"Guess we have no choice..." Sid says. "I'll try tossing the flare down there."
Sid tosses the flare into the abyss, then grabs Neigus with his other hand. "I have no idea what could be down there... Neigus! Be ready for anything."
"Got it."
And a page later: Well, shit.
Somebody doesn't like having a lit flare tossed at his giant head.
Our Intrepid Morons stand in frozen horror as the kishin's giant mouth opens up to swallow them.
I can't move... Sid think-bubbles.
And then he's bitten in half. Front-ways.
"GYAAAAAAAA!!!"
But then! Our Intrepid Morons are safe, and there's nothing there!
Dun dun dunnnnnnn!
"Another hallucination..." Akane says.
Sid looks down and realizes that the flare is on the ground beside him. He never threw it into the abyss. Sid picks up the flare. "Since when..."
"Well, at least there's no doubt now. The kishin is definitely down there..."
Meanwhile, back to our airship! Which is finally lifting off!
"I wonder if the witches are actually going to help us..." Azusa says. "My senrigan ability doesn't work in the Witch World, so I'm worried..."
"You see too much and you think too much, like always," Marie says. "If the witches don't cooperate with us, then there's no way that we can win... So all that we can do is believe in them..." She turns toward Kid. "...Right?"
"That's right..." Kid agrees. "Even if we could win this battle without the cooperation of the witches, our history with the witches up until now has never really been governed by the rule of order... So I'm going to change the rules."
"Way to sound flexible," Liz says, draping her arm over Kid's shoulder, "but can you really change the rules perfectly?"
She actually asks him if he can change the rules in a kicchiri kacchiri way, but I am far too bored by this chapter to put in the effort of trying to come up with a sensible translation of that catchphrase, so "perfect" is what y'all are gonna get. Also: Nice teasing, Liz. I lol'd.
"Of course I can!!" Kid says.
Meanwhile, in the Death Room!
"Shibusen and the witches..." Tezca says. "There's a history between us that runs deep... I wonder if they can really bring themselves to cooperate with us..."
"Eibon... Arachne... and I..." Big Daddy says. "We're the ones who made the rifts between our worlds even deeper... In the old days, the witches threw their weight around more and caused much more harm with their spells than they do today... And the witches were so clever---.... In order to oppose the witches, we desperately needed a new kind of power... What Eibon invented to address that problem was said to have been modeled after Excalibur himself: the 'Demon Weapon.' Eibon denied that, of course... But weapons are power! Everybody understands that. To merge an actual soul with a weapon would create something of incredible power... Therefore it was necessary to make a mere weapon become something that could absorb souls... Excalibur can't do that, of course..."
"'Human' and 'human'," Tezca says. "Or in my case, 'human' and 'monkey.' But normally it's 'human' and 'human'..."
"There was no reliable way of turning a human into a weapon---..." Big Daddy goes on. "So we wanted to create a synthesis of 'human' and 'weapon.' And since witches have the ability to change their form, we thought that a witch's soul could be used as the glue to create the 'connection' between the 'human' and the 'weapon'..."
"To use a witch's soul in order to defeat the witches..." Tezca says. "Like fighting fire with fire, I guess you could say..."
"But such an experiment would be cruelly inhuman---..." Big Daddy keeps going on, determined to wear that Captain Exposition Hat for all its worth. "So Eibon and I sealed up all of the information about that hypothesis. Eibon really did seem like he was a little bit eager to actually try it, though---..."
"And then it was the witch Arachne who resurrected that research and actually performed the experiment..." Tezca says.
"Arachne didn't just create one weapon, she mass-produced them. And now---... Now there are many Demon Weapon children born with the gene that allows them to change into a weapon. Back then, we were the ones forced to find those children, gather them, and train them."
"That was the beginning of Shibusen, wasn't it," Tezca says.
"Without the soul of a witch, those children were essentially incomplete---... Therefore a witch's soul was necessary in order to become a 'Deathscythe.'"
When Big Daddy says "Deathscythe" it's written with the kanji that spells True/real Demon Weapon.
"Using the Demon Weapons that were born from a witch's soul, we were able to hunt the witches and collect their souls. With each successive generation of Deathscythes, Shibusen became more and more powerful as opposed to the witches."
"So then the rift between Shibusen and the witches just got deeper and deeper," Tezca says.
Big Daddy orally molests some ellipses, then says, "Don't say everything that I'm going to say before I get a chance to say it~~..."
"But I already know this whole story..." Tezca says.
Lampshading As You Know, Bob. Ohkubo, that is delicious and you have (slightly) redeemed this chapter from that one line alone.
Also: I HEAR YA, TEZCA. Because WE already know this whole story, too. This is a COMPLETE REHASH of information that was explained SEVENTY-THREE CHAPTERS AGO. The only bit of new information gleaned from this massive word-vomit of exposition is a) how Excalibur fits into the whole picture and b) the reason why kids born with the weapon gene need a witch's soul to unlock their full potential. And as for the latter part of that, well, even THAT'S not totally new information because we already got a similar explanation (that Deathscythes absorb a witch's powers by devouring her soul, that's why they have abilities above and beyond other weapons) over thirty chapters ago. And other than those two minor details, everything else in this whole big chunk of exposition - everything about Arachne, Eibon, the process of making the first weapons, and the founding of Shibusen - is STUFF THAT WE'VE BEEN TOLD BEFORE. The same way that the first four pages of this chapter repeat the exact same dialogue and sequence of events that ended the previous chapter, now THESE four pages of the chapter repeat dialogue and exposition from, again, seventy-three fucking chapter ago. That's eight pages of this chapter nearly totally wasted. Almost one-quarter of the chapter spent repeating old dialogue and old exposition. When people complain about Ohkubo's pacing, THIS is what we're talking about. This right here. Pacing: This is NOT how you do it.
"And now I'm getting kinda old~~" Big Daddy says. Oh hey look, Enrique is still there. For some reason. "As time changes, the rules change too. And now it's time for the next generation to step up~~"
"Arachne, who created the Demon Weapons..." Tezca says. "Medusa, who revived the kishin... Those two sisters sure created a lot of chaos... Can witches like that really cooperate with Shibusen..."
"Kid believes in them..." Big Daddy says.
"They will help us," Big Daddy and Kid say in unison.
Translation note: Literally what Kid and Big Daddy say is "They will come to us," which I guess is a reference to the fact that Kid is already ordering the airship to launch and just kind of ASSUMING that the witches are going to come and save them from being shot down out of the sky in time. Or, I'm sorry, not assuming, but rather *~believing~* that they will. Er. But anyway "they will come to us" sounds hella awkward as a straight translation in English. "They will help us" is probably the better translation (or if you want to read between the lines, "They'll save us" would also work), but I just wanted to make a quick note about the literal-literal meaning that gets lost in the translation sometimes.
Meanwhile, on the airship! Kirikou is with them, yay!
"Kirikou... I heard that Maka and the others are already headed toward the moon," Kid says.
"Oh yeah! That's right!! I just remembered!!"
"What is that?" Kid asks.
"They told me to give this to you. I have ones for Liz and Patti too."
"?"
"Even though we're temporarily separated, everyone decided to wear these matching hairbands on our arms, like this! But I don't know where you're going to wear yours, Kid... I thought so, you can't wear it on your arm if it makes you unsymmetrical, right? Maybe you could just wear it on your head like normal... Or maybe around your waist?" Kirikou grins nervously. "Or maybe I should have brought two of 'em for you?"
"No... it's okay," Kid says. He ties the band around his left arm. "If I'm going to change the rules, then I have to be able to change myself, too!"
"Oh!" Liz and Patti gasp.
Yeah, this epic sparklypoo-ness lasts for exactly one panel before Kid is down on his knees with a marker in his hand and completely absorbed in some utterly pointless compulsion. "But I'm going to draw the picture on this thing PERFECTLY!!" Kid declares. Kicchiri kacchiri again, for those of you keeping track at home. Or playing a drinking game or whatever.
"I knew it..." Liz says. Patti just laughs.
"We have one hour until we reach the moon---..." Kid says, perfectly mimicking his father's favorite horrible abuse of punctuation. "What! What do you mean we can't extend the trip to four hours?!"
"Gen-san is going to murder you, you know..." Liz says. Patti laughs even harder.
Meanwhile, Crona!
"The kishin is down there..."
Crona dives into the moon's nose. "I'll dye this moon black with my blood, too!"
The moon sneezes.
Elsewhere in the universe, Excalibur is sneezing too. (ETA: In Japan - well, in quite a few Asian countries, actually - there's a superstition that when you sneeze it means that people are talking about you somewhere. Shinigami-sama was talking about Excalibur, hence Excalibur sneezing.)
Next month! A cover, color pages, the results of the second character popularity poll, and hopefully a much more action-packed, well-written, and/or actually fucking funny chapter!
Here's hoping.
Oh well at least Not! was awesome this month. There was action, there was Maka and Soul being awesome, there was badass artwork, there was creepy nightmare fuel, there was a substantial plot advancement, and there were answers to dangling plot questions from several chapters ago finally revealed. All within the space of a mere eighteen pages. So I guess Ohkubo can still write a well-paced story when he's bringing his A-game, I just wish that he hadn't wasted his A-game on Not! these past two months.
ETA again: Oh hi Youni89 I see you reading this. (*waves*) Next time that you're going to copy huge chunks of my translations word-for-word, at least give a little credit where credit is due and don't try to claim that you translated everything yourself, okay?And I can't believe that with all of the copy-and-pasting you did you still managed to screw up two of the best lines in the chapter, too.
Christallfuckingmighty is that a giant paella on the title page?
"Silence, Shinigami!" the fox witch says. "You'll never understand the depths of our resentment!! You think you can flatter us with pretty words and then just use us when it's most convenient for you!! You can't bend our will just with one or two measly bowed heads!!"
Jesus Christ I'm going to have to translate more of this godawful terribly-written boring "debate," aren't I?
"This isn't the time to be stubborn..." Kim counters. With totally convincing ellipses, just to punctuate the emphaticness of her statement. "You can keep saying that we're enemies as many times as you want, but by wasting time you're just sabotaging yourselves!! We don't have time for this!! Or do you really think that the witches will be able to stop the Kishin's rampaging insanity instead of Shibusen?!"
"We're not just trying to use you because it's convenient for us!" Kid goes on, his forehead still to the ground. "Our alliance doesn't have to be temporary, either. This is an opportunity to revise the rule of law itself."
"Stop trapping us younger witches with your outdated thinking!" Kim goes on. "Cooperating with Shibusen now can benefit all of the Witch World in the future!"
"Silence, Kimial! You are no longer a witch at all, you're merely Shibusen's dog now!!"
"Grandmother Witch-sama!!" Kim begs.
Granny Witch's single eye goes wide for a moment, then it narrows with a look of determination. "Nyamu!!!"
Yeah, we saw this last chapter. Come on Ohkubo, give us some real plot movemement.
Meanwhile, in the Death Room! "I wonder if things are going okay for Kid and the rest of them..." Big Daddy says. "Convincing the witches to help us sure isn't an easy thing to nego~tiate~..."
Suddenly!
"They're back!!"
Kid steps through the portal. "I have returned..." he apparently feels the need to announce.
"And?" Big Daddy says. "How did it go? Where are Kim-chan and the others?"
"I did what I could. Kim is going to continue speaking with the witches to decide the final details in a witch-only meeting... I was forced to return early." Wait, so then what about Free? He's not a witch, so why was he allowed to stay? It's probably so that Grandmother Witch can pull a Loki and remove his eye in the most excessively gruesome and time-consuming way possible, isn't it.
"But I described to them the new rule of order that I imagine," Kid continues, "and never once told them a single falsehood. Now all I can do is hope that they will believe in me."
"You've done well, Kid," Big Daddy says.
"And I want to believe in Grandmother Witch-sama's eye and in her 'nyamu'!" Kid says.
Later, on the airship! "Armor on E-Block is completely destroyed!" "This coolant system is completely frozen!"
Well, they sound like they're having a great time fixing that thing up.
"Even if we worked at the speed of sound, it would take us four hours to make all of the necessary repairs," Gen tells Kid.
"The ones left behind on the surface of the moon can't possibly survive that long..." Kid says. "Can't you at least do something in thirty minutes?"
"Thirty minutes?! We've taken massive damage to our armor! If we take even one more hit in this condition, we're finished!"
"All I need you to be able to do is fly close enough to the moon..." Kid says. "With the witches' power on our side, you won't have to worry about taking any more hits, of course."
Well I guess that convinced him. So Gen is yelling and they're going to lift off in thirty minutes and then Kid says, "I apologize, Gen-san, for placing such an impossible burden upon you..."
"Don't be so formal, Little Master," Gen says. "We've been doing the impossible this whole time anyway!"
Meanwhile, on the moon!
"......" Sid says. "What a mess...."
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!" Noah screams in Sid's face.
"Akane... Clay... You know, this is a real problem here...." I think that Sid is trying to tell Akane and Clay that they suck and that they failed at the ONE THING that he asked them to do, but he's too flabbergasted by Noah's Noah-ness to get the words out.
"Oh yeaaaaah?! Well YOU shitheads are the REAL problem here!!!" Noah snaps back.
"We... are the Shibusen Central Intelligence Bureau," Sid says. "As members of an intelligence agency, I understand that we normally do as we please... But this time we're in the middle of a world-wide crisis situation... For you to bring an enemy in here and complicate things like this... Of course I'm going to tell you two that you failed..."
"Yes, you are certainly correct," Akane says calmly. "And there is nothing more that we can say to you."
Meanwhile, Clay is doing his best moeblob impression. "Um... um... um... Ah-ha!" Goddamit why is he still fully-clothed in his weapon form? Anywhoo. "Kishin Ashura was always a paranoid meister, or so I've heard... Such a kishin surely would have developed a strong Soul Perception ability in order to detect any danger to himself, right? If that's true, then it's highly probable that the kishin would have noticed us as we approached him anyway, so there's no point in trying to sneak around like this... And even though these two are our enemies, more importantly than the fact that they're impeding our ability to sneak around, is the fact that we can use them as decoys once we get close enough to the kishin..."
"Clay, dragging these two along would be too much trouble..." Akane says.
"We don't need them," Sid says bluntly.
"Oh, so now he can get right to the point," Akane says.
"OH YEAH?! WE'RE THE ONES WHO ARE GONNA USE YOU AS DECOYS!!" Noah yells. "DON'T GET SO FUCKING COCKY, FUCKERS!!"
"Yeah! Yeah!!" Gopher harumphs in agreement.
"Oh, whatever," Sid says, finally giving in to the stupidity of this whole subplot. "Our mission is to find the kishin's exact location. Whether we do that in a smart way or in a stupid way doesn't matter." Oh Sid, I love you so much for that line. "The insanity wavelength is definitely stronger here, but I still can't find its exact source... But as long as the insanity wavelength keeps getting stronger, that's evidence that we should keep moving forward... Let's go!"
"WE'RE GONNA GET THERE FIRST!!" Noah yells, running right past Sid.
"Yes!! Noah-sama," Gopher shouts, running right behind him.
".......They really are going to get in our way, aren't they..." Sid says.
Later! Our Intrepid Morons find themselves unable to venture any farther into the interior of the moon, having finally reached an impassable abyss.
"We've gone so far into the interior..." Akane says, stating the obvious.
"From here on out, the only way to go is down," Sid says.
"HEEEEEEY KISHIIIIIIIIN," Noah shouts into the abyss, "COOOOOOOOME OOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNN!!!"
"He's down there, isn't he," Gopher says.
"It's too dark..."
"Noah-sama!!" Gopher says. "Should I try firing my 'I Love You Cannon' down there?!"
"Don't do anything stupid!!" Sid says, shutting Gopher down. "I'll light a flare so we can see what's down there."
Sid does so, but it doesn't do much good. "I still can't see the bottom," Akane says. "This thing must be pretty deep."
"Guess we have no choice..." Sid says. "I'll try tossing the flare down there."
Sid tosses the flare into the abyss, then grabs Neigus with his other hand. "I have no idea what could be down there... Neigus! Be ready for anything."
"Got it."
And a page later: Well, shit.
Somebody doesn't like having a lit flare tossed at his giant head.
Our Intrepid Morons stand in frozen horror as the kishin's giant mouth opens up to swallow them.
I can't move... Sid think-bubbles.
And then he's bitten in half. Front-ways.
"GYAAAAAAAA!!!"
But then! Our Intrepid Morons are safe, and there's nothing there!
Dun dun dunnnnnnn!
"Another hallucination..." Akane says.
Sid looks down and realizes that the flare is on the ground beside him. He never threw it into the abyss. Sid picks up the flare. "Since when..."
"Well, at least there's no doubt now. The kishin is definitely down there..."
Meanwhile, back to our airship! Which is finally lifting off!
"I wonder if the witches are actually going to help us..." Azusa says. "My senrigan ability doesn't work in the Witch World, so I'm worried..."
"You see too much and you think too much, like always," Marie says. "If the witches don't cooperate with us, then there's no way that we can win... So all that we can do is believe in them..." She turns toward Kid. "...Right?"
"That's right..." Kid agrees. "Even if we could win this battle without the cooperation of the witches, our history with the witches up until now has never really been governed by the rule of order... So I'm going to change the rules."
"Way to sound flexible," Liz says, draping her arm over Kid's shoulder, "but can you really change the rules perfectly?"
She actually asks him if he can change the rules in a kicchiri kacchiri way, but I am far too bored by this chapter to put in the effort of trying to come up with a sensible translation of that catchphrase, so "perfect" is what y'all are gonna get. Also: Nice teasing, Liz. I lol'd.
"Of course I can!!" Kid says.
Meanwhile, in the Death Room!
"Shibusen and the witches..." Tezca says. "There's a history between us that runs deep... I wonder if they can really bring themselves to cooperate with us..."
"Eibon... Arachne... and I..." Big Daddy says. "We're the ones who made the rifts between our worlds even deeper... In the old days, the witches threw their weight around more and caused much more harm with their spells than they do today... And the witches were so clever---.... In order to oppose the witches, we desperately needed a new kind of power... What Eibon invented to address that problem was said to have been modeled after Excalibur himself: the 'Demon Weapon.' Eibon denied that, of course... But weapons are power! Everybody understands that. To merge an actual soul with a weapon would create something of incredible power... Therefore it was necessary to make a mere weapon become something that could absorb souls... Excalibur can't do that, of course..."
"'Human' and 'human'," Tezca says. "Or in my case, 'human' and 'monkey.' But normally it's 'human' and 'human'..."
"There was no reliable way of turning a human into a weapon---..." Big Daddy goes on. "So we wanted to create a synthesis of 'human' and 'weapon.' And since witches have the ability to change their form, we thought that a witch's soul could be used as the glue to create the 'connection' between the 'human' and the 'weapon'..."
"To use a witch's soul in order to defeat the witches..." Tezca says. "Like fighting fire with fire, I guess you could say..."
"But such an experiment would be cruelly inhuman---..." Big Daddy keeps going on, determined to wear that Captain Exposition Hat for all its worth. "So Eibon and I sealed up all of the information about that hypothesis. Eibon really did seem like he was a little bit eager to actually try it, though---..."
"And then it was the witch Arachne who resurrected that research and actually performed the experiment..." Tezca says.
"Arachne didn't just create one weapon, she mass-produced them. And now---... Now there are many Demon Weapon children born with the gene that allows them to change into a weapon. Back then, we were the ones forced to find those children, gather them, and train them."
"That was the beginning of Shibusen, wasn't it," Tezca says.
"Without the soul of a witch, those children were essentially incomplete---... Therefore a witch's soul was necessary in order to become a 'Deathscythe.'"
When Big Daddy says "Deathscythe" it's written with the kanji that spells True/real Demon Weapon.
"Using the Demon Weapons that were born from a witch's soul, we were able to hunt the witches and collect their souls. With each successive generation of Deathscythes, Shibusen became more and more powerful as opposed to the witches."
"So then the rift between Shibusen and the witches just got deeper and deeper," Tezca says.
Big Daddy orally molests some ellipses, then says, "Don't say everything that I'm going to say before I get a chance to say it~~..."
"But I already know this whole story..." Tezca says.
Lampshading As You Know, Bob. Ohkubo, that is delicious and you have (slightly) redeemed this chapter from that one line alone.
Also: I HEAR YA, TEZCA. Because WE already know this whole story, too. This is a COMPLETE REHASH of information that was explained SEVENTY-THREE CHAPTERS AGO. The only bit of new information gleaned from this massive word-vomit of exposition is a) how Excalibur fits into the whole picture and b) the reason why kids born with the weapon gene need a witch's soul to unlock their full potential. And as for the latter part of that, well, even THAT'S not totally new information because we already got a similar explanation (that Deathscythes absorb a witch's powers by devouring her soul, that's why they have abilities above and beyond other weapons) over thirty chapters ago. And other than those two minor details, everything else in this whole big chunk of exposition - everything about Arachne, Eibon, the process of making the first weapons, and the founding of Shibusen - is STUFF THAT WE'VE BEEN TOLD BEFORE. The same way that the first four pages of this chapter repeat the exact same dialogue and sequence of events that ended the previous chapter, now THESE four pages of the chapter repeat dialogue and exposition from, again, seventy-three fucking chapter ago. That's eight pages of this chapter nearly totally wasted. Almost one-quarter of the chapter spent repeating old dialogue and old exposition. When people complain about Ohkubo's pacing, THIS is what we're talking about. This right here. Pacing: This is NOT how you do it.
"And now I'm getting kinda old~~" Big Daddy says. Oh hey look, Enrique is still there. For some reason. "As time changes, the rules change too. And now it's time for the next generation to step up~~"
"Arachne, who created the Demon Weapons..." Tezca says. "Medusa, who revived the kishin... Those two sisters sure created a lot of chaos... Can witches like that really cooperate with Shibusen..."
"Kid believes in them..." Big Daddy says.
"They will help us," Big Daddy and Kid say in unison.
Translation note: Literally what Kid and Big Daddy say is "They will come to us," which I guess is a reference to the fact that Kid is already ordering the airship to launch and just kind of ASSUMING that the witches are going to come and save them from being shot down out of the sky in time. Or, I'm sorry, not assuming, but rather *~believing~* that they will. Er. But anyway "they will come to us" sounds hella awkward as a straight translation in English. "They will help us" is probably the better translation (or if you want to read between the lines, "They'll save us" would also work), but I just wanted to make a quick note about the literal-literal meaning that gets lost in the translation sometimes.
Meanwhile, on the airship! Kirikou is with them, yay!
"Kirikou... I heard that Maka and the others are already headed toward the moon," Kid says.
"Oh yeah! That's right!! I just remembered!!"
"What is that?" Kid asks.
"They told me to give this to you. I have ones for Liz and Patti too."
"?"
"Even though we're temporarily separated, everyone decided to wear these matching hairbands on our arms, like this! But I don't know where you're going to wear yours, Kid... I thought so, you can't wear it on your arm if it makes you unsymmetrical, right? Maybe you could just wear it on your head like normal... Or maybe around your waist?" Kirikou grins nervously. "Or maybe I should have brought two of 'em for you?"
"No... it's okay," Kid says. He ties the band around his left arm. "If I'm going to change the rules, then I have to be able to change myself, too!"
"Oh!" Liz and Patti gasp.
Yeah, this epic sparklypoo-ness lasts for exactly one panel before Kid is down on his knees with a marker in his hand and completely absorbed in some utterly pointless compulsion. "But I'm going to draw the picture on this thing PERFECTLY!!" Kid declares. Kicchiri kacchiri again, for those of you keeping track at home. Or playing a drinking game or whatever.
"I knew it..." Liz says. Patti just laughs.
"We have one hour until we reach the moon---..." Kid says, perfectly mimicking his father's favorite horrible abuse of punctuation. "What! What do you mean we can't extend the trip to four hours?!"
"Gen-san is going to murder you, you know..." Liz says. Patti laughs even harder.
Meanwhile, Crona!
"The kishin is down there..."
Crona dives into the moon's nose. "I'll dye this moon black with my blood, too!"
The moon sneezes.
Elsewhere in the universe, Excalibur is sneezing too. (ETA: In Japan - well, in quite a few Asian countries, actually - there's a superstition that when you sneeze it means that people are talking about you somewhere. Shinigami-sama was talking about Excalibur, hence Excalibur sneezing.)
Next month! A cover, color pages, the results of the second character popularity poll, and hopefully a much more action-packed, well-written, and/or actually fucking funny chapter!
Here's hoping.
Oh well at least Not! was awesome this month. There was action, there was Maka and Soul being awesome, there was badass artwork, there was creepy nightmare fuel, there was a substantial plot advancement, and there were answers to dangling plot questions from several chapters ago finally revealed. All within the space of a mere eighteen pages. So I guess Ohkubo can still write a well-paced story when he's bringing his A-game, I just wish that he hadn't wasted his A-game on Not! these past two months.
ETA again: Oh hi Youni89 I see you reading this. (*waves*) Next time that you're going to copy huge chunks of my translations word-for-word, at least give a little credit where credit is due and don't try to claim that you translated everything yourself, okay?
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Honestly, I hope they both die soon, and that the Book of Eibon (and the BREW) goes with them.
It will mean that the entire "Index's evil plan" plot thread that was set up earlier will end up going nowhere, but honestly I think that the manga will be better for it. Because that is a terrible, terrible plot thread.
Oh, and you're welcome! :)