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Soul Eater Chapter 101: Plot is Falling from the Sky
(I'll bring you down)
I got on top my flying scythe to take a ride
(I'll bring you down)
Forgot what I was looking for and they arrived
(I'll bring you down)
I'm lucky I'm not on that airship that's going down
(I'll bring you down)
Down from the sky (falling)
Down from the sky (falling)
Down from the sky (falling)
Falling from the sky
Right, so. Now that that's out of the way.
We open with a full page of Salvador Dali's masturbatory fantasies as filtered through Atsushi Ohkubo. By which I mean a whole lot of squiggle-monsters and melting eyeballs. Madness that flows from deep within the moon... So long as that power still flows freely... The clowns' nightmare will continue for all eternity...
"The witches WILL come to the moon!" Kid declares.
Meanwhile, down on the surface of the moon, the awesome power of black squiggly goo revives a slain clown.
SOUL EATER CHAPTER 101
okay I know that I normally don't bother to translate the chapter titles in these recaps but this one is pretty fucking special so
MOON WAR II (PART 1)
(*headdesk*)
Yeah because we all totally want to see many more months of REPETITIVE CLOWN BATTLES, right you guys?
Also the chapter title is written the same way that the Japanese write "World War II" only Ohkubo substituted "moon" for "world." Sigh.
Anywhoo, on to the good parts!
Maka slices and dices. For four glorious pages. Oh and Soul is still apparently controlling those stolen moonbeams, too. Which conveniently fly back to Maka after every use.
Alexandre is like, holy fucking shit. Awesome reaction face.
Those giant hand-shaped clowns are pretty awesome too. (Having flashbacks to FLCL here.)
Meanwhile, Black Star is being Black Star.
"Is this all ya got? This ain't even a good warmup for fightin' the kishin himself!"
So now I guess it's Zubaydah's turn to stand around and comment about how awesome our heroes are, because that's never a cloying or obnoxious trope or anything. "Amazing! So this is the power of the Spartoi..."
"Yeah, those kids are straight-up monsters, aren't they," Stein deadpans.
"No matter how many times we destroy them they just keep coming back!" Tsubaki says.
"Meh, they're good enough entertainment for us 'till Kid and the rest of 'em get here," Black Star says.
Speaking of Kid and the rest of 'em. They're basically in a kamikaze dive right now.
"Entering enemy airspace! At this speed we won't be able to avoid enemy fire!"
"Full speed ahead!!" Kid says.
Down on the surface, Moonbeam is like, shibusen please. "So they have returned to die, then."
Boom boom boom, and the ship starts blowing up.
"They plunge straight ahead without manuevering to avoid my beams!" Moonbeam says. "Well, then. We shall continue like this until they shall be demolished!!"
(I think I finally figured out what Moonbeam's voice sounds like in my head. It's Tom Hardy's Bane voice from The Dark Knight Rises. Moonbeam's speech has the same stuffy, overly-cultured inflection that Bane does in the movie and probably sounds just as muffled [due to Moonbeam NOT HAVING A FACE] as Bane does too. Plus Moonbeam's voice should have the same slightly nutty, off-his-rocker undertones that Hardy gave his Bane voice. Okay. Now I can't get this out of my head. From now on all of Moonbeam's speech bubbles sound like Bane to me.)
Anywhoo. "I'll help, too!!" Kaguya says.
Well that's certainly an interesting-looking combo attack.
"TAKEMIKAZUTSU!!"
That is supposed to be a pun on Takemikazuchi, an important Shinto diety in the Kojiki. (Also a reference to about a million video games and more than one Gundam anime that has a "Takemikazuchi" in it.) But Ohkubo switched up the kanji so that they read as "bamboo beautiful pipe" rather than "thunder deity."
"We won't let them crash into our moon!!" Kaguya says.
"There's a huge energy signature approaching our bow!!" Beret Girl says.
"All hands!!" Kid shouts. "Prepare for impact!!"
Apparently this means grabbing on to whatever is nearby and holding on really tight. Seems legit.
Kid, this is a good plan and you should feel good. And I mean that in the most sarcastic sense possible.
So then, with a giant flaming ball of death racing straight toward the bow of his ship, Kid throws up his arms and does his best goddamn Father Karras impression yet. "NOW YOU SEE, WITCHES!! HERE IS THE PROOF OF OUR FAITH IN YOU!! NOW SHOW YOURSELVES TO US!!"
Unfortunately, the power of faith does not compel them.
And the ship goes down in flames.
"Direct enemy hit!! Fuselage breach!!"
lol Kid's face.
"WE'RE GOING DOWN!!" Beret Girl screams.
lol Kid's face again. "May... Maybe they won't come after all..."
But one panel later he's already back to his normal dumbass snarly self. "No!! I believe in them!!"
Oh and then all of a sudden Grandmother Witch is standing RIGHT THE FUCK NEXT TO HIM.
"Nyamu."
lol Kid's face cubed. "Grandmother Witch-dono!!"
A HA HA HA oh my fucking god
The portal to the "Witch Villager" (thank you for that Engrish label, Ohkubo!) has opened all across the entire sky. I wonder whose butt they utilized to pull that trick off.
Look, it's Risa! And Arisa! And Kim and Eruka riding together on top of Tadpole Jackson! And all five of the surviving Mizune sisters! And like a hundred other witches at the same time.
"Sorry, sorry!" Kim apologizes. "The signal-jamming around the moon was so strong that even with Grandmother Witch-sama herself fixating on your location we were still delayed. Or rather, I guess we're too late?"
Yeah their ship just got blown to smithereens. I'd say that qualifies as being too late.
"Hmph!" the fox-witch harumphs grumpily. "This still doesn't mean that I trust you Shibusen people one bit!!"
"You came to save us, Grandmother Witch-dono..." Kid says. This switch from -sama last chapter to -dono this chapter is pretty significant. Dono is an antiquated, overly-formal honorific that so far ONLY Kid has used when speaking to Grandmother Witch. And there is exactly one other character that Kid uses an antiquated, overly-formal honorific term of address for: his father.
And suddenly Free is there, looking around at the wreckage of the ship. "Hey! Wow!! We really made it by the skin of yer teeth."
Kirikou's double-take oh my god. "Since when was this huge guy here?!"
"They did it! They really saved us, senpai!!" Azusa says, grabbing Marie's hands.
"Thank goodness," Marie says.
"WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!" Liz screams. "How can you be so relaxed already!! WE'RE STILL GONNA CRASH!!"
oh my god lol. The next page is just everybody screaming while what's left of the ship finally crashes to the moon's surface.
And when the dust clears... Everybody's perfectly fine! Thanks to Grandmother Witch using her forcefield-space-cube powers, that is.
"Just like I thought..." Free says, sweatdropping. "The speed and precision of her space-manipulation magic is on a totally different level than my own..."
"Nyamu," Grandmother Witch says.
"A space-controlling forcefield!!" Kid exclaims, apparently still half a page behind the rest of the party.
Still floating with Eruka above the surface of the moon, Kim squints down at the wreckage of the airship. "Thank goodness. It looks like everybody's okay..."
"Let's hurry and get this thing started," Eruka says.
Oh look it's EXPLANATORY DIAGRAM TIME.
"The A-Team will deploy their Soul Protect spells---..."
The A-Team is the fox-witch and, like, all of the other witches.
"While the B-Team calculates the exact coordinates of the clown targets."
The B-Team is Eruka and Kim. The math nerds.
"Grandmother Witch-sama and Free will transfer the Soul Protect from the witches to the clowns."
And that's the end of Diagram Time. Now it's time for some nonsensical magical mumbling!
Kim: "Tanunkun Racooncoon pon pon ponkitanu..."
Eruka: "Kaerog froeru gekoeru frog..."
Free: "Wolf wolves wolf wolves..."
Grandmother Witch: "Nyamu."
I don't know if anybody needs these chants explained, but Kim and Eruka are mixing the syllables of their respective animals in English and Japanese, whereas Free is doing his boring stupid chant because he's not a real witch and he doesn't get a cool chant like they do.
And then, fox witch: "SOUL PROTECT!!"
Eruka: "MAGIC CALCULATION!!"
Meanwhile, Kaguya has no idea what the fuck is going on. "We destroyed their ship... But now they have witches on their side!! Other women must desire to gaze upon my nude body too!!"
"What are you talking about?" Moonbeam finally asks her.
Meanwhile, Stein is like... seven pages behind in the story. "They're here!!"
"I don't believe it!" Alexandre says.
"This is gonna change history!" Spirit says.
"Coordinates complete!!" Eruka says. "Free! Grandmother Witch-sama!!"
"FORWARDING PROTECTION!!"
Lizard-witch and the others look more than a bit nervous about this next step. "Our Soul Protects are being torn away?!"
Boom, boom, boom.
"What's this?" Kaguya says.
"Keep making more Soul Protects!" Fox-witch orders the others.
Maka looks up to watch the shenanigans. "Kid brought the witches as reinforcements!"
"All right!" Soul says. "Now we can win this thing!!"
That will probably take another nine months or so but hey who's counting.
Maka chops up a clown.
It falls to the ground, dead.
And it doesn't get back up again.
"!!" Kaguya gasps. "The kishin's insanity is being repelled from us?!"
"Gugiiiiiiiiiii" the clown screams as its face starts to dissolve.
"We cannot revive!" Moonbeam exclaims. "How can this be!!"
Meanwhile, Kid, Kirikou, and Ox have weaponed up and are ready to join the fray. "Our counteroffensive begins NOW!!"
And that's it for this month.
Good this month: Maka got to kick ass. The witches were impressive. An important plot event which Ohkubo has been building up for over a year finally HAPPENED. (It should have happened a long time ago, but whatever.) This chapter also didn't waste any pages rehashing conversations from previous chapters or info-dumping us with crap that we were already told 85 chapters ago. That's a HUGE improvement over the past five months!
Bad this month: Setting us up for more fucking clown battles. The fact that my praise for this chapter (long-delayed plot finally happening! no time wasted rehashing last month's chapter! no pointless info-dumping of crap we already know!) is like, congratufuckinglations, we have finally met the minimum standard for what makes a decently-paced monthly manga installment. That is the very definition of damning with faint praise. Right there.
The giant witch-portal with the face and the legs was pretty cool-looking, though.
So were those giant hand-shaped clowns.
oh man here comes that nostalgia again...
brb watching seminal 90's sexual-coming-of-age anime
By the way, any dumbass manga pirates intending to copy these translations and take credit for them again (hi Bleachh and Tiesto!): Have fun with all of the Soshul Experiment panels on these pages.
All seventeen of them.
PS - New Kid and Stein icons for Gangan Mobile users!
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NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Play for me, world's smallest violin.
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Thank you for these recaps, BTW! They're always entertaining.
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(Anonymous) 2012-08-14 04:26 pm (UTC)(link)Looks like fun :D
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But beggars can't be choosers. I'm just glad something actually happened in this chapter. All that rehashing and repetitive clown battles was driving me to the point of madness.
Wow thank you I thought I was the only one getting tired of background characters saying how awesome or cute or cool the main heroes are. Ohkubo have been doing this a lot lately and it's been irritating me. It just feels so forced and it's just bad character writing.
As for the chapter title, I hardly count leaving the moon temporarily and then coming back within roughly the same day warranting a "II" in this battle sequence. But whatever floats Ohkubo's boat, I guess.
Thank you for the recap and translation!
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It just feels so forced and it's just bad character writing.
It's absolutely forced and bad character writing. In Creative Writing 101 classes they usually teach authors not to do that. At the same time it's a pretty common trope in shounen manga, BUT it can be used well if it feels like a natural reaction to something that another character has said or done. Like, when Character A is expressing doubt about Character B's abilities or about to intercede on their behalf or something, Character C can jump in with "Don't underestimate B! They know what they're doing! They have secret training/special skill/an ace up their sleeve/whatever!!" Hiromu Arakawa is particularly good at doing this without being cloying or obvious about it. But just having characters standing around and gasping about how AMAZING so-and-so is - especially when so-and-so is a protagonist who has already been THOROUGHLY established as utterly amazing - is, well, really cloying and obvious.
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(Anonymous) 2012-08-14 05:17 pm (UTC)(link)And while the clowns feel like they've been around for too long, I don't think bring-the-witches'-help plot was dragging unnecessarily. It was first mentioned in 97 and set in motion in 98, and if witches came a chapter or two earlier, it would have still made sense plotwise but I would have felt the whole thing was rushed. Shibusen and witches did have long history so the talk between Azusa and Kid last month seemed pretty legit, too. Just my opinion.
The part where Kid basically drove the ship right into the beam was... I'm not sure how to describe what I felt. It was like taking a "seems stupid but shows character" shonen moment and declaring "Yes it is indeed stupid! even if it shows character!" Aand Mabaa appears right after. Is Ohkubo self-trolling Kid or what? lol
By the way I read the raw chapter myself and was wondering about some minor stuff that was different from what I thought I read, but the end of the post clarified it. Good luck with your soshul experiments!
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Hmmm. I see where you're coming from with that, but at the same time, well, that's the argument that was used to justify Endless Eight and is pretty widely recognized to be bunk. A good writer can get across that sense of "oh my god this is going on forever!!" from the characters' point of views without also annoying the reader at the same time.
I don't think bring-the-witches'-help plot was dragging unnecessarily.
Really? The first six pages of chapter 99 were spent repeating the exact same argument that took up the last six pages of chapter 98. That's the very definition of dragging unneccessarily. And I was annoyed at the Kid/Azusa talk last month because it's a conversation that both characters have had before. Azusa had the exact same conversation with Marie and Kid had the exact same conversation with Big Daddy and then again with Asuza in chapter 99. Six pages were devoted to that conversation repeating itself, when instead we could have gotten one of the big events (the witches showing up, Crona doing something, Noah making a move) that Ohkubo had been building toward for months. Heck, the whole "ship crashing + witches suddenly appearing" sequence in this chapter would have made a beautiful ending and a perfect cliffhanger if Ohkubo had just ended chapter 100 with that bit, instead of giving us Kid and Azusa word-vomiting at each other for six pages. Then we could have gotten all of the epic clown battling out of this way in this chapter and be ready to move on to something new next month.
This is just common-sense pacing for any work of serial fiction. Ohkubo's editor should be doing this job for him.
It's generally a very bad sign when, if I'm reading a monthly manga, at any given time I can say "Jesus Christ I know EXACTLY what's going to happen next month." That's what makes even longtime fans throw up their hands and start bitching at Bleach's Hueco Mundo arc or Naruto's poorly-paced battles, and it's happening here in Soul Eater too.
Remember what it was like to NOT KNOW what to expect with each new chapter of Soul Eater? When shit that happened was interesting and cool because we hadn't already seen it forty-two million times before?
Yeah. I miss that feeling.
Sorry for the rant but as a former (one-time) professional editor, it's this sort of terrible pacing that makes me really frustrated! With a few notable exceptions (i.e. chapter 96), the last year of Soul Eater has had chapters broken up the way that twelve-year-olds on fanfic.net break up their chapters, not the way that a professionally-edited commercial manga should be written and paced.
And Mabaa appears right after. Is Ohkubo self-trolling Kid or what? lol
I think that was the joke. After all of Kid's hot wind about how Shibusen needs to BELIEVE IN THE WITCHES, it turns out that the witches were only delayed because of technical difficulties, not because of some test of Shibusen's faith.
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(Anonymous) 2012-08-14 06:42 pm (UTC)(link)OMG I just can't wait to see this page!!
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(Anonymous) 2012-08-15 08:32 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
(Anonymous) 2012-08-15 12:26 am (UTC)(link)I felt like you should know because honestly that sounds a lot cooler.
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(Anonymous) 2012-08-15 04:26 am (UTC)(link)YES YES, APPROVED
And did Stein actually describe the Spartoi team as "staright-up monsters"? Wow Stein, please continue to be great forever. X)
And I really have no more comments for this chapter. Thanks for the translation! :D
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P.S.: Man I miss FuriKuri too, I might as well rewatch it now.
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Also, in league with WWII reference, why is it that they're diving boming the moon without caring if they land or not (like kamikaze? *is shot*) But at least there's plot! and the witches came to save the day! And Maka and Black Star are doing fighting stuff and they stay dead! Maybe things are finally starting to look up? (And- oh FLCL...how I have missed you...it's like you came back to me)
Also, this is feeling like the beginning of the end...I know team failboat has i think 5 more sins/incarnations to got through, but I don't even count that as part of the plot...since the Kishin, the witches, and Crona are all there, this feels like the big ending to me...but I could be wrong.
Thanks for the recap, even with the altrock intro! And now I will also forever hear moonbeam's voice as Bane, since you pointed it out...^_^
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http://www14.oekakibbs.com/bbs/htmn2/data/539.jpg
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But just for this one: it starts with Crona quoting hir line about dying the moon black, then the moon sneezes, then Crona says "Even the moon rejects me..." Then Noah yells a lot.
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