So we begin exactly where last month's chapter left off: with Kermit the Frog manhandling Soul and Tsubaki in their weapon forms.

Wait goddamit I mean Crona. Crona is the one. Who's doing that. Crona. Argh.

"Wait here. I'm gonna take Soul and Tsubaki back!" Black Star tells Maka.

"But even after you get them back, we still won't be able to match wavelengths with them!" Maka says.

Crona is making a face. Dear Ohkubo: This face is NOT SCARY. It's silly to the point of being distractingly silly. Way to ruin your own dramatic climax, dude. Anywhoo: "Why bother! There's no more need for the gears to match anymore!" Crona cackles.

Relationships only bring you pain, our chapter opener informs us.

Well, at least now we have a new quote from Crona to replace the "Trusting other people not to hurt you is idiotic!" and "Hell is inside your head!" lines for every socially awkward teenager and their socially awkward dog to endlessly re-post over and over again to the /soul eater tag on Tumblr.

(ETA: I wrote the above line over a week ago when I started the first draft of this recap, and.... yyyyyyyep. In the week since then, I've seen the scanslated "Relationships are painful" panel posted to the /soul eater tag on Tumblr something like seventy-five million times, rough estimate. Sometimes I hate it when my own predictions come true.)

"That doesn't matter!" Black Star declares, charging toward Crona. "SOUL BLAST!!"

"Useless!" Crona says. "Useless! Useless!"

"Whoops," Black Star says, dodging Crona's lashing thorns.

"See? See? See?!"

I see Black Star breakdancing and Crona failing to hit an easy target at point-blank range, that's what I see. Crona is clearly holding back, despite the crazy muppet faces.

"Black Star!" Tsubaki shouts.

"Are you okay?" Maka asks Black Star. Oh noes Maka still has freakishly tiny feet in this chapter, argh.

"Those blows are half-assed, like Crona's not even really trying to hit me..." Black Star says. "But it still looks like it won't be easy to break through those thorns and get those two back..."

Meanwhile, Soul is still trying to be relevant. "Dammit! WHY WON'T IT MAKE ANY SOUND!!"

"I came this far with Soul," Maka says through gritted teeth. "How could we have been separated so easily!!"

"That's right," Crona says. THAT FACE. Jesus Ohkubo just what the hell are you even doing man. "You can be cut apart so easily. The truth is that people are always all alone!! You're only forced to connect with each other because of 'order'!! But THIS is the NATURAL STATE OF THINGS!!"

And of course Crona needs to punctuate this statement not with ellipses, but with sending a barrage of thorn-tentacles at Maka.

"Can't hit me so you're gonna go for Maka instead," Black Star observes. "Guess you're not too far gone to be clever after all."

"MAKA!!" Soul shouts.

Black Star that seems like a TERRIBLY INEFFECTIVE way to block an attack.

But Crona is going to completely ignore the fact that Black Star is leaving his face, neck, vital organs, and crotch totally exposed and go for incapacitating him by tentacle-grabbing his ankles instead. "Gotcha!! I was aiming for Black Star's feet all along!" Crona gloats. "Because he's not supposed to be a part of this! If you're not supposed to be a part of this then you're just going to be a useless rope to grab onto!"

Okay so that was obviously a terrible pun that I have no idea how to even attempt to translate into approaching-sensible English, but for the record in Japanese it goes something like this: Crona says that fighting Black Star is tanin to kakawari ai ("getting involved with a stranger") which is the same as ashi no hippari ai ("playing tug-of-war by grabbing at one's feet").

"Black Star!" Tsubaki shouts, making a face that indicates that she, too, is baffled by Crona's obtuse punning.

And yep, there it goes. "Do you like it?!" Crona muppet-faces. "You must be getting tired of this by now!!"

Crona turns and FINALLY makes a kinda-sorta genuinely scary face at Maka. Well, it's scary if you squint. "You're next, Maka!!"

Then Crona makes a great Beaker-face and creates a gigantic column of thorns to hurl at Maka. "IT'S OVER!!"

SUDDENLY

BLOCKED BY PAPA-NO-JUTSU!!

"Papa!!" Maka exclaims.

"See, this is what happens when you run off ahead of Papa," Spirit says.

"Oh hey," Black Star says, dangling nonchalantly from Crona's tentacles. "It's Old Man Albarn."

"I see what's going on here," Spirit says. "Maka! You have to use your Papa."

Oh my god Crona's face. "Even if you change into a weapon, there's nothing you can do," Crona says. "Your gears won't mesh anymore."

"Crona's power is somehow preventing us from matching our wavelengths," Maka explains.

"I see," Spirit says. "But wavelengths, you know... Heck... That won't be a problem for me. Because Maka is Papa's daughter."

Maka holds out her hand and grasps Spirit in his weapon form. "It's not burning me... Our wavelengths are matching...?"

"But Maka and I were forced apart so easily," Soul exclaims. ~~Paging Dr. Freud, paging Dr. Freud, we have a situation here.~~

"You have GOT to be kidding me!!" Crona shouts, sending a fresh barrage of tentacles toward Our Heroine.

Tentacles which Maka slices through easily. "He's a little bit heavy, but the extra weight gives more power to my strikes," Maka says.

Maka, did you just call your dad fat?

"Impossible..." Crona says.

"Let's go, Maka!!" Spirit shouts.

And now Crona is on the defensive. "THORN DEFENSE!!"

From inside the shield of thorns, Crona groans. "Why...? Their wavelengths shouldn't be able to match anymore..."

"Wavelengths aren't the problem," Spirit says.

Maka wrecks Crona's thorn-shield.

"HOW!! HOW!!" Crona wails. "HOW!! HOW!! Even though I made a world where the gears can't mesh anymore!!"

"WITCH HUNTER!!"

Oh hey Spirit's Witch Hunter form looks AWESOME.

So now Crona's tentacle-shield has been completely sliced through.

"HOW!!" Crona screams.

"DEMON HUNTER!!!"

OH WOW Spirit's Demon Hunter form looks REALLY AWESOME.

Aaaaaaaand once again our delicious moment of dramatic badassery is utterly fucking ruined by Crona's face. Crona's silly, silly face.

Having been finally cut free, Black Star, Tsubaki, and Soul fall to the ground. Ohkubo devotes an entire panel to showing us just how silly their tiny, tiny feet look.

"HOW?!" Crona muppet-faces at everyone. "My thorns should have stopped the teeth in your gears from matching up!! But you!! How could you have still matched up with each other?!"

"That's because Maka and I are a parent and child," Spirit says.

"Parent and... child...?"

"The connection between a parent and a child has nothing to do with whether their soul wavelengths match each other or not," Spirit goes on. Because hey, this is Spirit Albarn that we're talking about here, the guy whose one consistent character trait throughout this entire manga has been that he CANNOT READ A ROOM TO SAVE HIS LIFE, whether it's flirting with married moms at a little girl's birthday party or throwing himself all over the clearly disinterested school nurse or showering Shinigami-sama with hookers and blow in order to cheer him up. If it's the wrong thing to say at the wrong place and at the wrong time, then by GOD Spirit Albarn is going to fucking say it anyway. And our glorious champion of TOTAL INAPPROPRIATENESS delivers in fine form right here:

"That's what 'family' means. Even cut apart our connection to each other still remains."

The word that Spirit uses for "family" ("en") can also mean "connection" or "bond." Remember that for the next page.

"STOP IT!!" Crona screams. "I............ I killed her... I don't want... to hear this..."

"What? What's wrong?" Spirit stupidly asks.

"Crona killed Medusa," Maka explains.

"There was only one of her in the whole world..." Crona says. "I killed my only 'family'... She was my everything... She was my order... Ha..." Crona starts laughing as tears stream down hir face. "Ha... Ha ha..."

The way that Crona says "I killed my only family" (たった一つの”縁”を斬ったんだ) could also be read as "I cut my only bond."

"Crona...?" Maka says.

I AM MADNESS ITSELF!

Wait, who said that?

BA-DUM.

You cannot succeed me.

Oh, that's who said that.

Create order... And when order is destroyed... Madness is born.

Meanwhile, Kid! "Wha... This wavelength..."

Yup.

YUP.

"CRONA!!" Maka shouts.

Oh Ohkubo, I love the little spray of black blood in that last panel on this page. What a perfect touch.

"What the..." Spirit says.

Maka starts to reach toward the ominous ball of scarf-wrapped doom. "Cro..."

Then Maka very, very wisely freezes in place.

"That's..." Black Star starts to say.

That's Kishin Asura, that's what that is.

To be continued next month!

So yay, to absolutely nobody's surprise but I'm sure many people's delight, Asura is back! Hell yes!

And my god what HUUUUUUUGE FUCKING IMPROVEMENT the fight scenes in this month's chapter were compared to last month's chapter. Oh hey look, action scenes that SHOW MOVEMENT! Panel sequences that actually FLOW INTO EACH OTHER! Spirit showing off new forms that actually look TOTALLY BADASS! Who'dve thunk!

I'm glad that Soul Eater is back in form after having taken a brief detour into suckville last month. See, THIS chapter is why I read this manga. Stupidly over-the-top action scenes and ridiculous character drama and Black Star being Black Star for the win. Crona's muppet faces and the teeny-tiny feet are still frustrating distractions, but at least Ohkubo is drawing ACTION again so yay.

ETA: This month's Gangan Mobile bonus emoji!

Soul Eater Chapter 106: The Daddy-Daughter Teamup of the Century

BA-DUM.

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