New chapter 4 part 2 and probably the end of the SDM case arc, yay
The culprit indeed acted under the influence of a bad spirit from down there, but somehow I didn't expect that it could possess different persons at it please, haha
Surprisingly, this manga, which didn't seem to be something that would bring a lot to the lore, add something to vengeful spirits. Changing the person it possess by means of beverage ? Interesting. Probably something that falls into ZUN's grand plan of including further booze into his work somewhere down the line, but otherwise, giving this particular vengeful spirit a particular gimmick. I wonder if such gimmick is exclusive to her : can others vengeful spirits have their own way, their own set of conditions for possessing people ? Pretty intersting imo.
Something could also be said about what this adds regarding youkai and their power, specifically their life force : there has always been this thing about the Youkai needing fear or other kind of feeling related thing to subsist, but this is kinda new. Magical power and youkai's importance can more or less be attributed to why Yukari put the border between fantasy and reality, which empowers youkai, and the spell card rules, which allow youkai to use their power in order not to lose it : this makes it very clear that youkai need more than fear, i guess.
And still speaking about non human species and their powers, since we seem to be entering a Hakugyoukurou arc, I'm VERY curious about the thing with Yuyuko : she is a GHOST, not a rando with a flesh body : since what happened to her really look like what happened in the SDM arc, did the vengeful spirit ate (such irony) her magic power ? Is the vengeful spirit going to be able to possess her ? And why would Yuyuko, a GHOST, PRESUMABLY suffer the same symptoms as the YOUKAI who got their power consumed ? among others ...
As far as I'm concerned, the latest chapter 4 part 2 made this series more intersting than I initially thought it would be (I confess, I was pretty underwhelmed by the first chapter tbh)
I've also more or less said this, and this is getting more obvious with the coming Hakugyoukurou arc, but this manga is one hell of an occasion for ZUN to reexplore the setting of locations introduced in the super old works, AND to give some screentime and characterization to the old cast : this is like the most cynical depiction of SDM character relationship I've seen in a while, plus some unusual side that we don't really see very often : cold Meiling, ICE COLD Patchouli, concerned Remilia (?!) This makes me curious as to how PCB cast is gonna be illustrated.
On the other side, this vengeful spirit-chan seems to be one of the few pure villain type of character of this series. That's very unusual, I wanna see what could her motivations be : why is she called eternal criminal ? What is she doing all of this for ? Is there any particular reason she goes after magical power instead of properly possessing people ? I hope she's not gonna be some kind a flat kind of character that was just introduced only to allow the plot to exist, only to be fortune tellered by the end of the manga.
At any rate, this is probably the last time we're gonna see Flandre talk until the next time, AND we're finally going to see Alice get some spotlight in the next arc, so there's that too
Is there a way to know when all of this happens? I personally think the whole story comes (and will end) before Lotus Eaters' chronological start, but i wonder if there is an actual way to determine the chronology, like some reference or whatever.
3/ Satori circumstances, namely her being so weak on the surface plus her being able to see the "remnants" of thoughts or something ? Maybe Koishi's super strength and endurance is that aside from her not being conscious of her tiredness, she doesn't need to deal with the problem Satori facesWell, it makes sense; Koishi's Third Eye is closed, so she wouldn't even notice things like this. Meanwhile it seems Satori gets ill from overexposure to them.
Hmm, chapter 7 is out, it seems
4/ Alice's house being ... relatively creepy ? She's got a doll doing reading for her, like, how is that even supposed to work ?! Also are those candle bearing *silent* dolls supposed to be normally singing ?! But whatever, now Alice's gonna receive a speaking role, after probably a literal decade or something. I also like how a simple pincushion tied on her wrist makes for some kind of couturier getup
Are you sure it's "Fool Detective"? The wiki says it's "Foul Detective". Or is the wiki wrong here?
Foul : adverb, contrary to the rules; unfairly
It's gotta be "foul" detective in the sense where it's similar to the previous "cheating" detective, since "fool" detective would have Satori be an absolute buffoon
So yeah, one letter change might indeed be warranted
Also wouldn't it be funny if the PCB arc end up without Alice and Ran not saying anything
Like they just got introduced with a title and that's it
If that were the case, it wouldn't be the first time it happened (FS Kokoro).Ah, I meant them talking in the series in general, not just in the manga. Kokoro was pretty new around the time, she got to talk a fair bit in HM, and still got to talk later in ULiL, AoCF and even do something in AFiEU. Even got to stare in a FS 4koma. By comparison Alice and Ran haven't said anything at all for about a literal decade. If next arc is gonna be with IN cast, then it'll be a sad day if Alice just sleeps through the whole PCB cast arc and Ran just get a one time appearance.
It sounds like they have been sealed in Former Hell for a long time, considering Satori is treating their escape as an urgent matter, to say nothing of the fact that she originally hailed from the current hell.Reimu says in the latest chapter 10 that the Eternal Criminal deliberately following the order of incident is probably in order to show Reimu that she has been watching her all that time. Mima or not, the Eternal Criminal could observe her one way or another, else she wouldn't necessarily attack in that particular order and target people who were involved in these incidents. I think here the motive to get back at these people in particular should be of importance later on. It just seem weird that we'd have some completely new and unrelated girl have some kind of personnal reason to target characters we know, especially we haven't been told some kind of grudge anyone could hold towards ALL of these victims. Probably another way of getting back at Reimu for the next reason :
Also, considering all Satori knows, I think she would tell Reimu if she knew the one after her personally.[/ispoiler]Actually she kinda did, in her conversation with Yuyuko, who already guessed that the Eternal Criminal had a grudge against Youkai AND the Hakurei Shrine. This latest chapter 10 has Yukari telling Reimu about the Vengeful Spirit's true nature and motive too, but like Yuyuko, she doesn't seem to refer to its exact identity.
https://twitter.com/thgairai/status/1431869577525297163
A bit late, but it has been announced thatthe Mima mangathe Detective Satori manga is set to resume serialization.
Not much detail is known aside from there being a new artist handling the art, and we're gonna have to wait for the end of next month (september) for updates on who that artist is gonna be and when the serialization will restart for real.
So yeah, it's been like what, 5 - 6 months of wait or something ? At any rate, I hope things are gonna go well and the new person isn't gonna get crapped on too hard over their artstyle, and also get ZUN to confirm for real if the Eternal Criminal is that villainous ghost who has been eternally absent from 2hu titles for a long time or not
>Yukari's gaps are used to attack Alice and drain herYukari's gap doesn't drain magic power, the Vengeful Spirit's possession does, and Alice got possessed since she fell into comatose. Plus, Satori also clearly says that there is no sign of external injuries, so it cannot be an attack besides possession. Besides, The Vengeful Spirit only possess one person at a time, and repossessing Yukari is very unlikely since Yukari was capable of taking action and could easily flee when freed. This is how the chain of events would be in case of a Yukari repossession :
>Presumably, while Yukari is still compromised, she is repossessed and takes Marisa to Alice's house. Possibly just to taunt everyone and show another victim has been taken?
>Yukari is drained and abandoned, where she then revives enough to go see Reimu
It's confirmed that Marisa was possessed when she visited Hakugyokurou, but there's no indication she has been possessed a second time. If she had, she wouldn't remember going to Alice's house, and only one person can be possessed at a time.Satori brings up that there is a high probability that Marisa has been possessed multiple times, so possessing someone more than once should not be an issue, especially if it's a human who doesn't suffer from the possession side effects Youkai face. It's likely that what happened is exactly as what she told Satori, and it's likely that no Marisa possessions happened after Yukari gapped her, but imo, if she had no incriminating memories to be deleted at the time this happened, there would be little reason to take such brazen action and blow possessed Yukari's cover (along with the legitimacy of the phantom gathering, which wasted quite a bit of time)
the "Alice was attacked before the arc even started" theory is interesting, but given the timeframe other victims have recovered I can't think of a way that would work. Plus, if you look at the frame when Alice's body is shown, there's an overturned teacup, suggesting she was attacked via liquid and not through old-fashioned possession (like I'm assuming happened to Yukari, Marisa, and Sakuya). Still, I'll keep that in the back of my head.
At most, Marisa is her pawn, not a conspirator. And besides, working with someone to hurt Reimu is the one thing Marisa would absolutely never do, no matter the reason. That alone is enough for me to dismiss the idea out of hand, personally.I also don't think the endgame of the Vengeful Spirit is about harming Reimu, since there were quite a few opportunies to do just that previously : for example, she could have just used a possessed Sakuya (before Reimu was made aware of the possessions) to do a surprise attack featuring time powers, or used Yukari and possibly attack Reimu when she was confining herself. Even most of the previous victims didn't particularly suffer any serious harm (despite magic loss supposedly being serious for Youkai) : weak Patchouli still got to move around, while Yuyuko is plenty capable of giving a freaking piggyback : the only person who truly have been harmed at this point would be Satori at the end of Chapter 15 : if the big bad's motives aren't about seriously harming Reimu, then Marisa getting enlisted doesn't seem off the table. I'm leaning more towards the Marisa-is-an-accomplice route because I can't picture Marisa to get manipulated at convenience, plus the things that require a proper partner that is on the ball in the more recent chapters.
And while it's true a gap in memory may not be something Satori would be able to note per se, she would definitely be able to tell if Marisa was actively conspiring with the criminal or lying during her interrogation at Alice's house.Still going by the angle where Marisa may be a conspirator, imo "refreshing" Marisa should not be too much of a challenge : something that seems suspicious to me happens in the start of the IN arc, where Marisa, somehow, figures out exactly that Reimu is in Eientei and even enlist Mokou's help to get just there : before this happens, an supposedly good Marisa was trying to rely on Reimu's intuition to find the Vengeful Spirit, but couldn't ask Reimu since she went to Eientei after a not-possessed-anymore Yukari told her about the Vengeful Spirit's intentions : if Marisa was going to rely on Reimu's help to find something, how did she figure Reimu's current location with exact precision ? Especially if she wasn't made aware of the Vengeful Spirit's objectives ? Extremely suspicious to me, what's with her randomly getting a bunch of highly accurate information. I think things probably went this :
I'm not sure why Kaguya getting to Eientei before Reimu is a plot hole.No no no, I didn't say that that's a plot hole, just that the timing between Yukari to Kaguya possession is ridiculously tight, especially since Reimu flew straight to Eientei just after Yukari told her about Newhu's plans.
So given the progression of events should we expect Eiki or komachi to be the next victim? I also hope we get to see yuuka since it's been awhile since we've seen her.Way it looks, seems like we're getting some of that PoFV disrespect as we are entering straight into MoF arc (if we go by the chapter / arc title + introduced cast of characters. Kinda funny since MoF's "incident" doesn't strike me as a proper generalized incident like the previous ones (PoFV included), but I digress.
I'm surprised that it's such a common reading of the last two chapters that Reimu is going after Mizuchi out of pettiness or because she hates the Miyadeguchi. It's not clear what exactly her feelings are or what she's going to do, but from the start I had the sense she feels some manner of responsibility towards Mizuchi for whatever happened in the past. Whether that's sympathy or merely an element of understanding before she stands her ground though, we'll just have to wait and see. I'm excited to see where the story takes us as we presumably head towards the final act.To me, it was the way she worded things. She spoke very vaguely about it, saying the Miyadeguchis served Hakurei Shrine and that it happened before she was born, which is a very vague way of putting things so I originally felt that she might not have known the full story. And then her final words are "We hit back!", which personally felt to me like an indication that she just wanted to get revenge on Mizuchi rather than anything to do with her past, especially considering that Mizuchi was already sealed in Former Hell, it just felt like she was going after her unnecessarily out of spite, due to the confirmation that this incident was about her.
Reimu already knew she was the personal target of the incident since the second arc though. If she hadn't learned her name was Miyadeguchi, it sounds like she may have accepted the outcome as things are, but learning her tormenter's name caused her to choose to confront her directly, even at the risk of her own life. Frankly, more than anything, I just can't believe Reimu is the type of person who would act out of spite over clan politics from before she was born, and her body language didn't read as anger to me. It's very much vague what her thoughts towards Mizuchi are since we don't know what happened between the Hakurei and Miyadeguchi, but I would be very surprised if this encounter will be a simple matter of Reimu trying to exterminate her.I didn't interpret it as her being spiteful over what happened with Mizuchi over things that happened before she was born, I interpreted it as her being spiteful after having direct confirmation that it was about her. It's been a while since I've read the whole thing, but I don't recall it being concretely established that it was targetting Hakurei, aside from them noticing the pattern of Mizuchi's targets and the incidents Reimu handled. Marisa even acknowledges this by saying "That just makes it even more certain! You're that spirit's main target!", the implication being that now they had concretely established it.