Hunter x Hunter is taking the week off due to some unexplained vagary of the Japanese TV schedule. (Certainly an unexpected hiatus is fully in the spirit of its source material, whose publishing schedule has been irregular.) The new kids can give us plenty to talk about, though!
Day Break Illusion #8 – Meeting a complementary card and cancelling each other out may be a terrifying thought for our young heroines, but it does suggest one decisive way of dealing with the Daemonia problem. Of course, it’s the sort of thing that will only be considered at the very last, when it looks like all hope is lost and the only way left is– Whoa! Hey! Where’s Ginka going?
Once again, she’s cutting through the fog of angst to show her friends the way forward. The straight-up fight doesn’t seem to be the way to do it, they’re too evenly matched. But what happened at the end there? Did they both really wink out of existence? Or…
It’s been explained more than once by now that both the Elemental and Diabolos Tarots descend from the earlier Aeon Tarot deck. When two opposing cards meet, perhaps they’re merging back into Aeon form? Except if that’s the case, why does Cerebran, whose interests clearly lie with the Daemonia, thinks that having the two meet is a good idea?
Gatchaman Crowds #7 – This is definitely a reimagining, not a sequel. Berg-Katze (or Berg Katse, or Zoltar, or Lukan, or Solaris, depending on which version you’re working from) was present and died in both the original series and an earlier remake. He was an engineered human born on Earth in the original; here he’s outright alien, or at least that’s what Paiman believes.
Whoever he is, his potential for destruction has not been oversold. He doesn’t seem to have even broken a sweat crippling Jō and reducing Rui’s Hundred to no more than five, by my count (Rui, Umeda, and the three who lost their app permissions just before the fight).
Meanwhile, Paiman has just about admitted that he’s useless as a leader. He doesn’t know what to do without JJ giving him instructions, O.D. is the one really keeping the team together, and Hajime is already the one making the real decisions in the face of most of their challenges.
It was great to see him briefly grow a backbone and show what must have gotten him the leadership post. How much collateral damage must O.D.’s power cause if the threat of using it is enough to scare Paiman into considering taking on a planet-destroying foe? I’m wondering about that unnamed disaster a couple years before the start of the series…
The Eccentric Family #8 – Having been tantalized with questions about the night of Soichirō Shimogamo’s disappearance, we now get answers to absolutely none of them.
Yajirō gets his due, as we can now fully appreciate his transition to the tanuki equivalent of a hikikomori. And it was sweet to see that Kaisei’s apparent affection for him is reciprocated.
But how exactly did he and his father part? How did Soichirō go from riding a fake streetcar through the side streets of Kyoto to sitting in a cage at a Friday Fellows meeting? What does Benten cry about when she goes to Yajirō‘s well? Is it something else to do with that night?
