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Title: The Tortured Princess
Series: Shaman King #14
Author: Hiroyuki Takei
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Manga
Pages: 200
Format: Digital Copy
Series: Shaman King #14
Author: Hiroyuki Takei
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Manga
Pages: 200
Format: Digital Copy
Synopsis: |
Joco's back story
continues. His new master, Olona, wants to make the world a better
place through laughter and comedy. But Joco's old gang doesn't want
to let him go and beats up Olona. Since Joco now controls Mic the
Jaguar, Olona is defenseless. Olona tells Joco that he has an
incurable disease and that he would rather die at the hands of the
gang members than see Joco resort to violence and death to save him.
The gang kills Olona and the story reverts back to the present.
Joco shows a new
move against Tecolote and immobilizes all his bone dolls with
terrible jokes. He uses up his mana but gives Ren the opening he
needs to move against Tecolote. He and Bason, his spirit ally, blow
Tecolote away with one smashing blow and everyone see's that Ren's
mana has increased exponentially. Hao, who is watching, comments that
maybe it will be worthwhile to recruit Ren later on.
We get a cut scene
of Lyserg, now one of the X-Laws, along with Marco the nominal leader
of the X-Laws, unloading an Iron Maiden encased in chains.
The next Shaman
fight starts, between one of the X-Law sub-groups, X-1 and Team Nile,
an Egyptian themed group. Lyserg is now part of X-1 and takes on the
challenge of fighting Team Nile all by himself. Marco and the Iron
Maiden step aside and leave everything to Lyserg. Ryu is crushed that
Lyserg has joined the X-Laws but Our Gang is cheering him on anyway.
However, Lyserg has fully drunk the X-Law kool-aid and threatens to
kill Team Nile. They refuse to surrender and continue the fight.
Lyserg can't bring himself to kill them and so Marco and Jeanne, the
Iron Maiden step in. Jeanne unleashes her power and eventually kills
each member of Team Nile as punishment for not surrendering to her.
The volume ends
with Yoh realizing that an X-Law member as the Shaman King will
result in an age of tyranny and blood and he vows that he will become
the Shaman King to stop such a thing from happening.
My Thoughts: |
Yeah! I like fighting and I get it in spades here. Thankfully, the
manga-ka leavens the action scenes with humor, so things haven't
descended into dark, gloomy angst. For instance, when Iron Maiden
Jeanne comes out of the iron maiden, both Ryu and Yoh exclaim “she's
hot!” and the picture shows Anna putting her hand over Yoh's eyes.
I'd definitely include that scene here but the digital version I'm
reading is a pdf and I don't know how to extract a particular image
from a pdf.
Between Marco and Jeanne, we get a pretty good idea of just what the
X-Laws intend. A world of Law without mercy and death as the final
sentence for any infraction. It is very harsh and unforgiving.
Unfortunately, the manga-ka takes the cheap and easy route and
portrays them as simply Hao-lite because their Justice ends in death.
The thing is, Justice is about death. Only when Justice is paired
with Mercy can death be avoided. There is just lots to go into with
all of that and just like his handling of the “great spirit”
philosophy, Takei neatly sidesteps any deeper thoughts to paint the
X-Laws as no better than Hao. Sigh...
Thankfully, while talking about that took up a whole paragraph in
this review, it doesn't play nearly so big a part in this volume and
now that Takei's gotten it out of his system, I'm hoping we won't see
a repeat of this particular shallow philosophy. I do expect to get
lots of philosophy-lite as each new group appears though.
This was a good ending place for the month, as a battle is concluded
and no other one has started. I'm thinking I'll try to find a good
ending volume each month to conclude on, as long as it doesn't run
over 5 volumes.
★★★★☆
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