User blog:Xilinoc/Ch. 638 - Boiling Malice and Total Comedy

Song to listen to while reading this chapter: "Holy Diver" by Dio

From the minds behind Harmful Park: High-Brow Gag and Pure Shooting comes the title of this chapter. Praise the Tron.

So we start off with Mayuri being, well, Mayuri: apparently, he doesn't care that Pernida wants to call itself Pernida Parnkgjas, he found it and he'll be the one to name it, dammit. Careful there, Mayuri, with that sort of talk you might start a tumbling of outrage on the internet, if you catch my drift. Fortunately, however, Mayuri is willing to compromise by merely deciding the spelling of the name; Mohrp was right when he said that this whole conversation reads like a back-and-forth between Kubo and the scanlation group (see: Ivan, Kirge, Juha Bach). In a truly Hulk-like fashion, though, Pernida reasons that since it can't understand what Mayuri is saying, and whatever it can't understand is bad, whatever Mayuri is saying is bad for the Quincy - my goodness, he's already at the level of a Youtube commenter - and releases more tendrils into the ground to form a stone hand, which leads Mayuri to clarify for us that it can also affect inorganic objects (and presumably all objects without nerves, like Hikifune's trees).

After leaping back to avoid a good crushing, Mayuri uses Jabarakaina for the first time in 517 chapters to pull a Bionic Commando on a tower, but Pernida sends its nerves racing up the side before forming another giant hand to push Mayuri off. I'm really starting to wonder if all it can make is hands. Anyway, Mayuri gets smashed between two stone hands like the world's most morally ambiguous fly, but his "armor" explodes and he pops out unharmed, albeit with a new hair design that is definitely my favorite so far. Pernida seems to have him caught with nerves in the ground, but the ever unpredictable Mayuri Trolltsuchi pushes a button on his shoes and BAM - hovering on Reishi because he's using Hirenkyaku. Now that's something I'm POSITIVE no one ever called, even the 2 people who predicted Pernida being the left hand of der SK. It looks like he needs those shoes active in order to do this, but that's still pretty cool.

Mayuri decides that it's high time to get a "sample" of Pernida and wraps...what appears to be a snake with a screaming human head around its pinkie finger before detonating it, causing Pernida to lose what is roughly its equivalent of an arm. Jesus, Kubo, you had to make an arm lose an arm as well. Now, being a completely sensible scientist, Mayuri douses the finger in, like, formaldehyde or something to keep it fresh - but he doesn't quite predict another, mono-pupiled (never thought I'd actually have to use that term to describe any character) eye appearing on the pinkie and sending a bunch of nerves into his arm, which bursts. Luckily, Mayuri is hella skilled with a needle, and in a second or two he completely stitches his arm back together, restructuring its muscles, nerves, and so on in the process, to prevent Pernida from taking control again. Damn.

Another damn good chapter. Getting some more expansion of The Compulsory was interesting, though I was a bit underwhelmed by Pernida's lack of creativity (in all fairness, it doesn't seem to be terribly smart). Mayuri, however, stole the show, especially with that psychedelic chapter cover. From bringing back Jabarakaina to the Hirenkair Jordans to the arm recovery, he's really showing off his stuff here, though not quite as much as he did in the Giselle fight, and his new design is very fitting. What's more interesting, though, is that the penultimate panel shows that he's actually beginning to sweat, meaning Pernida is just beginning to push him - a very rare occurrence, I'm sure we all agree. This on top of Nemu's vagueness in the last couple weeks makes me think she'll be stepping in either at the end of the next chapter or the middle of the chapter after that because I'm guessing Pernida's still got quite a bit more to show...and if so, Mayuri's gonna get rekt.

Thoughts on this chapter? Is Kubo just trying to fuel the arms race? Pfft, not enough eyes I want Mayuri's new hairstyle Mayuri's got mad seamstress skills, yo