Tuesday 6 January 2015

Nanatsu no Taizai 109 Review: The Demon Clan

Nanatsu no Taizai Chapter 109: Earthquake

The chapter starts off with Hendricksen doing this crazy portal-summoning ritual while Dreyfus watches and then kind of heads off when he thinks it's too dangerous. I thought it was funny. Hendricksen does this big summoning thing and there are blasts and scribbly dialogue everywhere and for a moment it looks like Hendricksen is being torn apart and killed by the great ritual thing, which would be a fun twist if only to see this big bad nigh-impossible to kill enemy just get wiped out by a random thing like this...

Dreyfus walks up to Hendricksen and apparently Hendricksen was set up to be a decoy by Dreyfus. Dreyfus talks about how the 'ash', or 'gray' part of Hendricksen was killed, while the 'blood' or 'red' part was left behind, and judging from the art it seems that this means Hendricksen's demon powers were ripped straight out of him. Hendricksen seems to have gained his sanity back (or is just completely confused over everything) as he sees Dreyfus with that demon symbol on his eye.

Dreyfus lets Hendricksen go for being useful, and we get this two-page spread of just... freaking creepy-ass black shapes with glowing white eyes, which was drawn pretty well in my opinion. Dreyfus talks about how it has been three thousand years (and another demon later comments that their normal lifespan is around one thousand years or something) before we cut off to another two-page spread showing nine demons that Hendricksen has summoned. There is this man in a cape with armoured arms, this dude dressed in a suit of armour with a scythe (that reminds me of that one random knight from the Weird Fangs way back when), a little girl wrapped up in a gigantic blanket of tentacles, a girl with a shadow cape that ends up in hands, this giant blob of shadow and cracked faces that looks like a toned-down version of the demons from Berserk, a four-armed giant with a bag over his head and a skull belt, mini-Vegeta, a Leone-looking girl with what little clothes being made out of shadows and some dude standing on tippy-toes with a rapier.

Quite interesting designs all, and Armor Dude seems to be one of the chattiest of the nine. Shadow-Cape-Arm girl addresses Dreyfus as 'Fraudrin', and apparently Dreyfus' body has been taken over by this Fraudrin fellow as a vessel around ten years ago, which is about when they killed Zaratros. Maybe one of the two demons is Fraudrin and they sent their consciousness down Dreyfus' body? I'm not sure if it's an error in making the word bubbles, but at one point the Tentacle Girl seems to talk to herself. She's asking why Dreyfus-Fraudin only broke them out, and then answers herself about how the blood isn't sufficient. She's either a mind-reader or it's just an editorial goof. Or a translation goof.

Leone-girl (who doesn't really look like Leone anymore beyond that one panel) keeps talking about 'taking it from the ass', which is apparently an euphemism for 'long story short'? Whatever. She and Rapier Dude (who has a face tattoo and a funny mustache)  discuss how the Goddess, Giant and Fairy Clans don't really have much of a presence anymore. Dreyfus-Fraudrin recaps the other demons about how humans have taken over Brittania, and the Armor Dude is kind of 'hey Fraudrin have you been dicking around?' but Fraudrin replies about how the Seven Deadly Sins are a hindrance to his plans, which was why he probably set them up to fail.

And indeed, when you think about it, the Seven Sins do have some representations of the Fairy and Giant clans in the form of Diane and King. Not to mention Meliodas' whole demon-y ness.

One of the demons mentions Meliodas by name, and we reveal later on after a reaction from Meliodas that it's the short dude that kind of looks like Vegeta, who looks like Meliodas' brother or something. Hendricksen has this face of 'what the fuck is going on' while all this is happening and it makes it all so hilarious!

But we cut over to Meliodas and company, talking about Camelot (yeah, what's up about that too?) when suddenly there is a gigantic earthquake, and both Hawk and Gowther notes how Meliodas is not acting right... and he knows. He knows they have awakened. After this we cut over to a full-body shot of this possibly-Meliodas-brother dude...

Armor Dude just wants to blow shit up (I like him) while Take-It-Up-The-Ass-lady wants to sleep. Mini-Vegeta (who I'm giong to call him for the rest of the review) notes how their demonic powers haven't returned to full strength yet, and their magic is near close to empty and they have to recuperate. They decide to go to a place that's apparently called Edinburgh, and they just fly off and leave a very fucking confused Hendricksen behind.

And they do fly. I like how most of them have wings like Meliodas' black-Amaterasu-flame wing things going on. Most of them just have them on the back like angels, but Mini Vegeta sprouts them from his arm like Meliodas. Cthulhu-Tentacle Girl, Shadow-Cape Arm Girl and the big black blob of faces are just flying around just 'cause, Armor Dude has these cool super-streamlined tentacles, and the four-armed giant seems to just be helicoptering with a crazy buzzsaw halo thing.

Overall, quite interested to see where we go from here, and I actually hope Dreyfus and his little party gets to meet Meliodas pretty soon. Though the next chapter is apparently 'Confession' so I'm going to assume Meliodas is going to say some stuff about his backstory which is equally interesting. Just... just don't take like fifty chapters to tell it like Magi did.

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