Nanatsu no Taizai, Chapter 169: The Legendary Weakest
Holy Knight
A mostly standard chapter that sums up that Gowther is a
crazy emotionless piece of bastard shit, and I love Gowther for it. I mean,
don’t get me wrong, not that I agree with anything Gowther is saying or doing,
but damn if he isn’t entertaining as all hell. Jericho goes on about how he
went through a similar thing with throwing emotions away for power, we get
Gowther dismissing comradeship (a nice take that against most shonen manga out
there) and Jericho trying to defend it… but all she gets from Gowther is ‘oh
that makes me want a heart more’. We get Escanor begging Gloxinia and Dolor to
stop the match but they predictably tell him to fuck off. Meliodas is just
poker-facing through this all.
Gowther just effortlessly whacks Jericho and Hawk aside,
noting that he didn’t use magic against them, but he uses Nightmare Jack
against Escanor out of respect to the Lion’s Sin… and, well, at least Gowther’s
using relatively non-lethal methods of combat. We get a flashback for Escanor,
which is unexpected. We see that he’s actually the prince of a certain kingdom
with an utter shitbag of an older brother, who bullies him constantly and beats
him up. Mini-Escanor accidentally broke his brother’s arm at one point, and
while we don’t see what Escanor looks like at this point the reactions from
everyone (including his distraught mother) all make it as if Escanor
transformed into something monstrous.
Escanor is driven out of his kingdom, helped by this lady
called Rosa, and he just wanders around the countryside beating up big monsters
and scaring people and being prideful as fuck, before he meets Merlin and
Meliodas. But mostly Merlin. Escanor is absolutely taken to how Merlin doesn’t
give a shit about his transformations and feels more curious than afraid, and
we see a meeting between Escanor and Gowther in the past discussing about
Escanor’s attraction to Merlin.
And then we get a visionary version of Merlin who
delivers an absolutely horrifying nightmare face to Escanor (which takes up an
entire page, fuck you) and rejects Escanor outright, noting that the ‘curse’
will devour Escanor who has never been anything more than a test subject. All
the while Escanor gets swallowed up by darkness as vision-Merlin tells Escanor
to die alone in the darkness.
Man, Gowther is a dick!
And then Escanor breaks free from the illusion, because,
uh, Merlin is his Sun that illuminated his darkness. And then Escanor just
hulks out and assumes his daytime form, which is what the hell? It’s awesome as
fuck, and all, even if the Merlin-is-my-sun bit really came out of nowhere. The deus ex machina honestly... doesn't bother me that much? I mean, it doesn't outright win Escanor the match. If anything it really only serves to level the playing field between Gowther and Escanor. I
can’t really hate it too much since we don’t really know the extent of
Escanor’s abilities, and I’m definitely interested in seeing just what it would
entail. At this point I don’t have a clue. Escanor and Gowther are two
characters whose power levels aren’t exactly made clear, so it’s going to be
interesting if nothing else.
No comments:
Post a Comment