Nanatsu no Taizai 258 Review: War Dawn

Nanatsu no Taizai, Chapter 258: Holy War Begins

Not really much to say about this chapter. It's decent setup stuff, ending with the big two-page spread showing the gigantic army of demons and the final panel-page with the combined forces of Britannia charging towards the demons. Definitely looks like the start of the Final War arc for Nanatsu no Taizai, and I'm of two feelings -- on one hand, I'm definitely extremely hyped up about this in a way that I haven't been about Taizai for quite some time. On the other hand, I've seen what 'final war' arcs tend to do to a series, so...

There's definitely a lot of neat stuff going on, though, with Meliodas grabbing the five commandments from Zeldoris relatively voluntarily, including Zeldoris's own commandment. The ones Zeldoris has are himself, Gray Road, Gloxinia, Dolor and Gowther. Estarossa has his own and Galan's, leaving... Melascylla, whose commandment is still with Merlin, I think, and the two still-living Monspiet and Derriere. Zeldoris then asks Meliodas to remember his promise, whatever that is, and then Meliodas apologizes to Zeldoris for being the kind of brother that he is. Yeaaaah I really wish we get some clarification on this front. 

We then get a bit of a roll call of our main characters, which is just an excuse to make one-page spreads showing off their new war-time character models, but thankfully we're not going full Naruto and the character models take up only half of the page and there's still a fair amount of dialogue on the pages themselves. We've got a neat funny Hawk moment, Merlin and Elizabeth talk a bit and Merlin notes how she wasn't serious back when she wanted to 'draw out' Elizabeth's power in the past. Diane does a gigantic split that shows off her crotch while saying "lookie, King!", causing poor King to go into nosebleeds and stutter out an attempt to propose to Diane. Escanor, keh-ing like the arrogant Sin of Pride that he is, shows up in his fancy new jacket and is all pissed about how lovey-dovey everyone's being. Gowther, meanwhile, is all sparkly and is now able to mimic Merlin's voice just to troll Escanor.

Poor Escanor, man. Apparently, the disappointment and the unrequited love aren't the only things that aren't going Escanor's way, because all the keh-ing he's been doing in the short couple of scenes is a symptom of him coughing up blood. Is he actually getting sick all this while because of the "a human body cannot contain an Arch-Angel's power!" or is it tied to how his pride is constantly being challenged left and right?

We then get Deathpierce and the Azure Sky dudes being gigantic vengeful dicks with bloodshot eyes, and Sariel and Tarmiel note that they're all under Ludoshel's power... but they also confirm that as devoted as he is, Hendricksen isn't actually under the power. We get a brief farewell between the B-list cast members (man, I really miss the time when the likes of Guila and Howser were actually relevant). Ludoshel and everyone cheer... and then Escanor notes how "that's the end of your self-satisfying rejoicing", which is the biggest wet towel ever... and then we get the two-page spread, and finally the good guys charging. Overall, it's actually a pretty dang good chapter, and I'm definitely excited for all the action scenes we're going to have. If anything, my only real complaint is that there's like five named characters on the demons' side, which means that we're going to have way, way too many scenes of minor characters fighting generic fodder demons, and that doesn't seem as entertaining as it sounds. The other option is pulling off the resurrection of the dead Commandments and stuff, and that doesn't sound good either. Oh well. We'll see.