Nanatsu no Taizai 115.5 Review: Meliodas the Demon and Escanor's Split Persona

Nanatsu no Taizai, Special Chapter: The Vampires of Edinburgh, Part 2 

Thirty more pages of Nanatsu no Taizai! We pick up where we left off, and Orlondi the Rose, creepy prettyboy that he is, continues to suck Ban's blood out. Ban, being immortal and all, can just replenish his blood whenever, but Orlondi wants to keep Ban forever as a blood bag. Ban figures out that Orlondi's power is basically invisible tentacle-pipes tipped with poisons... which is why he's called Orlondi the Rose. Because roses have tentacles, invisibility and numbing poison. Right. Makes no fucking sense. But Ban, of course, doesn't really give a shit. He drinks some wine, then tells Orlondi that poison doesn't work on him, before slicing off Orlondi's tentacles. Orlondi has apparently drank so much of Ban's blood that he's like Snorlax and Jabba the Hutt combined into one big obese thing, plus Ban shows off his absolutely broken powers of strength-stealing and one-shots obese Orlondi to death. Well, these vampires aren't really going to be a threat, are they.

Escanor and Meliodas show up and Escanor is all like 'oh I am worthless and Merlin is awesome' and generally is a klutzy self-deprecating dude, dragging his giant axe around while Meliodas walks in full armour. Escanor and Meliodas naturally get separated, and Escanor comes face-to-face with the vampire king, who is this big, muscular dude with an aewsome beard. He reminds me of someone, but I can't really think of who specifically at the moment. That style of beard and long hair really looks familiar, though. Anyway, he introduces himself as the Vampire King Izraf, and he can do some kind of Force Explosion thing as he attacks Escanor who's all running around like a coward and screaming and telling him to stop please.

Meliodas is confronted by two more members of the vampire royalty, Ren of the Black Claw and Gelda of the Thousand Temptations. And they recognize Meliodas for the one who broke a treaty with them and sealed them, while Meliodas, of course, remembers nothing. They mistake Meliodas for his brother-slash-lookalike form the Ten Commandments, Zeldris... or there is some memory loss involved within Meliodas' backstory. And it's cool how this ties into the bigger story and doesn't just serve as backstory for Escanor and Edinburgh and whatnot.

Ren the Black Claw, who really has two blades, not claws, jutting out from her knuckles, is all 'I will have my revenge!' and calls Meliodas 'Zeldris' and all before Gelda blows Ren apart and asks Meliodas to kill her because of reasons. Sadly that's all we learn of this episode, but that really makes me want to know more about Meliodas' mysterious past. And whatever happened to Gelda.

Meanwhile, Diane and King are fighting Modganne and Ganne, a pair of weird-looking dudes. Modganne is a scrawny goblin-thing dressed in rags and Ganne is a weird combination of lanky and stocky. And they have this weird dude with a reaper's scythe with them. Diane and King feel tired and whatnot, and it's apparently because a drunk Ban is stealing their physical strength. This is the battle referred once way back near when Gowther was first introduced, so I guess we had to have this scene? I thought it ran for a bit too long.

Drunk Ban tries to challenge Merlin (who collects Orlondi's sentient eye because Orlondi is apparently a Zelda boss or something) to a fight but Merlin manages to convince Ban to do a thousand pushups.

Apparently when time becomes dawn, Escanor gets a change in personality because as soon as Merlin comments that it's going to be dawn soon, Escanor, well, loses his cowardly streak and starts to behave like someone holding the title of 'the Sin of Pride' would. He also gets a physical boost, growing straight into his baggy clothes and acts all 'apologize to me, that you were born into my world'. He manages to land a hit on Vampire King Izraf, who, while not using his full power... really, I don't think he'll give Escanor much trouble.

Still pretty exciting to see all this happen. I'd be content just to see Escanor get introduced and Ban being a badass and Merlin being mysterious as always, but all the additional Meliodas backstory and how it ties into the present-day main series by peeling off little bits of Meliodas' mysterious past is pretty awesome. Definitely looking forward to next week for more Nanatsu no Taizai.