Nanatsu no Taizai Special: The Young Girl and A Dream That Was Never Meant to Be
We get a Diane backstory! And... it's not really that interesting, I'm kind of sorry. King, Ban and Escanor's little flashback stories all had stuff that correspond to the present day stuff like the dynamic between King and Ban, plus Escanor's unrevealed powers, and while this backstory does reveal a fair amount of the giant clan dynamics and what Diane did after he met King the first time, it's kind of really predictable and doesn't really hold much surprises in store.
Diane and this little chubby giant girl, Dolores, are part of a giant clan under this super-awesome giantess warchief Matrona, who was the mysterious woman Diane used as an alter-ego back when she was shrunk to human size. The giants have this proud-warrior-race Viking mindset that the only thing to do in life is to fight to get an honourable death in the battlefield, and they're being used by humans as mercenaries, and the giants are more than willing to fight their own kind, not being bothered by killing their own kind because, hey, the other dude got an honourable death.
Diane herself calls bullshit on this, noting how this will only serve to drive the giant race into extinction while furthering humankind, though she herself doesn't hate humans that much since she apparently has been throwing humans into a river instead of killing them. Matrona is a bit of a drill sergeant and is pretty verbally abusive to both Diane and Dolores, who all the other giants of Megadozer kind of view as disappointments due to, y'know, not liking war.
We get a little reference to Hellbram's death at the hands of humans, and we get a conversation about how Diane and Dolores don't really like their situation in a cycle of war and fighting. We see Diane and Dolores training to use their Creation powers, with Dolores barely being able to keep a tiny rock afloat while Diane is able to lift what's basically a small mountain and it still standing even after Diane was distracted by Matrona punching Dolores in the gut. They practice Heavy Metal, but a single punch from Matrona dispells Dolores's Heavy Metal (she sucks) while Diane survives a barrage of punches before finally coughing up blood. Also apparently if they want to get out of the warrior life, they have to birth a warrior child to take their place.
Matrona plans to mould the potential within Diane so she gets to be the strongest of all the giants, and while this is good in the eyes of the other giants, Diane kind of goes away. Dolores is kind of like 'no one's going to accept us giants' and so Diane leaves alone, where we get a recap of when she met Meliodas the first time... though she doesn't immediately join up with Meliodas after hearing about the whole 'I accept anyone into my team', but actually returns to Megadozer first to bring Dolores...
Who, like all 'likable family member or friend who shows up in an origin flashback' manga characters, dies. Off-screen. Diane punches Matrona, who delivers an allmighty comeback that sends her falling. Matrona is like 'save your anger for the next battle', and Diane is all like 'fighting is only meaningful to protect someone' and Matrona is like 'you're not a human or a fairy, fuck off with your non-giant ideas'. Diane cries herself to sleep, thinking of Meliodas and kind of assigning the remnants of the memories with King to Meliodas, which is kind of sweet.
However, it's still a massive distraction. I'm going to assume next chapter we'll either pick up with the present-day Diane plot and have Diane remember King for good and that'll wrap up the Gowther plot and we can move on with the Seven Sins fighting the Ten Commandments. My money is on Matrona having already died in the meantime (maybe in a second part to this flashback, though I hardly think it's necessary), or at least present to give one of the Ten Commandments a fair fight.
Overall it's not a bad chapter! It's really solid, some nice character work for Diane and a lot of worldbuilding, I just am not that interested especially after all the teasing about the Ten Commandments because dammit I want to get to them.
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