Synopsis: An hour into the exam, Debonair continues to round up and 'arrest' the Hunter candidates that she comes across. Suddenly, she hears a call from behind her and finds herself ambushed by a larger group of candidates who are aiming to take the handcuffs from her. Debonair laughs, but realizes the hallway is too narrow for her to fight back without killing someone, so she uses her powers to melt hand-holds into the wall and climb away. One of the guards asks Migael what they're doing, and Migael proudly says they're hunting. As she climbs away, Debonair remarks how annoying the strategy they've come up with is. They continue to ambush her with more people than she has handcuffs for, and they interrupt her ability to get more of them. She also realizes they put more people on her because it's harder for her to fight without killing people so she can't help but hold back, a fact they seem to have realized and are taking full advantage of. As annoying as the strategy is however, she can't help but love how brilliant it is on their part. As Migael uses the fact that they were able to drive Debonair away to recruit more people to their plan, Debonair crawls back inside via another window, thinking to herself that getting away clean is a fine answer to the question the test posed, but using hunting to save others is an even better answer. On the third floor, in the supply storage area, Velou, Porschen, and Bonkers have come face to face with Grimm, who has just taken out a number of their team, including Cobbs and Merrio. Grimm claims that as long as someone comes at them with a level head, they aren't so hard to deal with at all, and asks them what they'll try next. Velou thinks to himself that he knew that dealing with Grimm head-on was too dangerous, and that's why he put most of their number on Debonair instead. Back when they were planning after breaking out of the holding cell, Velou warned everyone that while Debonair wants to test them, Grimm lacks empathy and will only focus on arresting them, even if that means she has to break some bones to do it, so they have to be very careful when dealing with her. Grimm says that if their plan is to disrupt the handcuff supply chain, then all she has to do is knock everyone out long enough for her to go get more, saying that she'll even break some of their bones to do it, confirming Velou's summation of her. Out of nowhere, Bonkers tells them to leave this to him before picking up Velou and Porschen and putting them in the nearby cargo elevator, sending it down and telling them to join up with everyone after Debonair. While Porschen rages that this wasn't part of the plan, Velou says he wondered if this might not happen, as if his suspicions about Bonkers are correct... Grimm asks Bonkers if he really wants to pass at all, causing Bonkers to scoff, especially as Velou and Porschen get back out of the elevator. Velou says he suspected as much himself, but asks Bonkers why he doesn't really want to pass. Grimm pulls out their records on Bonkers, and says that Bikjoe is just a fake name – his real name is KelenkenBonkers, and he was born into the well-known and wealthy Jinmottes family. She stops in surprise for a moment when reading that he's 23, with both Velou and Porschen having assumed he was older than that. Grimm says all of this information is from a background check the guild did on him after they became suspicious with him participating in five consecutive training periods and failing at the last minute every single time – he's failing on purpose, she says. Bonkers says he's just not the type and tells her to hurry up and 'arrest' him, going on to say that guys like him don't deserve to be Hunters. Bonkers explains that back when he was around Velou's age, his hometown was in the path of a giant. Half of the town was reduced to rubble, but thanks to the efforts of some Hunters, the giant was driven back and the town was largely saved. At the time, he thought Hunters were really cool and wanted to join them someday. Late one night when it was raining, a pair of homeless villagers asked if they could shelter inside the family mansion for the night. They had already put up a large number of people, but Bonkers thought turning people away would make them look like villains, so he offered up his own room. Later that night he found himself unable to sleep due to his father's snoring, and came across his room with a light still coming out of it. Peering inside, he found the two villagers looting items out of his room, saying that it was a lot easier to go after rich folk late at night than to dig through rubble in the rain. When one of them asks the other what to do if they're found out, the first thief says they can just kill whoever finds them and be gone by morning. Before they can escape, Bonkers accosted them. The first thief pulled a knife and tried to attack Bonkers, but Bonkers swung his lantern at him, and as it broke it caught both of their clothes on fire. The burning thief rushed out the window to get to the rain to put him out, forgetting that they were on the third floor, and fell to his death. As the sound of the ruckus woke people up, Bonkers dumped water from a vase over his head to put his own fire out, but soon finds his throat too scorched to speak. The other villagers ran out and found the burned thief, as the other thief shouted that Bonkers pushed him from the window and is going to kill him next. Seeing a gold pocket watch in the burned thief's hand, the villagers assume that Bonkers caught him stealing it and Bonkers burned him alive and threw him from the third floor as punishment. The young Bonkers realized none of this would have happened if he'd never invited them inside, and says the family was quickly labeled a house of murderers, though he fled soon after and has no idea what happened after that. He says his story is the same thing that happens to a lot of kids after something like that, and he wound up taking whatever job he could find, eventually falling in with the shadier parts of society. He eventually found himself on the Ironworks, and realized that if he could just keep up with the training and fail at the end, he'd have half a year of free room and board, and the debt collectors after him wouldn't chase him this far either. Porschen asks him if he wants to become a Hunter at all then, and Bonkers says no. He's happy if he can just survive the day, and having confidence in his own strength is more than enough for him. Now that the cat's out of the bag, he figures he'll be kicked out, but that maybe he can use all of the training he got to become a mercenary. He calmly says that if a person's life is a story, then at best he's a random extra, and has no business becoming a hero. Velou tells Bonkers that that's not true at all. Bonkers asks him why he's crying, and Velou says he's not a jerk, before thinking back on how Bonkers had acted until now. He concedes that Bonkers can be a jerk at times, but says his life isn't over yet. Velou struggles with how to put his thoughts into words, ultimately saying that if Bonkers is going to call life a story, then all he has to do is write a new chapter and let his actions make him the hero. He grabs Bonkers hand and stands by him, saying he refuses to stand by while someone lets themselves fall into darkness, and urges Bonkers to fight to become a Hunter alongside him. Review: In a series that still manages to wow me (and bewilder me that it's extremely likely to get axed soon), this chapter might stand alongside a few others as one of the best in the series thus far. We don't get any action per say in this one, but the chapter more than makes up for it with the new character information brought front and center, and it's all about Bonkers of all people. But let's talk about the few other things this chapter also brings up first. The finer points of Velou's plan for them to continue stealing the cuffs has already been laid out in previous chapters, so what we get to see of that plan in action now is fairly straight forward at this point. All things told though, it shows how much Velou has been paying attention to their teachers for him to formulate the best plan of action for how to deal with them. He knows that Debonair's power is an unwieldy one, and he also knows she's expressed more care and concern for the applicants than Grimm has, so using both of those things against her is a stroke of genius. He also knows exactly what sort of person his mentor Grimm is, even if it's not the most complimentary thing in the world. He knows she's going to be a far tougher nut to crack, but he's at least willing to be on the team that faces her directly. Or rather, he might think that's the only way to deal with her at all is for him to be there. We'll find out soon enough if I had to guess. Then we get the big reveal of who Bonkers really is, as well as his age, and I have to say – I'm still not used to being introduced to adult characters in anime/manga, only to realize I'm older than they are. Oof. We get a tease that Porschen is older than him though, something I definitely would never have guessed – I'd pegged her for older than Velou but younger than Merrio. Just goes to show that, when it comes to character ages, you can never really tell for sure until something concrete is said. The reveal of Bonkers past is one hell of a doozy. For the guy who made his big introduction to the series by lambasting Tylty for failing the exam before, I certainly never would have guessed that he was himself failing on purpose. In fact, this revelation brings how Bonkers has been acting the past few chapters into a whole new light. There's been quite a few panels where he's seen unsure of the plan, and at the time I chalked it up to him not really being sure he trusted Velou. Now though, it looks more like he was starting to get more and more uncomfortable with dragging down everyone who was going above and beyond to pass the test when he himself never intended to in the first place. Given that the younger him was greatly impressed by Hunters, I'd wager there's still a part inside of him that respects the effort that Velou and the others are putting forth to make their dreams come true, particularly when he's given up on his own. The backstory presented also makes a further case for this series really being about questioning who and what makes a monster a monster. The thieves are presented as if they were already like this for a while now, and not just after half of the town was destroyed. Heck, nothing is ever said for sure, but it's even possible they weren't villagers at all and have merely shown up to try and pick the town clean after it's tragedy. Either way, it's made pretty clear that they're both pretty awful people, and their villainy only gets worse when one of them quickly shifts the blame for his partner in crime's death onto a young child, the very child that is the only reason they were allowed in in the first place no less. One might feel inclined to blame the other villagers for so quickly blaming Bonkers and his family as well, but Bonkers himself points out that this was just one more tragedy on top of all that they'd been through so far, effectively making it the straw that broke the camel's back as it were. They're not wrong to think that being set on fire and shoved out a window is way too harsh a crime for a petty theft, they're just mistaken in whom to cast blame upon. It's unfortunate, but that's life. And speaking of life, maybe it's just me, but I continue to really like this meta subtext that the author puts into certain dialogue, acknowledging the way stories work and how characters function within them, even while using their own characters to verbalize these points. It's high-minded without being too deep, and I'm really curious to see how that plays into the over-arching narrative. Assuming we get to see that over-arching narrative, anyway... Until next time! Favorite Panel: Next Time: Chapter 13
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About the AuthorAspiring author and big anime/manga fan, just trying to do my best in the world. For more details, go to About Me. Archives
September 2022
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