Synopsis: Velou celebrates with everyone else now that they've passed the test and thinks to himself that he can become a real Hunter now and get revenge for the mayor's death. Elsewhere, floating in the sky, Cinderella and Hech Horlock (the mayor) watch through a mirror and observe that Velou has passed. Cinderella says this means the guild is finished now, and asks Horlock if she or him should take care of Velou. Horlock says he'll do it and tells her to take a nap before opening up a portal in the sky before them that leads to the Ironworks. Horlock disappears through the portal, leaving Cinderella to turn to ask Lycaon what they should do next. To her surprise, Lycaon is nowhere to be seen, but even more surprising, she finds herself asking who Lycaon even is. On the Ironworks, Debonair laughs and concedes that she lost, though Grimm (now reverting to her childlike form) argues that they should at least fail everyone who's knocked out on the other floors. Debonair says that they aren't jailed or cuffed however, and nothing was said about having to be conscious to pass, so there's nothing they can do – though she does suggest that they could always test them again at a later date, an idea that horrifies the applicants that overhear her. Debonair picks up Grimm and puts her on her shoulders before walking over to ask Velou if that was part of his plan too, but Velou says it was just a happy accident. Debonair thinks that makes sense as nobody could predict that Grimm would just knock people out, and Grimm says she only did it because it was so difficult to get replacement cuffs so she had no other choice. It quickly dawns on her that that really was caused by Velou's plan, though Debonair discreetly asks her if that was itself all part of the scenario she'd written out. Laurell greets Tylty who isn't pleased to see him, and it's revealed that Laurell was one of the applicants during Tylty's failed exam before that gave him a bunch of trouble. They each had done their best to murder the other but both failed in the end, and during the next exam when Tylty didn't take part, Laurell tried again and passed. Laurell praises Tylty for learning to trust others again, while Laurell acknowledges his part in causing Tylty to grow untrusting in the first place, but says he hopes to work with Tylty again in the future, an idea Tylty reluctantly concedes to. Grimm asks Debonair what she's talking about when she mentions a 'scenario', which catches Debonair off-guard. Before they can talk further, Velou interrupts and says that since he's now a Hunter in the guild, he'd like to know what the plan is for exterminating all werewolves. Grimm starts to tell him, but Debonair interrupts and says they should do some interviews first, and asks Cursa and Tarpan to take care of that. Two of the applicants step forward (a woman in a skintight bodysuit and a horned headband on her head, and a dejected looking man with a pointy nose, wearing an overlarge sweater), revealing themselves to have been fully fledged Hunters all along who took part to observe everyone's behavior. The woman (Cursa) apologizes for the deception while the man (Tarpan) says they'll talk while they wait, promising to reveal what the guild has discovered about werewolves and how they plan to take care of them. Debonair walks away and asks Grimm, who she's still carrying, to come back to her room to talk for a bit, and Grimm agrees. Three months and twelve hours after they first departed, the Ironworks finally arrives at the uncharted map where Site Citadel, the Hunter Headquarters, resides. Back in the sky elsewhere, Cinderella discovers a letter hidden away in one of her sleeves. The letter says it's from Lycaon, and says that the letter was protected until now, instructing her that if she reads this and doesn't know who he is or sees a giant werewolf at her side, then she needs to kill Horlock immediately and steal back his pages. The letter goes on to reveal Horlock's true goal, something bad enough that steam starts to pour off of Cinderella's body in rage as she says Horlock's really done it this time. As Debonair carries Grimm back to her room, she asks Grimm a series of questions designed to get a particular answer from her, but Grimm doesn't answer a single one of them correctly. Debonair curses and puts Grimm down on a couch in her room, telling her to lie there for a bit. Grabbing a phone, Debonair asks to be patched in to HQ and tells them that Grimm of the Hundred Cannons has had her memories manipulated, so she needs a response team at the Ironworks immediately. A voice over the phone, soon revealed to be Dutt Troidal (the guild's Collections Department Director) tells her that they can't authorize that right now and that orders have come down to place the Ironworks in quarantine. He tells Debonair that their top priority is to protect 'The Book', and they're enacting an anti-corrosion protocol instead, a strict level five, before hanging up on her. Debonair wonders what in the world is going on. Back with the applicants, Cursa explains that werewolves are caused by a disease known as lycanthropy, and that when enough of the genetic factor for the disease builds up in someone's body, the person transforms. Velou is surprised it's something as simple as a disease, and Tarpan explains that since it's a disease, it should be possible to make a cure, though they already know that if a werewolf has eaten a person it's too late to turn them back. He explains that the guild is currently researching how to make an antidote that will prevent transformation into a werewolf, and Cursa says that it'd be great if someone could capture one alive or at least bring a corpse back to be studied, as Grimm usually winds up blowing them to pieces. Bonkers and Nulo ask if they're doing the interviews here or on the island after all, but Tarpan receives a radio call that tells him about the the quarantine order, telling them all to standby for a while. At the Hunters Guild, in it's Underground Office #7, Dutt Troidal goes to see a hooded person with gnarled hands that's writing in a book with a feather pen. Dutt asks the figure what's going on as the scenario playing out right now wasn't one written into the True Book. The figure says that things that were unwritten happen often, but what's happening now with Grimm is different – someone other than themselves is 'editing the outline'. Dutt responds in horror saying it must be the two ripped pages, but who could it be? The figure responds that who does the writing doesn't matter to whoever is reading, and says that the True Book's blank pages are the future – the words written on them set the laws of nature and build the very structure of their world. Thirteen years ago, someone ripped out two of those pages and disappeared, and now what was written on those pages is taking effect. Suddenly, Horlock appears before Velou on the Ironworks. Velou is surprised but overjoyed to see the mayor alive, and tries to stop Cursa from attacking him on sight, before asking the mayor how he's still alive. Horlock apologizes for causing Velou such grief but says faking his death was a necessary deception, one he had to do if he wanted to drag Grimm, the Red Hood, out of her role, and crown Velou the Hunter as the main character in her stead. Velou is confused by the mayor's words, but Horlock opens another portal, one through which the Underground Office #7 can be seen, and says that this will complete everything. He grabs Velou's arm and steps through the portal, catching Dutt by surprise. Horlock says it's been a long time, but he wants to tell Velou a story. He says that long ago, dragons flew in the sky, but the Hunters exterminated every last one of them – that's a story that he, Horlock, wrote 500 years ago. Review: Okay, so um...I think it's pretty safe to assume that none of us were prepared for this chapter and what it brought to the table, at all. Ho. Ly. CRAP. Some of the elements brought up in this table are things that I've been wondering about for a while now, but coming off of the end of the previous chapter, I didn't expect things to start going in the direction they are at this point, at all. While this is all really exciting, I can't help but be a little worried that it's only happening now because the axe of cancellation continues to dangle over Kawaguchi's head – the series has consistently been at the bottom or second from the bottom of Jump's readership, and while I still cannot fully understand why that is, I've waxed poetic enough about what the possible reasons could be, so I won't go through that all again here (though if the series does end up getting cancelled, I'll likely do a 'What Went Wrong?' type of post after the fact). For now, I'll just say that I'm growing more and more curious about what exactly is cooking in the author's mind. Right from the start, we hit the ground running with some pretty major reveals. It's not that surprising that Cinderella and Horlock have continued watching the events on the Ironworks, as they were greatly interested in what was going on when we last saw them. For Cinderella to proclaim that Velou's passing means they're finished however, and that she expects one of them to go and take care of Velou, is a big surprise however. Just what exactly is it that causes Velou to need to be taken out? Just that he's a certified Hunter now? She seemed entirely dismissive of him before this, so is something in their plan contingent on him NOT becoming a Hunter? We're unlikely to find out what's going on with her side of the plan anytime soon I'd wager though, because it's made clear pretty quickly that Horlock is working towards his own agenda instead. And yes, it's worth noting that I was entirely and completely wrong all this time – the werewolf with her WAS Lycaon all along. Something about how he acted seemed different to me, as well as not being able to tell 100% by his design alone, but I guess the biggest fault is my own for thinking on it too hard: sometimes the giant werewolf really is the same giant werewolf you saw before. My bad. Grimm's rebuttal that those that she knocked out shouldn't qualify for passing is an expected reaction from her, but it and everything else in that part of the conversation seems curiously underplayed. I think that might be intentional though, as all of the major parts of the chapter were sure to overshadow it anyway, as well as bring up questions about what's really going on in this story at all. Even the reveal that Laurell and Tylty's shared history doesn't hold nearly the amount of pages or attention that you think it would had this been any other chapter, though it is nice to see that Tylty really is trying now to break out of his funk. Despite being the hot-headed battle maniac, Debonair gets to shine in this chapter by also showing that she's not stupid either, as she's the only one that seems to pick up on the fact that something strange is going on. Even when she calls in to HQ and is basically brushed off, she seems all the more certain that something's amiss, and that something has been done to Grimm's memories as well. Given what Horlock's ultimate goal is said to be, that's extremely curious to me. The reveal of Cursa and Tarpan isn't one I saw coming, but I'm kind of kicking myself for not realizing it sooner. There weren't any real hints that there were Hunters mixed in with the applicants, but it seems like such an obvious thing to do that I'm surprised it never occurred to me. I do remember noticing Cursa a few tims in the background of shots though and pegged her as someone that we're likely to get something on eventually, but I just thought she'd be another newly passed Hunter we'd meet soon enough. Only time will tell if we see more of the shaman looking guy. Also, calling it now, Cursa is definitely someone out there's type. I'm not judging. It's almost a little underwhelming when we get the reveal of werewolf transformation being a disease called lycanthropy, since again, that's something that just about anyone with bare minimum knowledge of werewolves would probably already be able to tell you (though perhaps that sort of thing is far less well known in Japan?). Treating it as a disease in the form of one that can be treated by a cure though is a little different, and it will be curious to see that expanded upon in the future, if that's the game plan at all. The reason it's hard to predict what the plan for any of this ultimately is comes down completely to the GIGANTIC wild card the chapter throws at us in the form of 'The Book', or the 'True Book' as it's called at one point. I'm uncertain if these are meant to be one and the same, or if 'The Book' is merely a front for what the 'True Book' is actually capable of, but it does bring to mind all of the talk about the Red List from before as well – especially when you see the gnarled fingered figure writing in the True Book. The notion that there's a book somewhere that you write in and cause the very rules of the world or people's fates – their “stories” as it were – is an incredibly intriguing and also horrifying notion. It also explains why there's been so much careful word choice in previous chapters when referring to people's lives as 'stories', and your choices deciding 'what type of character you are in your own story'. The series has clearly been building up to this thematically for a while now, but what this could all mean for the story going forward, or what it means for the world itself...it's hard to really stop and think about, frankly. What does seem to be pretty clear however is that even pages torn from this Book can have an effect on the world around them, and it seems pretty likely that Horlock is the one that took the pages, and also is probably the one that messed with Grimm's memories, seemingly for the purpose of eventually making Velou the main character. That's a little strange seeing as he already IS the main character, but we're clearly talking about some greater plan he has in mind here, so I guess Velou's only really been our POV until now rather than someone The Book says will be the lead. How Horlock plans to utilize changing things about Grimm to make Velou the lead instead, and how that may or may not relate to him being over 500 years old and being the 'author' that ended the dragons (yeah, how's THAT for another plot bombshell), we can only wait and see. This chapter is probably the biggest surprise after chapter 5, and it definitely looks like this might be just the beginning – either of something much, much bigger, or just the beginning of a Hail Mary throw of things planned for way later to reach some kind of ending now before the axe drops. Here's hoping it's just the former. Until next time! Favorite Panel: Next Time: Chapter 16
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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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