Synopsis: Picking up where the last chapter left off, Grimm asks Velou if he'd like to become a Hunter. She claims that the guild she's with has a plan to put an end to werewolves altogether, but to do it they'll need all the Hunters they can get. Velou is intrigued, thinking that he'd like to be part of such a grand plan, but says that he can't. He doubts that such a thing is even possible, and worries that if he becomes a Hunter, he'll just be sent all over the land and leave this hamlet he grew up in unprotected from further attacks. He also still doesn't trust Grimm and the mysterious way she took on an adult's body. Grimm rationalizes that if she can win his trust and guarantee the hamlet's safety, Velou will have no reason not to join her, so their course is clear. Elsewhere in the woods, a pair of werewolves named Dodou and Naraoia are discussing the death of the werewolf that had been posing as the mayor's wife, Mialli. Naraoia weeps, but Dodou scoffs at her for having used such an old trick anyway, even if she had been nice enough to share her human meat with them. Dodou says it was going to happen eventually anyway due to her age, and that the time has come for youngster werewolves like themselves to take over. He points out that the remaining villagers are off guard and think it's safe now, making them vulnerable to another attack. The village is ripe for the picking too, as it's remote enough that other werewolves aren't going to care about it. Dodou cautions his brother that while he's stupid, he's strong, so all he has to do is follow Dodou's plan, and they'll soon have more human meat than they know what to do with. A short time later, the huge Naraoia attacks the village from the front, distracting the villagers who all run to the meeting house to hide, save for the man who rings the warning bell. Inside the meeting house, Dodou has taken on his human form and is pretending to be a villager as well. He knew that the townsfolk would gather together in a shelter if they were attacked, and the Hunter would also be distracted by Naraoia's attack, leaving Dodou free to lead some of the humans off with some sort of lie – the perfect plan! Outside, the villager who remained behind to ring the bell is still at it, annoying Naraoia who turns his attention to attacking him. Grimm suddenly pops up behind him, asks if she can borrow the bell, and despite the man's objections, takes it and slams it viciously into the attacking werewolf's head. Inside the meeting house, Dodou's plan runs into a sudden roadblock when Velou appears with his musket. Dodou wonders if this is a second Hunter since he seems to be looking for something, but is unconcerned, thinking that there's no way for him to be picked out of the crowd. To his surprise however, Velou soon has his gun pointed at the back of the werewolf's head. In a flashback to the beginning of the chapter, Grimm tells Velou not to look but that they're being watched by two more werewolves before asking him to take her back to the village secretly. On their way back, she explains that wolves are territorial creatures, and usually a village is kept by one werewolf as it's territory. When that werewolf dies however, sometimes other nearby werewolves will try to take over the now free territory. She says that Velou should be able to pick out the second werewolf with ease however. With a gun pointed at the back of his head, Dodou questions how in the heck the boy could have found him. Velou explains that everyone in the village took care of him after his parents died, so they're all like family to him, so much so that he'd recognize any of them at a glance. Dodou though, he's never seen before in his life. Velou boldy proclaims that the village doesn't need any more werewolves here, and proudly declares that they're going to hunt them down and protect this hamlet. Review: While I don't know that I'd say this chapter was anywhere near as strong as the first chapter, it's still an incredibly satisfying read and definitely sets out to build upon what the first chapter set up, in a somewhat slower fashion perhaps. I don't mean that as a critique against it at all either – most of the biggest Jump titles usually have a little bit of a slow build, to get readers used to the world, characters, and types of adventures the series is going to be showing you, before throwing you into the real meat of the story. In this story's case, it does show to give us a better look into what kind of hero Velou's really going to be, which is good because if I had to wager a bet, I'm thinking he's going to eventually be our main lead with Grimm taking more of a backseat role as a mentor. Heck, I almost wouldn't be too surprised if she gets killed off by the end of the opening arc of this series, just to serve as a showing of what Velou could be like once he's fully trained. Based on how popular she is already though, that could backfire if that's the eventual plan. Considering I've already seen some fan art of her floating around after just TWO chapters, I'd say that people like their tall werewolf slaying lady. *looks at Grimm again* ...Who am I to judge? At any rate, this chapter as I already said shows us more about what makes Velou, well, Velou. He's a different type of person than some of your more upbeat Jump hero characters, the likes of Goku, Luffy, or Naruto. He's closer to the same archetype as Ichigo, Deku, or for a non-Jump example, Eren from Attack on Titan, at least very early on. It's not the thrill of adventure, or even the hunt in this case, that gets Velou going when it's time to fight. For him, it's all about protecting those he cares about, and I could easily see this eventually expanding to wanting to protect others because they two have people they care about or care about them. It's going to be really interesting to see how he develops moving forward. Grimm meanwhile remains just as mysterious as she was in the first chapter. While she remains in her adult form for the entirety of it's run, it's still not made clear if this or the child form we were introduced to her in are her natural state, if this is something unique to her, or if it's some sort of Hunter based-skill of some sort. It could be just about anything really, though I'm still hedging my bets on it being some sort of power-up based around putting your body at it's peak. Then again, it could be entirely the opposite – I've seen some mention that the author, Yuki Kawaguchi, is a former assistant of Kohei Horikoshi of My Hero Academia fame. While I don't know for a fact that this is true, the art-styles are vaguely similar enough that I could believe it, so perhaps Grimm is in an All-Might sort of situation where her adult form is her 'true' form, but she has to reserve energy in a smaller form at times to maintain it. Until we get more info, the sky's the limit really. Something else left entirely unexplained for now that I find extremely interesting is the plan the Red Hood guild has for eliminating all werewolves. That's quite the bold claim, since as Velou surmises, werewolves are people first so as long as there are people, there will be werewolves. There's also the fact that, as the chapter once again reiterates, nobody knows what makes people turn into werewolves. So how in the heck does the guild plan to put a stop to something that they don't know how it starts? Once again, there are a few possibilities here. For one thing, maybe the world at large doesn't know what causes werewolves, but the Red Hood guild does? It's logical enough that a guild focused on hunting down the creatures may have learned something that's not common knowledge yet. There's also the fact that the way werewolves work in this series has already shown itself to be a little bit different seemingly from the way we traditionally think of them, so there's limitless potential for an answer when you start skewing the original rulebook itself. Also worth mentioning is the fact that Grimm says the Hunters already wiped out dragons hundreds of years prior, though it's somewhat unclear if she means Hunters in general, or specifically her guild, the Red Hood. Either way, the Hunters clearly have experience with eradicating a much tougher species of monster, so they really might have something up their sleeves yet. One other moment worth mentioning, albeit a small one, is Grimm telling Velou to keep the mayor's axe, even describing it as 'precious'. In the previous chapter, she already noticed something about it that we still haven't been made privy to ourselves – my leading theory here is that it's made of silver, another classical werewolf weakness. Is it more than that though? Does it just happen to be made of silver, or did the mayor specifically have one made of the material solely for the purpose of killing werewolves? In that case, was he a former Hunter himself? Or, possibly, are Velou's murdered parents more than throwaway background characters – maybe the axe originally came from them, and they were Hunters. If that's the case, we're definitely setting a precedent of the Hunter and the Hunted switching off very often. That's enough thinking about the unknown for now though, let's switch back to something that we do know, and that's our new pair of antagonists, the werewolf brothers Dodou and Naraoia. Compared to the sneaky, manipulative werewolf we had last time, this pair is...less impressive, frankly. But I think that's kind of the point. Their existence and dialogue, as well as some additional werewolf lore we receive, seems to indicate that the mayor's wife may have been a werewolf for some time now. She was the one ruling over this area, so no other werewolves dared enter her domain, save for this pair of lone wolves that she seemingly took pity on. That in of itself is interesting to note, since it fits with her outwardly human appearance of a kindly old lady, just here it was towards others of her own kind. So do the wolves keep some aspect of their former humanity after all, even if it's only in terms of personality? So far, this pair seem to be the terrifying qualities of the previous werewolf, but split into two and diminished by quite a bit. Whereas Mialli was cunning and sly while also being big and strong, Dodou has the brains to an extent while Naraoia has the brawn. Neither of them apart is as good as she was even in her old age, and honestly it sort of seems like even together as a duo they're her lessers. It's hard to comment purely on strength between her and Naraoia, but his incredibly dense nature kind of makes it a moot point anyway. In the case of Dodou, while he certainly came up with a clever plan on the surface...he really didn't think it was possible for someone to question who he was if they'd never seen him before? This was already seemingly a small village and one that's lost a number of folks in recent months, a stranger like him was bound to stick out like a sore thumb. So much for being smart, eh? I said this chapter wasn't quite as strong as the first, and I stand by that, but like with our werewolf duo this time, that seems to be the point. It's here to show off our lead characters a bit more and get us more acquainted with the world, and I'd predict the third chapter will likely follow a very similar pattern – especially since there's at least some possibility the story's not entirely done with this pair of werewolves at all. Until next time! Favorite Panel: Next Time: Chapter 3
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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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