Synopsis: The giant werewolf in the water rises up as it speaks to the mayor of Velou's village. It calls him by name, Hech Horlock, and says that while his goal is the same as that of the Red List, he is no friend of theirs, merely a convenient tool they've chosen to use. He further chastises him for 'editing the script' by adding Dodou and the others, saying that it's because he did so that they had to step in and fix the errors he caused. Horlock tells him that what's done is done so there's no use complaining, and Cinderella yells that it's because it can't be changed that they're furious. She notes that Grimm isn't stupid and will surely have noticed, and if she reports it to the guild, they may even find out the truth about the hamlet. Cinderella thinks that could be especially bad for Horlock as he used to be a member of the guild. She admonishes him for what he's done as well, accusing him of having many other options he could have used and instead only 'wasting page space', while asking him just what it is he's trying to do with Velou's story. Back on the Ironworks, ten weeks have passed since they departed towards the guild headquarters. Tylty is helping Velou study about different types of golems when Bonkers suddenly pushes his way into their room with his things, saying that as of today they're roommates. A second man named Merriopios comes in behind him and explains that four candidates are assigned to a room, and both he and Bonkers lost their three roommates so they've been instructed to move in with Velou and Tylty to conserve space. Merriopios tells them to just call him Merrio, but as Velou introduces himself, Merrio begins to freak out at the sight of food sitting on a table. Merrio explains he suffers from a phobia of leftovers, and Velou and Tylty quickly eat the potatoes to calm him down. Merrio instantly calms down and asks if he can take the lower bunk, and Velou marvels at how there are all kinds of people living in the world. Later that night, Velou collapses into his bed while Bonkers and Tylty agree that the instructor really gave it to them today. Merrio comments that it's only three weeks until the debarkation exam, and Velou can't believe it's almost time. The Ironworks final debarkation exam is a test to determine who gets to get off the boat and join the hunters guild. Those who fail have to remain on the boat and keep training for the entire three-month trip back in the hopes that they'll do better next time. Remembering that both Tylty and Bonkers have been through these final exams before, Velou asks if there's any advice they can give him. Tylty says that the exam changes every time so there's not much to say, but Bonkers adds that it's usually some kind of practical exercise. Tylty further cautions that they're not aiming to graduate a certain number of people, and it's entirely possible that nobody will pass, as has happened before. He also warns Velou that the final test is so harsh that it makes the previous three months look easy, so he needs to be prepared for anything. The day of the debarkation exam finally arrives, and with three hours to go until they reach their destination, Debonair announces their final test: Cops and Robbers. Velou has no idea what this is, but Merrio and another candidate explain that it's a game children play that's a lot like tag. Debonair says that the rules here will be basically the same with one major twist: they'll be using actual handcuffs. Everyone else will be the robbers and she'll be the cop, and everyone that she catches and handcuffs will be put in a cell on the far end of the deck. Debonair warns them that this is a test to see if they're worthy of becoming Hunters, so they should all resist as hard as they can in the time limit of two hours, as anyone who's in the jail in the two-hour mark fails. She cautions them that just running and hiding won't be enough, they'll need to use everything they've learned in the last three months if they want to pass. Velou starts to think to himself that this test almost seems too easy with only one cop, when Grimm – now back in her adult body again – says the same thing, and says that she'll be joining in as a cop as well. Debonair is excited saying that they haven't fought together since 'incident 38', but Grimm says this won't qualify as a fight, only a one-sided beat down. As the exam is about to kick off between the two 'cops' and the 30 'robbers', staff on the Ironworks call for an emergency over a telegram they've just received from the Magmatha Royal Military. It seems the military had engaged a target that changed course and is now on a collision course with the Ironworks line, the target being a Kraken class 'sea butterfly #13', aka a Tidal Manta Ray, a gigantic manta ray that's bigger than the Ironworks itself. While the candidates start to fret about the creature's size, Debonair calmly says she'll handle things. Everyone wonders how she'll do such a thing alone, but Grimm says she'll be fine before revealing that Debonair is like her and has also suffered a witch's hex. In her case however its a curse of heat, with her body emitting scorching levels of heat and burning everything around her. As some of the Ironworks staff bring Debonair her 'furnace armor', she takes only the limbs this time, as Grimm explains that through strenuous training, Debonair managed to subdue the curse and has taken control of it as a weapon. As Debonair starts to heat up, everyone is hit with waves of heat, with Grimm saying that it's only out on the open sea that Debonair can go all out due to how hot things get. Debonair launches herself at the Tidal Manta Ray, chastising it for interrupting the exam before launching a 1500 degree Fahrenheit Bullet Punch. Scalded but alive, the creature starts to go another direction as Debonair waves goodbye to it. She lands and announces that they can get back to the exam now, imploring everyone to fight her, while the candidates mentally plead to do anything but that. Review: This chapter seems to be setting up the finale of the Ironworks storyline as it were, and while I'm excited to see where things go from here, I'm also a little worried. While I'd normally wait to talk about this sort of thing until towards the end of the review, it's somewhat brought up right at the start of this chapter, so we may as well dive right into it. With the giant werewolf that I'm still not entirely sure if it's meant to be Lycaon or not giving Horlock an earful, we get a lot of almost fourth-wall breaking talk about 'editing scripts' and 'adjusting stories for coherence' while 'jerking characters all about'. Heck, there's even a comment about 'wasting page space'. In universe, this is talking about whatever it is that Horlock is attempting to do with Velou's fate, as apparently it wasn't part of the original plan for him to have to deal with Dodou and Naranoia, and maybe not even the mayor's wife either – though what was going on with her becomes a whole other debacle, knowing what we now know about the mayor. In the real world though, this whole scene sort of comes off as a meta commentary for what's going on in the real world in regards to this manga. Despite a pretty strong start and a growing cult fanbase, The Hunters Guild: Red Hood hasn't been doing too hot in the internal Shonen Jump ranking as of late. In fact, it's been trailing behind most of the other heavy hitters and even some of the other manga that aren't doing the greatest, which admittedly boggles my mind, but I'll try to keep my own personal preferences out of this as much as I can. While I don't know for certain what Japanese fans have been saying about the series, Cinderella's comment about page space seems to fit with what I've seen some folks make comment in the west as well, and that's an issue of pacing. Some readers have felt that the series has been moving too slowly, or at least that it had been during the opening chapters of the series. This isn't really a sentiment I agree with, but I can at least sort of see what they're seeing – it took five whole chapters, a good majority of what will likely make up the first collected volume, before Velou's village was destroyed. Compare this to a similar opening premise of Attack on Titan, which also features the main character losing his home from a monster attack – in AoT, it only took two chapters to decimate a village. That said, Attack on Titan was a very different kind of series right from the start, especially considering it was a monthly serial rather than a weekly one, and wasn't in Shonen Jump. No, a more fitting comparison to be made would be to look at a few other major Shonen Jump titles. By chapter 5 of Dragon Ball, we've only just met Oolong and are barely a fifth into the first story arc. By chapter 5 of Naruto, we've only just met Kakashi and Naruto and his teammates haven't even officially been declared genin yet. For Bleach, Ichigo has barely started his Soul Reaper activities and we've only just met Orihime. In One Piece, Zoro hasn't even joined Luffy yet. In all of these hit series, the story has barely even gotten started by Chapter 5. A whole other discussion could be made about the nature and limitations of shonen, especially Jump, storytelling, but it's clear from even a cursory glance that the slow building that Red Hood has been doing isn't something unique to it. One could argue, however, that all of those examples I've brought up are old, as even Bleach is 20 years old now. Well, let's look at a more contemporary example, My Hero Academia. By chapter 5 of MHA, Deku has been given One-for-All, has successfully used it to pass the UA entrance exam, and we're being introduced to his classmates for the first time. ...Huh. I'll be honest, I didn't go into that comparison at first expecting such a stark difference, but there IS quite a bit more achieved by chapter 5 of MHA than there is in Red Hood, or any of their SJ predecessors. So, what can we take from this? Is it Shonen Jump and it's staff that's less lax on how long it takes to get to a certain point in a series nowadays? Or is it the fans themselves that have come to expect more from a series in a certain amount of time? I'd wager a guess that the answer is somewhere in-between. That said, it does seem like things have changed quite a bit since the old days where it could take chapters upon chapters to get anywhere in a story really, which is honestly kind of a good thing. Some stories definitely do spend too much time lingering in a specific storyline before finally getting to where they're going (ironically, these same accusations ended up being levied towards the final arcs of Naruto and Bleach, and there are entire discussions over how long it takes to get somewhere in Dragon Ball and One Piece at times). Some stories however benefit from a slow build, and I feel like Red Hood might just be one of those series. Only time is going to tell however if it's going to be afforded that time or not. I for one certainly hope that it does. That's enough about the nature of Shonen Jump storytelling for now, let's get back to the actual scene that spurred on this discussion so we can finish up with it and move on to the rest of the chapter. As mentioned before, it's made very clear that everything that's happened up until this point has been by Horlock's choice, not that of the Red List. Their goal is the same, but it seems they disagree greatly about how to get there – that or, Horlock's plans with Velou are something entirely separate from their shared goal, at least in their eyes. This makes the question of what exactly the Red List is up to all the more intriguing. Our only hint prior to this is that they want to live as well, and that they seem to be planning on making enough of themselves that humans can't possibly exterminate all of them. Why would Horlock, an apparent former member of the very guild that hunts them, be helping them in that cause? And if he's really helping them, why is he setting Velou up to become a great Hunter and presumably fight against that cause? It's only a theory for now, but I expect the idea is for Velou to eventually learn to understand the minds of both the Hunter and the Hunted, and eventually be the lynchpin that causes some sort of peace between the two. This would fit with Grimm's words about there being nothing inherently evil about werewolves being how nature designed them, and with Velou himself witnessing that some werewolves mistreat each other while others seem to care about their comrades. He's constantly getting his eyes opened as to what the world is really like as of now, so I'd imagine it's only a matter of time before he meets a human who is just as despicable, if not more so, than any werewolf, further challenging his worldview. But again, that's just my own personal theory as of now. The rest of the chapter, while not nearly as deep and potentially meta, plays out enjoyably enough and keeps the story moving quickly – another reason I suspect the author may have turned up the dial on the story's speed as a result of feedback. Since the last chapter, even more candidates have left the Ironworks of their own volition, and by the time we get to the final test, there are only thirty of them left, a small amount of what they started with. While we only barely got to see the training itself, it's clear that everything Debonair is putting these people through is extremely tough and only the best of the best even makes it this far, making the low passing rate of the final test that much more terrifying. Before we get to that final test itself though, we're introduced to another new character this time, in the form of Merrio. He's a rather bland looking character if I'm being honest, certainly not near as striking as Bonkers or even Tylty. His fear of leftover food is a little out there too. It feels a little too try-hard in trying to introduce a quirky character honestly, and while I give the author credit for coming up with a quirk I've never heard of before...fear of leftover food? Seriously? The character being named likely means he'll be sticking around for a little bit though – at least, now that we've gotten this far into the trip, that is – so maybe he'll prove himself to be more interesting with time. The final test itself is one that works great for where the story seems to be heading next. The entire trip aboard the Ironworks seems to have a very similar goal to that of Roshi's training over in Dragon Ball – it's entire purpose is to make the characters going through it toughen up rather than them actually learning anything in particular from it (though we do get hints of actual teaching here and there, what with Velou reading up on various types of golems, another new creature we now know exists in the Red Hood world). Ergo, it makes sense that the final test would be proving yourself in some form of mock combat against Debonair, the one who gets to make the final call as to whether or not you get to leave the ship and join the guild. For her part, Debonair seems to really enjoy the prospect of seeing what everyone there can do – she definitely seems to be the battle-hungry sort of character. That said, the test itself, while definitely being stacked against the candidates – especially once Grimm joins up – is probably going to come down to something more than strength. Now that we've seen what an absolute beast Debonair and her heat powers (something I did wonder about potentially being hinted at last time) are, there doesn't seem like there's any way for Velou or anyone else to prevail. There might just be a hint in the wording of the test itself however – 'everybody who's in jail at the two-hour mark fails'. Nothing says they can't get captured and try to break free somehow, thus earning them multiple attempts at not being caught, or even a way to pass at the very last second. It would take one heck of a mind to come up with this in the middle of combat however, and if anyone on the ship has been shown capable of thinking that laterally, it's Velou. I think he's likely got this test in the bag, maybe even by the end of the next chapter or the one after that at the latest. Guess we'll just have to wait and see though. Until next time! Favorite Panel: Next Time: Chapter 9
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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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