Whoa... maybe Mokou caught on to something there. She rejected the hand shake, heh. Well, then again, they ARE enemies. It seems that pressure point Eirin hit before was.... lethal(?) perhaps...? Lucky Keine is a youkai, or they would be disqualified.

Looks like someone is getting quite the tongue lashing.

It would appear so. Well maybe she caught on but i think she its that she just doesn't trust Kaguya. Then again from the sweating on Kaguya, Mokou might have caught on. Well atleast Keine has Eirin there to start her heart back

Judging from the sweating and the inclusion of Wriggle and Mystia withing hearing distance in the shot, I'd say it's nothing particularly good for Kaguya. Maybe Mokou's calling her out on how extreme her game of Kinnikuman got? Keine is pretty messed up, after all.

Wait, who is the one giving out the tong lashing?

Mokou isn't on screen but it looks like Kaguya's still talking, especially considering how she has the last word in the second panel.

finalagent said:
Wait, who is the one giving out the tong lashing?

Mokou isn't on screen but it looks like Kaguya's still talking, especially considering how she has the last word in the second panel.

Yes, but none of the speech bubbles are pointing to her. That's a common way to show that the speaker is off-panel.

I think this one sure needs a translation, unlike with previous strips, actions don't speak clearly enough for us, non japanese speakers, to understand what's going on.

I would humbly request a translation since it looks like this one really needs it. (yeah i know there is a tag for it but i think it's cortesy to ask politely for it directly)

Haven't got the time right now to track down the bothersome kanji in the last panel...

Tetrominon said:
Haven't got the time right now to track down the bothersome kanji in the last panel...

No Problem, take the time you need, for now i think we got quite enough to get an idea, so i thank you.
Anyway, now that it was translated i can say this, i hope Mokou still won't accept that handshake, but neither act rash about it, just neutral and tell Kaguya that, it was her that wanted to make them look like heels and there is no more point to go on with the "nice" character to them, after all they are Heels, and Mokou rather have 1 single honest cheer from Keine, than a sea of manipulated and hollow cheers.

One could think that for the Sake of Keine Mokou should shake the hand, but i don't think that Keine would like that really, since she was against the acting of the Hourai Team since the very beginning, and, unlike Mokou, she didn't let the unrightful insults and booing bother her.

Kruger said:
Yes, but none of the speech bubbles are pointing to her. That's a common way to show that the speaker is off-panel.

Looks like I was on the money though. Speech bubbles aren't the only way to know who's talking, particurlarly if they act as a sort of narrative box.

Well, there was that and the fact that Kaguya had the same expression from the second panel and she was talking there.

Mettaur said:
No Problem, take the time you need, for now i think we got quite enough to get an idea, so i thank you.
Anyway, now that it was translated i can say this, i hope Mokou still won't accept that handshake, but neither act rash about it, just neutral and tell Kaguya that, it was her that wanted to make them look like heels and there is no more point to go on with the "nice" character to them, after all they are Heels, and Mokou rather have 1 single honest cheer from Keine, than a sea of manipulated and hollow cheers.

One could think that for the Sake of Keine Mokou should shake the hand, but i don't think that Keine would like that really, since she was against the acting of the Hourai Team since the very beginning, and, unlike Mokou, she didn't let the unrightful insults and booing bother her.

While I agree, it's unlikely Mokou will turn it down. This Mokou is pretty weak willed and all it takes is to say that it's for Keine's sake.

finalagent said:
Looks like I was on the money though. Speech bubbles aren't the only way to know who's talking, particurlarly if they act as a sort of narrative box.

Well, there was that and the fact that Kaguya had the same expression from the second panel and she was talking there.

Yeah, I suppose I was hoping that someone would call her out on the fact that the entire situation (Keine's condition, everyone possibly hating her and Mokou, etc.) is a result of her trying to play hero. At least she's trying to have some sense of honor.

Kruger said:
While I agree, it's unlikely Mokou will turn it down. This Mokou is pretty weak willed and all it takes is to say that it's for Keine's sake.

Yeah, I suppose I was hoping that someone would call her out on the fact that the entire situation (Keine's condition, everyone possibly hating her and Mokou, etc.) is a result of her trying to play hero. At least she's trying to have some sense of honor.

Keine's condition is certainly not Kaguya's fault, she made that decision herself. The only bad thing Kaguya did during the entire fight was have Mokou and Keine be the "heel" for their fight. Otherwise, the fight was a straight up fair fight.

You're pretty unfair overall to Kaguya, she's crafty but so are characters like Tewi (not really in this story) and Yuyuko (a bit more blatant) and yet no one seems to get on their case.

finalagent said:
Keine's condition is certainly not Kaguya's fault, she made that decision herself. The only bad thing Kaguya did during the entire fight was have Mokou and Keine be the "heel" for their fight. Otherwise, the fight was a straight up fair fight.

You're pretty unfair overall to Kaguya, she's crafty but so are characters like Tewi (not really in this story) and Yuyuko (a bit more blatant) and yet no one seems to get on their case.

Instead of fighting in a sportsmanlike manner she relied on demoralizing Mokou and playing up a false image. That's straight-up heel material. The fact that she's so blasé about tarnishing an otherwise good woman's reputation doesn't exactly win her any points with me either.

Tewi actually tends to bug me in most depictions of her. The whole "she makes life harder for Reisen and most everybody else while rarely getting her comeuppance" thing is grating. As for Yuyuko, her blatant cheating in this bugged me far more than Kaguya's manipulating the crowd, but all that happened before I got into this series and I didn't want to bring up an old topic.

Kruger said:
Instead of fighting in a sportsmanlike manner she relied on demoralizing Mokou and playing up a false image. That's straight-up heel material. The fact that she's so blasé about tarnishing an otherwise good woman's reputation doesn't exactly win her any points with me either.

Mokou's hardly a good woman (more like a reformed villain or tragic hero reallly...) but that's besides the point. Wether it be on the ring or not, physical or psychological, you need to get every advantage you can get to win a fight (within the rules).

Kaguya's personality was well suited for this because she has plenty of experience with dealing with people and being charismatic (a NEET is not the same as a Shut-In). Mokou sorely lacked that part, in fact, it was worse than I expected considering this story showed her as being even co-dependant on Keine...

Kaguya performed her first move by doing what all entertainers should do first, winning over the crowd.

Also, I don't quite get why a lot of people think of Mokou as some kind of heroic figure...she's the only touhou girl who we can verify as having killed someone (even Rumia, though she says she eats human meat, has ever been confirmed as to ever having managed to perform the feat of killing someone...). Not to mention she holds a grudge of over 1300 years...(although maybe both of those should be compounded as one since she killed because of that grudge).

Finalagent, this is based in the Kinnikuman manga, where Kaguya's action are seeing in the bad guys side. You may be seeing it your way, but it was supposed to show Kaguya as the villain the entire time

finalagent said:

Also, I don't quite get why a lot of people think of Mokou as some kind of heroic figure...she's the only touhou girl who we can verify as having killed someone (even Rumia, though she says she eats human meat, has ever been confirmed as to ever having managed to perform the feat of killing someone...). Not to mention she holds a grudge of over 1300 years...(although maybe both of those should be compounded as one since she killed because of that grudge).

Mouku is not the only confirmed killer in Touhou.
Erin did kill the messengers from the moon and supposedly tried to kill the astronauts on Apollo 13.
Plus may have killed some people on Earth because they didn't take her bribe to remain silent.
http://touhou.wikia.com/wiki/Eirin_Yagokoro

Dr_Z said:
Mouku is not the only confirmed killer in Touhou.
Erin did kill the messengers from the moon and supposedly tried to kill the astronauts on Apollo 13.
Plus may have killed some people on Earth because they didn't take her bribe to remain silent.
http://touhou.wikia.com/wiki/Eirin_Yagokoro

Ah yeah, I forgot that Eirin had killed quite a few people herself (confirmed). It's also implied that Sakuya, Letty and Yuuka have killed people by the way...and Tenshi has killed souls so that can count too.

dandan said:
Finalagent, this is based in the Kinnikuman manga, where Kaguya's action are seeing in the bad guys side. You may be seeing it your way, but it was supposed to show Kaguya as the villain the entire time

Huh? It didn't show Kaguya as being villanous at all, just petty frankly (unless you consider not entering at first and then laughing when she heard that Mokou was depressed about it villanous, she didn't even plan that). Also, after getting convinced by Keine, she started training physically too you know so it's not as if she was laying around while everyone else trained.

She did put on a "just as planned" face after seducing (the only way I can describe it) Mystia and before tricking Mokou though...but so did Yuyuko and Reimu during certain parts of the comic.

Kaguya may not have played completely "fairly" but she still earned her win in the end. Don't cheapen Mokou and Keine's loss by saying the only reason she won was thanks to her scheming.

as I said, it's not from your perspective. It's from their perspective and the author's.
it doesn't matter if she trained her butt off after Keine convinced her, it's the whole thing she did for and during the fight

and once again, I didn't say anything against Mokou and Keine. I said Kaguya, in this story, is the villain at the moment. But she may get a moment to redeem herself later

dandan said:
as I said, it's not from your perspective. It's from their perspective and the author's.
it doesn't matter if she trained her butt off after Keine convinced her, it's the whole thing she did for and during the fight and once again, I didn't say anything against Mokou and Keine. I said Kaguya, in this story, is the villain at the moment. But she may get a moment to redeem herself later

Well it's not like I outright said she wasn't being played as the bad guy (in fact, I often complained about it in earlier comics because I figured the artist would do the cliched thing and let Mokou win because of it).

I simply think a lot of you are OVERvillanizing her. It's not like she killed Mokou's puppy or anything, sheesh.

A lot of people tend to dislike more the Villain that fakades a Hero Image (Kaguya) than a Villain being honest about his or her villany (aka Yuyuko)

Yuyuko at least got proper booing from the crowd because of her team's actions, while Kaguya's fakade is still intact without a the slightly scratch.

This is more about honestity than anything else, specially when someone tries to take the "Hero's role". Kinnikuman and Kinnikuman Nisei weren't exactly treated half as well as Kaguya and co during their matches, but it was on the very ring where they proved their worth, that's how Heroes do it, Kaguya may be averagely ok as fighter, but her fakade nullify any good points we could get from her performance.

Mokou and Keine at the end had to bear a sea of insults and booing and had to suck up following their "play" even to the point of the not honest at all hand shake that follows up.

As a Kinnikuman fan, i really can't support or give props to Heelish teams, either honest or in disguise like Kaguya's team. Besides i always have a beef with characters claiming being good guys when it's all a lie and a delusion (most obvious example Light from Death Note) so this could apply to Kaguya's act too.

Mettaur said:
Kinnikuman and Kinnikuman Nisei weren't exactly treated half as well as Kaguya and co during their matches, but it was on the very ring where they proved their worth, that's how Heroes do it, Kaguya may be averagely ok as fighter, but her fakade nullify any good points we could get from her performance.

aye, that's exactly how it is. Just like Youmu and Reisen, they were trashing every rule even before the fight started, but Remilia was the one giving the villain feel since she turned down Reimu so she could fight against R/Y/Y on her own.

dandan said:
aye, that's exactly how it is. Just like Youmu and Reisen, they were trashing every rule even before the fight started, but Remilia was the one giving the villain feel since she turned down Reimu so she could fight against R/Y/Y on her own.

That's not exactly a villain thing, it's usually how some of the hero's tag team start like, not all the Tag Teams have a nice start like many think, specially in Kinnikuman, if anything, Remilia getting cocky and finally realizing that she needs Reimu to win, is pretty much something you see on the Heroic Choujin's teams. And Reisen and Youmu weren't only trashing rules before the fight but also in the fight itself, remember Yuyuko's stunts and how they technically ditched the "tag" rule of the fight by everybody jumping in the ring with exception of the handcuffed Reimu. The only moment on which doing that is aok in a tag fight, is way at the end of it, pretty much like what happened in the match of Kaguya's team vs Mokou's team.

So at the end, they were obviously the Villains, if anything Remilia is just the typical cocky hero that needed to realize the worth of team work int he middle of the match (and man Kinnikuman sure had it's share of that kind of heroes, i think even Kinnikuman himself is guilty of that)

yeah, that's what I'm trying to say. They turned the fight around once Remilia got Reimu out of the handcuffs and both fought against the trio

I would have no problem with the outcome of this fight if really worked for the win. She didn't train at all! I guess the end of this fight was rather unexpected though. When a villain who acts like a hero fights someone who ACTUALLY trained to fight, I'd expect the false hero to lose.

Wait she did train after Keine "convinced" her to participate

Center Point is a reference to the Dantein or the Hara, the absolute center of your body. It's about two inches above your navel and directly in the middle of your body. This is the center-core for you Chi and Ki circulation, where most of it is cultivated.

What Eirin is doing is finding the center of the sternum, cuz, near as I can tell, there aren't any meridians going along the middle of the chest.

I don't get where Kaguya fans are getting this "she earned her win" thing from. She did not train anywhere near as hard as any of the competitors. Eirin states this herself (her whole speech about their being two types; those who train hard like her and Reisen, and natural geniuses like Kaguya)! Kaguya's training was mostly her watching the Kinnikuman anime so she could copy the moves (as we saw)! Keine pointed out that Kaguya's body was "soft" (meaning it wasn't hardened by muscle and training), so Kaguya's imitation moves didn't do as much damage as they should have. We had it literally slapped in our faces that Kaguya slacked hard before the matches!

She schemed before the match to have the whole crowd on her side (a typical villain move from Kinnikuman as any fan would know), she schemed at the beginning of the tourney to turn the crowd against Keine and Mokou, Aya cheated like crazy (the most blatant example), Tewi cheated by blinding Keine/Mokou, Eirin resorted to a move that could have been lethal (she said it was an exact copy of Scorpio's special attack which is meant to torture the victim to death) and earlier she tried to break Mokou's leg before Keine broke it up, and in the end Team Mokou/Keine still only lost because Keine couldn't match the stamina of the immortal/ageless competitors after being nearly tortured to death by Eirin's pressure point tricks.

As for the people being hard on Mokou, they are missing the point of Keine's flashback. Mokou has nothing. She has watched everyone she has ever loved die and has nothing to live for but her feud with Kaguya (who clearly views the feud as mere entertainment to pass the centuries), and even lived by herself in the bamboo forest for centuries because it was too painful to make friends only to watch them die. Eirin even tried to taunt her about it.

After Keine fainted Mokou realized just how much she had come to care for Keine, and now she was back to being all alone again, all while surrounded by people who loved Kaguya and hated her. Talk about nightmare fuel. Kaguya was loved by everyone, even Mokou's father, whereas no one really gave a crap about Mokou after her family was gone. That's why her fans see her as a tragic heroine. She's stuck in a senseless feud (which is largely her own fault not unlike a Shakespearean tragic hero) against an opponent who has everything, and (almost) everyone on her side.

The Eientei people are popular with almost everyone, even discounting Kaguya's schemes before the match (everyone goes to Eirin for medicine and such and kaguya holds exhibitions of the moon's culture).

In comparison, when Eirin hides the moon and she and Kaguya are confronted about it, Kaguya says, "Go kill my rival (knowing it was impossible), and I'll give you the real moon back!"... and our heroes (a group including Reimu, Marisa, Yukari, Remilia, and Yuyuko) rush to do just that instead of just beating Kaguya and Eirin down until they gave them the real moon back! Look at it from mokou's persepctive, here she is just chillin', occasionally doing good deeds (she saves people who get lost in the forest from youkai), when suddenly a bunch of Gensokyo's most powerful people show up and kill her again and again on Kaguya's say-so!

Kaguya is indeed very charismatic (she's not a shut-in). She also has everything anyone could ever want and eternal life to enjoy it all (she is spoiled as all hell, this canon) meanwhile Mokou has nothing but a single friend who will eventually die. This whole fight took all those points and beat us in the face with them, and in the end Kaguya wins and still retains her popularity. Personally, I'm hoping Shiki does call her on her BS and outs her as a true Kinnikuman-style villain!

OmniGman said:
Kaguya is indeed very charismatic (she's not a shut-in). She also has everything anyone could ever want and eternal life to enjoy it all (she is spoiled as all hell, this canon) meanwhile Mokou has nothing but a single friend who will eventually die. This whole fight took all those points and beat us in the face with them, and in the end Kaguya wins and still retains her popularity. Personally, I'm hoping Shiki does call her on her BS and outs her as a true Kinnikuman-style villain!

Let's hope that Eiki finds a loophole to kill this bitch and still win the match.

OmniGman said:

I don't get where Kaguya fans are getting this "she earned her win" thing from. She did not train anywhere near as hard as any of the competitors. Eirin states this herself (her whole speech about their being two types; those who train hard like her and Reisen, and natural geniuses like Kaguya)! Kaguya's training was mostly her watching the Kinnikuman anime so she could copy the moves (as we saw)! Keine pointed out that Kaguya's body was "soft" (meaning it wasn't hardened by muscle and training), so Kaguya's imitation moves didn't do as much damage as they should have. We had it literally slapped in our faces that Kaguya slacked hard before the matches!

She schemed before the match to have the whole crowd on her side (a typical villain move from Kinnikuman as any fan would know), she schemed at the beginning of the tourney to turn the crowd against Keine and Mokou, Aya cheated like crazy (the most blatant example), Tewi cheated by blinding Keine/Mokou, Eirin resorted to a move that could have been lethal (she said it was an exact copy of Scorpio's special attack which is meant to torture the victim to death) and earlier she tried to break Mokou's leg before Keine broke it up, and in the end Team Mokou/Keine still only lost because Keine couldn't match the stamina of the immortal/ageless competitors after being nearly tortured to death by Eirin's pressure point tricks.

As for the people being hard on Mokou, they are missing the point of Keine's flashback. Mokou has nothing. She has watched everyone she has ever loved die and has nothing to live for but her feud with Kaguya (who clearly views the feud as mere entertainment to pass the centuries), and even lived by herself in the bamboo forest for centuries because it was too painful to make friends only to watch them die. Eirin even tried to taunt her about it.

After Keine fainted Mokou realized just how much she had come to care for Keine, and now she was back to being all alone again, all while surrounded by people who loved Kaguya and hated her. Talk about nightmare fuel. Kaguya was loved by everyone, even Mokou's father, whereas no one really gave a crap about Mokou after her family was gone. That's why her fans see her as a tragic heroine. She's stuck in a senseless feud (which is largely her own fault not unlike a Shakespearean tragic hero) against an opponent who has everything, and (almost) everyone on her side.

The Eientei people are popular with almost everyone, even discounting Kaguya's schemes before the match (everyone goes to Eirin for medicine and such and kaguya holds exhibitions of the moon's culture).

In comparison, when Eirin hides the moon and she and Kaguya are confronted about it, Kaguya says, "Go kill my rival (knowing it was impossible), and I'll give you the real moon back!"... and our heroes (a group including Reimu, Marisa, Yukari, Remilia, and Yuyuko) rush to do just that instead of just beating Kaguya and Eirin down until they gave them the real moon back! Look at it from mokou's persepctive, here she is just chillin', occasionally doing good deeds (she saves people who get lost in the forest from youkai), when suddenly a bunch of Gensokyo's most powerful people show up and kill her again and again on Kaguya's say-so!

Kaguya is indeed very charismatic (she's not a shut-in). She also has everything anyone could ever want and eternal life to enjoy it all (she is spoiled as all hell, this canon) meanwhile Mokou has nothing but a single friend who will eventually die. This whole fight took all those points and beat us in the face with them, and in the end Kaguya wins and still retains her popularity. Personally, I'm hoping Shiki does call her on her BS and outs her as a true Kinnikuman-style villain!

This.

Anyway, Kaguya, seriously, "you want Keine to leave this ring as a heel?" Please, that's because you pulled all that publicity stunt. It's so damn obvious.

Shame I just found this series now, though, if I could speculate... well.