A doppelganger duel ends with an ending we’ve seen before.  

——

Well, despite my prior excitement with seeing Medaka and company square off against their doppelgangers, it was a less than surprising with the solution they came up with to defeat them. This is something we’ve seen multiple times in other stories where doppelgangers cannot be defeated by the originals, and instead must be defeated by someone else. What is worth noting about this is that the chapter doesn’t waste much time getting this point across to our heroes as they easily dispatch their doppelgangers within the first half of the chapter. This minor battle was a bit of a disappointment when compared to the much more complicated and thoughtful ways of victory that these characters have achieved in previous conflicts, but it is slightly forgivable since this is nothing more than a minor hurdle in a much bigger arc. 

The second half of the chapter saw Medaka and crew encounter Obi, one of the heads of the Shiranui family, and in typical Medaka fashion, doesn’t waste much time in disposing of her challenges. It’s a bit of a funny moment to see Medaka in annoyance smack around a childlike figure, but it really doesn’t offer much else. What’s more interesting is the last challenge she issues Medaka before meeting Shiranui. It’s a mental challenge meant to stall and confuse Medaka, and for a while it seems like it will, with the absurdity of asking what someone would ask you, written down on a scroll that you cannot see. It’s a battle of logic and understanding of a person’s character which is something Medaka has pat down in her core, so when she comes up with her answer, it was a riot for me to read what her answer was, which is pictured below. 

Overall, I would have scored this higher had I not breezed through this chapter so fast. It is an easy and quick read compared to previous chapters and the cliffhanger doesn’t do much for me. Sure, Medaka and Zenkichi meet up with Shiranui, but there wasn’t a lot of tension building up to it, and there’s almost no excitement in seeing them back together because we still haven’t been given an accurate direction of where this arc is going. We’ll probably get that in the following chapter, but for now, I have to leave my score at just a three. 

GO Rating: 3/5

The trio are reunited. 

[MangaReader]