New chapter 4 part 2 and probably the end of the SDM case arc, yay
The culprit indeed acted under the influence of a bad spirit from down there, but somehow I didn't expect that it could possess different persons at it please, haha
Surprisingly, this manga, which didn't seem to be something that would bring a lot to the lore, add something to vengeful spirits. Changing the person it possess by means of beverage ? Interesting. Probably something that falls into ZUN's grand plan of including further booze into his work somewhere down the line, but otherwise, giving this particular vengeful spirit a particular gimmick. I wonder if such gimmick is exclusive to her : can others vengeful spirits have their own way, their own set of conditions for possessing people ? Pretty intersting imo.
Something could also be said about what this adds regarding youkai and their power, specifically their life force : there has always been this thing about the Youkai needing fear or other kind of feeling related thing to subsist, but this is kinda new. Magical power and youkai's importance can more or less be attributed to why Yukari put the border between fantasy and reality, which empowers youkai, and the spell card rules, which allow youkai to use their power in order not to lose it : this makes it very clear that youkai need more than fear, i guess.
And still speaking about non human species and their powers, since we seem to be entering a Hakugyoukurou arc, I'm VERY curious about the thing with Yuyuko : she is a GHOST, not a rando with a flesh body : since what happened to her really look like what happened in the SDM arc, did the vengeful spirit ate (such irony) her magic power ? Is the vengeful spirit going to be able to possess her ? And why would Yuyuko, a GHOST, PRESUMABLY suffer the same symptoms as the YOUKAI who got their power consumed ? among others ...
As far as I'm concerned, the latest chapter 4 part 2 made this series more intersting than I initially thought it would be (I confess, I was pretty underwhelmed by the first chapter tbh)
I've also more or less said this, and this is getting more obvious with the coming Hakugyoukurou arc, but this manga is one hell of an occasion for ZUN to reexplore the setting of locations introduced in the super old works, AND to give some screentime and characterization to the old cast : this is like the most cynical depiction of SDM character relationship I've seen in a while, plus some unusual side that we don't really see very often : cold Meiling, ICE COLD Patchouli, concerned Remilia (?!) This makes me curious as to how PCB cast is gonna be illustrated.
On the other side, this vengeful spirit-chan seems to be one of the few pure villain type of character of this series. That's very unusual, I wanna see what could her motivations be : why is she called eternal criminal ? What is she doing all of this for ? Is there any particular reason she goes after magical power instead of properly possessing people ? I hope she's not gonna be some kind a flat kind of character that was just introduced only to allow the plot to exist, only to be fortune tellered by the end of the manga.
At any rate, this is probably the last time we're gonna see Flandre talk until the next time, AND we're finally going to see Alice get some spotlight in the next arc, so there's that too
