Wow. When I saw that this chapter was called "part 1" I had a feeling it would end on a big cliffhanger...but I was not prepared for that last panel 😵💫
Before I get to that though, another major event in the chapter is the fact that Donovan, along with the former director of the hospital, has been visiting the old and dying former Prime Minister Chapman, who was apparently the one who started the war. I'm assuming this is what Damian is referring to about his father going to the hospital a lot. Unfortunately, all we really know at this point is that Donovan is indebted to this prime minister for some reason.
If we think about what Donovan said back in chapter 99 - that humans are predisposed to war, that they're all liars and we can never know what someone else is thinking, etc, it makes sense that he'd have involvement with the guy who started such a big war. And as I've mentioned in other posts, his ideas about people never being able to understand each other could be what led him to have experiments done on his own mind, whether to get mind-reading powers like Anya or something more.
This panel here is interesting as well...
This could be yet more evidence that Donovan can read minds (or at least could at some point). It's one of those lines that seems like nothing, but for a narrative purpose, why would Endo draw attention to Donovan trying to understand someone's thoughts? My guess is that, like Anya, he can't read the mind of someone who's unconscious (at the most, they could maybe tell if the person is having a bad dream or not, like during Loid's backstory when Anya knew he was having a nightmare but didn't get the details).
Before we get to the serious stuff, I want to take a moment to appreciate another example of Anya shenanigans that made me crack up 🤣
Not much else to say here other than Anya's humor never gets old~
But unfortunately the fun is short-lived with what happens to Anya at the end of the chapter. I also want to point out the little "end of chapter blub" in the Japanese version, which says "In a flash, there was an explosive burst of power!" (left side of my screenshot below). This makes it clear that there's some kind of power/energy exchange going on here.
There's a A LOT to speculate about the end of the chapter, so I'll list a bunch of possibilities, either from my own thoughts or theories I've read from other people online.
-If Donovan is indeed a mind-reader too, some sort of feedback loop began to happen when Anya read his mind, causing tons of thoughts he was getting from others to flood into her mind, which overwhelmed her.
-OR, Donovan has the ability to block others from reading his mind. He can send some kind of powerful "energy" or something into the minds of anyone who tries to read his, which harms them and makes them stop. If that is what's happening then dang, take it easy Donnie, she's just a kid 😕
-Reading the thoughts of another mind-reader somehow "enhanced" Anya's powers, causing some kind of new energy to surge into her. Whether this makes her powers better has yet to be seen.
-It's important to note that the power surge seems to be drawn to Anya's "horns." I think it's been revealed that these aren't attached to her head and she can take them off. So my suspicion is that, perhaps under her head where the horns go, something was implanted that gave her mind-reading powers.
Of course, everything I listed above is just speculation and could be totally wrong. When you have a fictional phenomena like mind-reading that hasn't been thoroughly explained yet in the series, the possibilities are literally endless!
Gah, the next chapter can't come soon enough! Worst case scenario is that whatever's happening to Anya causes her serious harm 😥Yor, please come get your daughter!
