#great philosopher

So I head-canon him at about 2028 years old, give or take. 

Either that or a 14 year old and going through *That* phase. 

Red Muffler.  A good lad, a hard working lad, sporting his red muffler made lovingly by his mom.  He may not be a high-flier but he puts in the honest miles.

Twintail.  The most perfectly androgynous hero out there -- Murata himself had to settle whether they were male or female.  It’s the latter.  I love her circus-based deadliness and I hope we get to see her again.

Great Philosopher.  Now here’s a guy who hits the gym as hard as he hits the books.  We didn’t get to see how good a fighter he is until the webcomic and I like what I see.   A book you can not just throw at your enemies, but that returns to hand?  I like!

Darkness Blade.  My favourite little edgelord.   He really shouldn’t speak.  Or raise his arms.

The fighting duo D-Pad and Funeral Suspenders.  They have quite the style!  Funeral Suspender’s habit of wearing his get up to taunt enemies by implying that he’s going to bury them is the sort of individual quirkiness I come to this series for.

I was going to wait until chapters 127 and 128 were also translated, but with u/hdx514′s disappearance (I hope they’re well, whatever is going on with their lives), translations are going to be a little slower coming. And I’m driving myself mad with all the meta I want to talk about!

Story

Man, heroes are too amazing!  The only time we met Great Philosopher was in the manga, where he was then A Class Rank 13.  No rank is given today.  But never mind that.  Here he is dispensing extreme philosophical violence on a monster crocodile.  He throws the book at the monster...

...and then it returns to hand.  Amazing!

Unfortunately, there were plenty more monster crocs where that one came from.  By the time back up arrived, the pro-heroes found that the Neo Heroes had showed up and beaten down the    This particular group was comprised of the boy band the Soda Pop Boys, a couple of whom had just about scraped through to Class C of the Hero Association before being discouraged by Amai Mask’s derision.

In what becomes a motif for the rest of the chapter, a bigger croc shows up and they call on their leader, Webigaza.  She shows up and ONE’s challenging himself to draw women comes across so well.  She poses beautifully for the camera, addresses her followers, then turns and dispatches the big monster in a manner as beautiful as it’s awe-inspiring.

We next go to other parts, where in turn, single pro-heroes are being overwhelmed by monsters, only to be rescued by the intervention of groups of Neo Heroes and their leaders.  Raiden and his group save an unnamed C-Class hero, who is so impressed by the organised way in which they fight he considers following them.  Oh, the Neo Heroes make sure to get a media pitch in, using Webigaza as their draw.   And we close out with the wonderfully ridiculous: a giant speedy snail monster, which Accel is about to face with his group.

Meta

Leaders and Levelers

Seeing the Neo Heroes in action finally brings together all the disparate pieces we’d been told about how they planned to do things differently to the Hero Association.

The Great Philosopher is an experienced hero and notes quite accurately that the Neo Heroes who show up are far from skillful, being amateurish in their movements.  No wonder, we’ve met the Soda Pop Boys before.  They’re not fighters by training and they’d be doing well to scrape into C-Class of the Hero Association at all. 

Child Emperor noted that the Neo Heroes meant to take on people to train on the job as opposed to the Hero Association who only took on street-ready candidates.  Enter the leveler: the power suit. Just as the automatic machine gun leveled battlefields, the power suits level the field of hero ability. In power suits, even the Soda Pop Boys could surpass the Great Philosopher in speed, strength and stamina, being able to prevail  over the other crocodiles.

Raiden cannot help but be impressed by the suits’ abilities, but he as he notes, it’s a tool that too easily encourages misuse as a crutch to replace, rather than to supplement a person’s capabilities. [Aside: we’ve seen Genos musing about this... sticking to the webcomic, as of chapter 108.  I wonder what answer he’s found.]

With the power suit comes another notable difference in the way Neo Heroes are organized.  There are no hero classes.  The Hero Association’s classes reflect what they expect a single hero from that class be able to be entrusted with.  To recap:

Class C = no monsters, minor street criminals only.

Class B = wolf-level monsters, reasonably dangerous gangs.

Class A = tiger-level monsters, all but the most dangerous criminals.

Class S = demon-level monsters, the very vilest criminals.

Of course, it’s been nice in theory, but the practice has proved very challenging, especially with monsters not caring to play fair or correspond to what the artificially-applied labels say they ought to be like. 

These distinctions in class don’t exist in the Neo Heroes.  There, a squadron of suited heroes are led by one of the leaders to take on any foe, great or small.   It’s very flat.

What the Neo Heroes do have to invest in is leadership.  Being part of a squad has the potential to be great or terrible, according to the leader one is working under.  Already we see contrasts.  We see Webigaza ignoring her squad, being only focussed on what she’s here to do.  Raiden, despite his doubts, is doing a great job encouraging his squad to move forward.  And Accel is using his guys in a cooperative manouvre.

“...her smile... is very forced.”

We have to talk about Webigaza, the idol who turned cyborg, esper and hero in her bid to outshine all.

The Soda Pop Boy’s observation is best summed up in nine pictures as Webigaza gets ready to face the camera, faces it, and turns away to fight.

At 71% body modification, Webigaza’s mods are definitely past what’s considered sane, but they appear to not be as extreme as those of Destro, Erimin... or Genos for that matter.  However, in quality, wow, we have to revise that assumption.  Leaving aside the risks inherent in modifying her body to the extent that she has, she’s also on a heavy experimental drug regimen, and has had additional brain surgery for the purposes of acquiring psychic ability.   It is as if she’s decided to live briefly but most brightly.   Why?  What’s driven her so?  Answers must wait for future chapters, alas.