Law of Ueki 14

Shame on me, I fell behind on one of my favorite shounen action series.  Truth be told, I’m getting a bit worn out on it at this point.  It’s been nothing but tournaments for as long as I can remember.  The battles aren’t even thinly disguised, or impromptu.  It’s literally just a final tournament to see who gets to be the next King.  Law of Ueki isn’t quite good enough to pull off a straight tournament, but I still really like its oddball flourishes.

I’m recently missing one of my favorite oddball flourishes for this series, which were the extremely unique fighting environments.  Nothing will ever top the battle that took place where you had to wear a Russian hat and dance in order to breathe while fighting, but I still think highly of the settings.  The fight with Team Marilyn took place in a deserted city that was only spiced up by the occasionally friendly ghost, and the environment at the end of the volume… while it does have hazards that will end the battle, it’s just a grid in an arena.  Boo.

There’s a break in the fighting where Ueki gets to go home and spend time with his adorable family, then hangs out with his Celestial Dad.  Both scenes were pretty good in their way.  They made the types of jokes which are really stupid, but can be really funny if they strike you in the right way.  These jokes did it for me, at least.

Mori’s power is finally, FINALLY revealed in this volume.  I was a little underwhelmed until the very end, when the condition was revealed.  Then I was rather enamored.  The explanation as to how Mori came to her conclusion while looking at Sano’s notes is 100% lost in translation in the worst way.  It is explained copiously by the characters, but not seeing Sano’s note written in a sloppy mix of English and Japanese, plus whatever other weirdness was factored in just made me give up on following the reason.  That’s fine though, it’s not very important in the end.

One of the characters mentions winning against one team and being “in like Flynn.”  I was a bit disturbed by this comment coming from a shounen manga character, but I’ll take my vaguely dirty Errol Flynn references where I can get them.  I also get treated to the line “Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, Kill Norton.”  That one works on a couple different levels.

As much as I loved this series early on, I would say it’s pretty well over at this point.  The endgame is being stretched out a little bit, but it also feels like the series burned through all its good ideas.  I’m still kind of hoping for a clever conclusion two volumes from now, though.