Monsieur
Finally finished Genesis Testament 10, a pretty interesting volume all told.
The Transcendent Saga had its ups and downs, and I was always ambivalent on it because they replaced the much more interesting (IMO) antagonist Anna Sprengel and felt like a weird rethread of True Gremlin. But GT9 really surprised me in how it pulled all the stops and even used a long-standing mystery, while this one had Kamachi managing to bring back an offhand remark from way back at the start of the arc in GT5 in a bit The Reveal that puts into new perspective what has happened up till this point.
Alice has been a little flat for me (even with the good halfway twist in GT5, she was mostly kind of a weird addition to the events), but this volume made her understandable a lot more understandable as a character. It helps that she's a major source of creepy Body Horror making her more memorable as well.
But really, this volume ties in with NT8 in having a really good Cliffhanger, namely The Hero Dies, which is what Alice predicted 5 volumes ago.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Honestly BBC felt like a much better fleshed out version of True Gremlin to me, like Kamachi just refined the idea he used in NT.
It's crazy to me how much I went from not really caring about the Transcendants to actively liking them, especially Aradia. The way they went from just mechanically following their salvation conditions to us gradually seeing the humanity in them more and more was great.
I also didn't really care much for Sprengel either, but GT 9 did so much to make me actually like her and GT 10 only continued with that.
Monsieur
Oh it is indeed a way better version of the Magic God Invasion arc, which looked somewhat promising but got cut short due to Kamisato and what followed was not as engaging.
Do note that I find the individual characters of the Transcendents good, it's the concept of it and how they were introduced kinda out of nowhere that didn't really endear me, Anna needed more space to breathe IMO. And I do find disappointing that Bologna Succubus was essentially sidelined from being Touma's main ally among them and swapped for Aradia, when she was a real MVP throughout GT6 (alongside Mary, but she stayed the GOAT throughout). It's not even that I dislike Aradia, I just find it a weird writing decision.
As for Sprengel, I disagree, she was really interesting to me, as an essentially ancient threat from magic before Crowley, when magic and science were indistinguishable, coming back to sow chaos in this new global status quo (much more fitting than at the start of NT, which was only a relative change of status quo with the exception of Aleister's plans falling apart), mixing science and magic and revealing magic to espers through an app. She was also a villain that even after being punched by Touma did not change her ways and still caused trouble, which was novel. It's not even that I dislike her Face–Heel Turn, I liked her role in GT8, GT9, and especially her logical endpoint in GT10, but it felt rushed to me, like her villainy arc needed more cooking instead of suddently inserting the Bridge Builder Cabal. GT4 was bad, and then she essentially doesn't really do anything until she is captured at the end of GT6 and then freed by Touma next volume. The elements of her facing Anna Kingsford, allying with Touma out of necessity and growing fond enough she sacrifices herself, and CRC especially being her Rosicrucian founder after her and using Rosicrucian magic used in her focused volumes are all good, I'm just not sure it meshed well with the BBC stuff.
If it were me, I would excise these elements and center them around Anna, and then make it about the Transcendents, who are much better focused on Alice anyway, who herself showed she made a good antagonist on her own.
I have a question: How does the feel about Touma in general?
Monsieur
I assume this is asking everyone's opinion on Touma. I think he's pretty fun and a very good character when Kamachi uses him effectively.
Anna got 3-4 volumes to cook though, that's a lot.
I think it's because Bologna was pretty firmly on Touma's side since jump, writing Aradia going from disliking Touma enough to try to kill him to advocating and falling for him really tickled Kamachi's fancy
I personally liked that Kamachi did something different from his normal magic side villain plot -where they're spending so much time to set up a huge ritual and instead Anna is still a villian only she's working to mess with and expose another group who is working completely under the radar.
Edited by Chaosjunction on May 8th 2024 at 4:48:35 AM
Monsieur
If you're introducing an arc villain, they need buildup of how much of a threat they are and then cap it off with a proper conclusion. The previous big arc villains I mentioned above got buildups to their plans and then dealing with them were huge affairs, almost wars. Anna/BBC/CRC are supposed to get the same hype from the way they are presented, but then they are all smushed together reducing their effectiveness.
The thematic magic is also all over the place: the OT ended with Christian magic as the focus, the first half of NT was Norse mythology, and then the last third Crowley Magick (the Aeons thematic Kamachi went for for NT 20-21-22). GT starts with Rosicrucian, then it switches to seemingly Secret Chiefs/Magick, then back to Rosicrucian, all part of the same arc (Kamachi says it was ultimately about impersonation, which sure, but it really isn't clear reading).
Just generally it was structured differently but not in a way that worked for me.
Gremlin got 8, RCC got half of OT. Othinus and Fiamma both got 4. Their organizations were touted as big threats yes, but they themselves got around the same time or less that Sprengel got to establish themselves as threats.
The difference is that instead of setting up the organization and giving us time to work our way to the top dog, we start with Anna and she makes it obvious she's whose running things with her group.
It's only later on that we learn it's because he goal is fundamentally different from theirs. She isn't creating a big plan, she's tearing one down. That's when we see BBC come in.
It's the same story structure, just handled differently.
Edited by Chaosjunction on May 8th 2024 at 5:28:09 AM
The whole point with Anna is that she seems like a powerful, overwhelming threat at first before it's revealed she's fallible and full of weaknesses.
Song of the Sirens
Mental Out chapter 24.2 updated. A Kihara being a Kihara, and that mind-controlled girl losing one of the keys to her mind control.
"To me, she looks less like someone with a hostage, and more like someone playing with a toy until it breaks." Yep, that summarizes the Kiharas pretty well.