Mashle: Magic And Muscles

Huh. According to a volume Q and A, Margarette Macaron is non-binary, identifying as both male and female. And not even mincing words there, the author states it very explicitly:

I thought the joke was just that they were a very masculine-looking woman, but nope, full-on NB. Cool.

Oh that’s rad.

Guess that explains a question I had, which was why Margarette was fine with everyone else using he/him pronouns for the entire arc.

Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Jan 4th 2023 at 9:19:06 AM

I updated the character page to reflect Margarette being NB.

Also, chapter 140: Ah, the sweet familiar sound of Mash doing ridiculous bullshit. A perfect 10! I think one of the best parts about Mash as a protagonist is that he's ridiculously wholesome. His facial expression never changes, so you think he's like super serious and apathetic toward everything, but he's actually really emotional and he just wants to go home and live a happy life with his grandpa and best friends. He's not Goku, Doom may be loving this fight, but Mash isn't, he doesn't enjoy fighting for its own sake.

Also, I found it really funny that Doom went 100% last chapter, then in this one he releases all of his magic power (so, even more than 100%), AND summons his God, AND casts his Thirds. Man claims to have been going all-out, then he powers up three more times within one chapter. Also, Doom has a God and Thirds without even a single line on his face, did the author just forget about the core base mechanic of his power system?

Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Feb 9th 2023 at 7:37:38 AM

Chapter 141: And it's over. Mash plays reverse whack-a-mole with Doom's clones, pushing them down through the bottom of the castle until there's only one left, then he breaks the remaining one's neck with a BLUE DESTINY OUTTA NOWHERE!!! Hilarious, just completely dismantle Doom's Thirds in the silliest way possible. And we get a conclusion to the "I don't enjoy fighting" conversation, turns out Mash's goal in life is to be a patissier, a pastry chef, and make everyone happy with deserts. That's just... perfect, almost brings a tear to my eye. And of course, Doom immediately considers "mirroring" Mash in making pancakes. Now for the final battle.

This reminded me of how I would cheese fights in Jump Ultimate Stars by abusing the ring out win condition.

I saw a meme where a group of friends are all hanging out and every single one is thinking "wow, these guys are all such weirdos, thank god I'm the normal one here". That's this series, that's what everyone is thinking when Mash, Lemon, Dot, Lance, and Finn are all hanging out. Except for Mash, he's just thinking about cream puffs, but the other four are thinking that constantly.

Like, this meme is so spot-on that I could actually point to individual panels where different characters literally think that about each other, this is a joke this author has made before, almost word-for-word.

Unrelated, but it's kinda cool to look back on chapters 40 and 41, where all of the Divine Visionaries we see in action during the final arc are introduced.

Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Feb 2nd 2023 at 6:15:17 AM

"He's roasting him alive!"

Chapter 142: He is, indeed, roasting him alive. Mash just called his bio-dad, the main villain of the series, a cringe deadbeat in front of the whole world. Also, Mash appearing behind him mid-monologue was really funny, and him stealing Caladbolg from Doom, bending it into a boomerang, then throwing it underground was hilarious.

Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Feb 5th 2023 at 12:27:08 PM

It’s fine that Mash cut into Innocent Zero’s monologue, he wasn’t gonna remember more than ten words anyway. Classic Mash.

I made a post on Reddit analyzing an interesting quirk of Hajime Komoto's writing that I just noticed: he explains some important plot points once, never explains them again, and expects the audience to remember and keep those plot points in mind for future events. He even writes major thematic conclusions and events with those plot points in mind.

It's kind of a big post with a lot of manga pages, so it's much easier to link it instead of reposting it here.

TL, DR: This author only explains certain things once, and then he just expects you to remember those things for future events. Characters can grow new face lines by getting stronger (except Mash). Doom's strength is from a Master Cane. Mash's brothers all have a stamina-based healing factor during their battles, which is important to the conclusions of all of their fights.

Hmmm now that you mention it the author doesn’t even try to refresh that kind of information in the readers’ minds. I think it works because Mash is a rather straightforward action/comedy, so there’s not a lot of dots to connect.

Especially the fact that all four brothers have demon hearts and dealing with their healing factor is a big part of the climax of all four fights, it's weird that the author left that detail almost entirely subtextual after the first fight. It shows a surprising degree of respect for the reader's intelligence to connect these dots on their own, especially for a Shonen Jump manga. Though I've seen a lot of these connections go over many readers' heads, so maybe he overestimates how invested people are in his story.

One Piece has made me used to extreme overanalyzing and keeping a mental library of every little detail ever mentioned. Mashle isn't half as complex as One Piece, but One Piece also routinely reminds the audience of previous plot points and exposition to keep the audience up to speed, and I find it interesting that Mashle just doesn't do that.

Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Feb 7th 2023 at 5:39:08 AM

For the demon hearts while an interesting detail, ultimately as long as the defeat of the brothers is communicated it’s fine to know the specific details.

143: Mash unleashes his ultimate form, the almighty slug stance!!!

"You can only use it during an eclipse? Sounds like you got a raw deal." Damn, this is why his name is Mash Burnedead.

I'd had the thought before that Mashle would work really well as an arena fighter. Every battle takes place in a wide open room, every fighter has access to basic magic (Nalcos) as well as personal magic that makes their moveset unique.

Mash and Doom are basically the only close-range combatants. It even has convenient transformations and Supers with God invocations, Secondths, and Thirds.

I'm just imagining Cyber Connect 2 (the studio behind the Naruto Storm and Demon Slayer games) making a Mashle game, and that sounds perfect.

Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Feb 13th 2023 at 6:15:53 AM

New chap

I expect the chapter after this one to be like this: Mash: "You think killing me was enough to make me dead?"

Edited by Demongodofchaos2 on Feb 19th 2023 at 12:08:22 PM

Someone feed Mash a cream puff, stat.

My prediction: Mash will mold his metal wand into a fully-functioning mechanical replacement heart.

145: Meliadoul just yeeting Ochoa at the castle and him actually hitting Zero was hilarious, and then Ochoa did his thing of being a little slimeball weasel. I was actually thinking as Ochoa and Zero were being hit by the beams, that they looked like Domina's water lasers. I was shocked to learn that I was right, especially since last we saw of Domina, he was consumed by Dark Magma that automatically transferred his heart to Zero. So he shouldn't just be dead, he should also be in the same situation as Mash in terms of missing a heart, I dunno what's going on here.

I wonder if Doom will team up with Domina.

Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Mar 1st 2023 at 9:27:23 AM

146: Domina was rescued by Ryoh and revived by Meliadoul, just like Mash. Little bit of a retcon there, since in chapter 101 we literally see him sinking into the Dark Magma, but it's fine. I'm glad we got one final note with Domina in this final arc that otherwise deals with all the rest of the Innocent Zero family.

The anime will be 2 cours, so around 24 episodes, give or take 2. So it's not a continuous adaptation, more like a long season 1. Maybe like how My Hero Academia seasons are structured?

Hopefully, it's paced well and ends at an appropriate spot. I think a good place to end would be chapter 72, the end of volume 8 and Innocent Zero's invasion of the tournament. At that pace, it would be around 3 chapters per episode, which is a pretty good, standard pace for a weekly manga adaptation.

Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Mar 11th 2023 at 9:44:13 AM

Source ?

I don't have one aside from that Tweet.