HSDK Chapter 487 Discussion / 488 Predictions

[kkck]

Working hard should guarantee success for an individual most of the time even if you factor in the external factors in which that person has no control over. You said "merely" What else did you have in mind as a requirement for Kenichi to do to guarantee his success? Please elaborate because I don't have a clue. Furthermore, Kenichi does not have guaranteed success. In my opinion what success means to kenichi is surpassing Miu in strength and protecting her without Miu to having to lift a single finger in crisis time not becoming a strong master class fighter. That's his main ultimate goal for practicing martial arts and he's yet to accomplish that. You say the masters training and plan for him ensure him the success of becoming a master, but that was never his goal to begin with that's not the success Kenichi has in mind. Sure he'll become a master, but their plan does guarantee him the success of surpassing Miu not at the rate she's going even you cant argue against that. Therefore, Kenichi does not have guaranteed success in my opinion meaning failure is very probable. Also, I wasn't trying to imply nor was I assuming Kenichi works harder than any of the other characters you mentioned. I find Kenichi's willpower/ work ethic towards becoming stronger inspirational because he has no business in martial arts; he's a brave soul without a shred of talent or build for fighting with no guaranteed success. I commend him for that. Anyway, becoming a master does not guarantee him success not unless he surpasses Miu. Yes, he'll no doubt will reach master class ( a little uninspiring I suppose) through their plan "the fall towards mastery" it doesn't matter. The masters have cannot ensure he doesn't fail that matter is simply out of their hands. Kenichi can fail make no mistake about that regardless of his masters infallible plan or being privileged and it's completely on him.
It's been awhile since we had a good debate

Well, I said merely because in real life working hard is plainly not enough. Working hard towards your goals is the bare minimum and that by no means guarantee that you will actually succeed. At any given point there are an infinite number of things that can go wrong to put it simply. And even if things do not go wrong on your end it is still perfectly plausible for circumstances to screw you. Of course, it all depends on what your goal actually is too, not all goals would be influenced by the same things. For instance, how many people work hard to get to the Olympics and how many do? How many people just plain don't make it towards their goals? While certainly there will be a number of people who didn't work as hard and whatnot the actual real competition you will have towards a goal will have a sharklike mentality and will work every bit as hard as you do.

Surpassing and protecting miu is but one goal kenichi has but there are other (arguably more important) things which kenichi wants. I would think his main goal is to become strong enough to fight the evil which others ignore (which perhaps has the implication that kenichi lives in an asshole japan where people don't have the decency of calling the cops but that is an entirely different subject). For kenichi this pretty much means he has to become a master and become batman (without the gadgets and the piles of dead bodies though) so as to actually fight the evil which society at large is ignoring. Its not even like wanting to protect miu is a good thing (its sweet, and it is not bad but it is not a good thing). Miu is basically flawless as a character. She has insane talent and astounding intelligence and capacity to learn basically. Kenichi could want to protect her as much as he wants but the fact of the matter is that miu is plenty capable of protecting herself. There are absurd circumstances which could arise which warrant miu being protected (such as the junazad thingy) but the issue here is that 1) kenichi does not necessarily have to be stronger than miu and 2) they actually are absurd situations. Even miu wanting to be protected by kenichi is plain wrong, why would she as a capable independent individual want to develop that sort relationship with a loved one? They shouldn't be aiming to protect or be protected by the other, the coherent thing would be to aim to be a proper support to each other(at least that is what a proper relationship is).

Then, of course, becoming a master is not something which is actually burdens kenichi but rather it is his masters' burden to make kenichi into a master. It does not matter that kenichi does not have an aptitude for martial arts (even though kensei did seem to think kenichi was implausibly talented a while back) as his implausible masters will make sure to give him an implausible body which will actually be implausibly perfect for martial arts (he probably already has a good deal of pink muscle for instance). Even then it seems like kenichi's limitations to martial arts are not a physical but rather mental and emotional though. The extent to which kenichi can fail is actually very limited as far as his master's plan allow. Akisame and ma will guarantee the training kenichi undergoes does not actually permanently hurt him (thus denying him the possibility of continuing martial arts). So kenichi's job is basically to not get killed by other disciples. His only job is to actually put up with the infallible training his masters got for him. Its not like we even have any reason to believe the extra hours kenichi has put in make a significant difference. The difference could have made a difference in his fights against yomi (being marginally faster, marginally stronger, mastering a technique just a bit more) but overall I don't think the manga has shown us that the disciple remodeling plan will fail if kenichi does not take the extra mile. For example in the last chapter we saw kenichi without the strength to walk, let alone putting another hour of training on his own. Also I do recall a few manga instances which suggest kenichi trains since early in the morning before school and then he trains in the afternoon after school. As far as we know kenichi's regular training already takes up at least between 4 and 6 hours a day. So add school, homework, meals, fighting other disciples and the time he apparently (miraculously) has to deal with ordinary situations such as ukita having a pointless duel and it does not seem like he will be able to do much on his own. If anything, seeing the current developments it kinda seems like his masters have been going somewhat easy on him so that he can have his deathmatches in peace. Basically, any "extra" work kenichi is actually physically able to input into training is the result of his masters going somewhat easy on him.

[OcasoEterno04]

Well, I said merely because in real life working hard is plainly not enough. Working hard towards your goals is the bare minimum and that by no means guarantee that you will actually succeed. At any given point there are an infinite number of things that can go wrong to put it simply. And even if things do not go wrong on your end it is still perfectly plausible for circumstances to screw you. Of course, it all depends on what your goal actually is too, not all goals would be influenced by the same things. For instance, how many people work hard to get to the Olympics and how many do? How many people just plain don't make it towards their goals? While certainly there will be a number of people who didn't work as hard and whatnot the actual real competition you will have towards a goal will have a sharklike mentality and will work every bit as hard as you do.

Surpassing and protecting miu is but one goal kenichi has but there are other (arguably more important) things which kenichi wants. I would think his main goal is to become strong enough to fight the evil which others ignore (which perhaps has the implication that kenichi lives in an asshole japan where people don't have the decency of calling the cops but that is an entirely different subject). For kenichi this pretty much means he has to become a master and become batman (without the gadgets and the piles of dead bodies though) so as to actually fight the evil which society at large is ignoring. Its not even like wanting to protect miu is a good thing (its sweet, and it is not bad but it is not a good thing). Miu is basically flawless as a character. She has insane talent and astounding intelligence and capacity to learn basically. Kenichi could want to protect her as much as he wants but the fact of the matter is that miu is plenty capable of protecting herself. There are absurd circumstances which could arise which warrant miu being protected (such as the junazad thingy) but the issue here is that 1) kenichi does not necessarily have to be stronger than miu and 2) they actually are absurd situations. Even miu wanting to be protected by kenichi is plain wrong, why would she as a capable independent individual want to develop that sort relationship with a loved one? They shouldn't be aiming to protect or be protected by the other, the coherent thing would be to aim to be a proper support to each other(at least that is what a proper relationship is).

Then, of course, becoming a master is not something which is actually burdens kenichi but rather it is his masters' burden to make kenichi into a master. It does not matter that kenichi does not have an aptitude for martial arts (even though kensei did seem to think kenichi was implausibly talented a while back) as his implausible masters will make sure to give him an implausible body which will actually be implausibly perfect for martial arts (he probably already has a good deal of pink muscle for instance). Even then it seems like kenichi's limitations to martial arts are not a physical but rather mental and emotional though. The extent to which kenichi can fail is actually very limited as far as his master's plan allow. Akisame and ma will guarantee the training kenichi undergoes does not actually permanently hurt him (thus denying him the possibility of continuing martial arts). So kenichi's job is basically to not get killed by other disciples. His only job is to actually put up with the infallible training his masters got for him. Its not like we even have any reason to believe the extra hours kenichi has put in make a significant difference. The difference could have made a difference in his fights against yomi (being marginally faster, marginally stronger, mastering a technique just a bit more) but overall I don't think the manga has shown us that the disciple remodeling plan will fail if kenichi does not take the extra mile. For example in the last chapter we saw kenichi without the strength to walk, let alone putting another hour of training on his own. Also I do recall a few manga instances which suggest kenichi trains since early in the morning before school and then he trains in the afternoon after school. As far as we know kenichi's regular training already takes up at least between 4 and 6 hours a day. So add school, homework, meals, fighting other disciples and the time he apparently (miraculously) has to deal with ordinary situations such as ukita having a pointless duel and it does not seem like he will be able to do much on his own. If anything, seeing the current developments it kinda seems like his masters have been going somewhat easy on him so that he can have his deathmatches in peace. Basically, any "extra" work kenichi is actually physically able to input into training is the result of his masters going somewhat easy on him.

I GUESS IS F*CK THIS SH*T O' CLOCK!

Ok where do I start...well im totally with you in everything except the 2nd paragraph, as you may or may not know, kenichi's first ideal was to protect the weak, but then he falled in love blah blah blah protect miu. And now I totally agree with you inthe part of kenichi's mind being more weak than he's body. We all know what kenichi's capable when he uses his 100% that was when he fought with kano sho, "the full power of the ryouzanpaku's number 1 disciple" that's what kenichi has to dominate to defeat all the yomi.

[Unholy]

The author is just stalling for time, looks to me like he/she aint sure where to lead the story now and thats rather annoying.... We just had a terrible arc with an ending that didnt please most and after we are fed pointless nonsense. Seriously since they got back nothing important plot wise has happened, Kenichi and Ryu meeting was pointless since they didnt talk about anything and Miu/Rimis fight was unnecessarily plus totally predictable and now we are given quite a few chapters for a char so unimportant and uninteresting as Ukita, i mean seriously since the start of the manga Ukita didnt do much worth noting besides fighting Kenich the first time and breaking some guys finger on the DD tournament.

[kkck]

I don't think the author would fail to know where to take the story. The whole thing has been slowly moving towards the setting sun thing for a while now, it wouldn't make sense for the author to not have a direction. I think this pointless ukita business is just a distraction, something big is about to happen. We just saw a guy with a gun being about to attack kenichi and miu while kenichi is rather hurt, it is unlikely that the reaction from that will be small. I am thinking that perhaps it is almost time for all out war between yami and ryozampaku. With junazad dead, diego and gaidar in big lock and agaard being elsewhere it seems like the numbers would just about fit for an all out war soon.

[BASED Shinigami]

All out war soon? Mind as well call it the end of the manga then but then again I've maintained all along that the OSNF will probably replace all the members that they have lost meaning new masters new disciples = more problems more money for the Ryozanpaku gang.