Kinnikuman 285

After seemingly dying thanks to the power of Mixer Taitei and the Evil Gods, Suguru has escaped from the realm of death with a little help from Warsman! But now comes the hard part: can he return in time to not lose his match!?

Chapter 285: Scramble for the Kinniku Throne (12): A Shocking Defeat!!

47.
Wars: Go—Kinnikuman, leave your pursuers to me!!
Suguru: I’m…sorry!!
Oni: Hold on—
Oni: An escapee getting out of the Choujin Graveyard will spoil our names!!
Suguru: Warsman, you’ve surely come to save me!!

48.
Wars: G…go without caring about me, Kinnikuman. I’m not a man who will sputter in this world of the dead!!

49.
Wars: I’ll…be waiting………
Wars: Kinnikuman…
Caption: KUMAMOTO CASTLE—

50.
Referee: Kinnikuman has one minute remaining in his return postponement!
Announcer: We’re nearing a minute left in the return postponement, but currently, Kinnikuman hasn’t returned from the Choujin Graveyard. At this rate, it will be decided to be a ring-out victory for Mixer Taitei!
Mixer: Hey, Short Stuff, if they decide on Kinnikuman’s elimination, you that’s remaining as last is finally going to fight me. You should prepare to die!
(TN: Mixer Taitei refers to Meat actually as “Chibisuke”, which is merely combining “chibi” for “short” or “small” with the male name of “suke”; somehow I figured that it makes more sense in English to have the teasing akin to “Short Stuff”, “Small Fry” or “Tiny”)
Meat: As a part of the Justice Choujin, I’m not afraid of getting hurt in a fight…………
Meat: If only…now.

51.
Meat: It’ll be alright, regardless of their cruel appearances…even if I die, I would do so if I could ascertain Prince was alive with my eyes!
Caption: OSAKA CASTLE—
Mayumi: Uoo, I’m sorry, Meat; you take such big troubles on your tiny body for that worthless Prince!!
Referee: Kinnikuman has thirty seconds remaining in his return postponement!
Mariposa: That Kinnikuman, whose consecutively defeated the Devil Choujin and Perfect Choujin, has, of course, reached his wit’s end facing the power of a God.
Mixer: Hi—hihihi—
VTR: Uh.

52.
VTR: Uooo
Mixer: What’s wrong, Mister VTR!?
VTR: I can’t find him. Though I had clearly seen Kinnikuman, wandering around in the Choujin Graveyard until earlier, now I frankly can’t find him!!
Mariposa: What—
Mixer: So then, Kinnikuman has escaped from the Choujin Graveyard, said to have greater difficulty of escape than even a the 4th dimension or a black hole—
Suguru: Well, I finally can see the return gate to the real world.
(TN: Strangely, Suguru refers to “seijoukai”, with “seijou” as “normal”, but it works better as “real world”)
Referee: Kinnikuman has ten seconds remaining in his return postponement!
Suguru: Do…don’t hurry me!!

53.
Mixer: Alright, if he comes, then he comes. I’ll send him right back to the Choujin Graveyard with my Power Separator!!
Referee: 6, 5
Referee: 4
VTR: Ugya—my body is burning up—
Mariposa: Mixer Taitei, the return gate Kinnikuman’s return gate to the real world isn’t in the sky.
Mixer: What?
VTR: GYAAA
Referee: 2
Mariposa: The Return Gate is…

54.
Mariposa: Mister VTR’s monitor!!
Mixer: Guhe

55.
Meat: Prince, I believed you could do it—
Suguru: I’ve kept you worrying for long, Meat.
Mixer: Fufufu…well aren’t you stylish.
Mixer: It would be better if you stayed fixed in the Choujin Graveyard----!!
Suguru: You left this out.
Mixer: Uh.

56.
Suguru: Until now, my hand has been someone who always gains strength like this when my own situation becomes unfavorable against evil Choujin who capture me---!!
Announcer: Kinnikuman is going into a Kinniku Driver—
Mixer: Hehehe…I can really make this utterance with matching self-confidence…
Mixer: I’m going to try to defeat your Kinniku Driver, your ultimate special technique until now, with proof!!
Announcer: Somehow, Mixer Taitei has announced he’ll defeat Kinnikuman’s Kinniku Driver, which has crushed formidable enemies including Ashuraman, Akuma Shogun and the Hell Missionaries---!!

57.
Suguru: Kuuu…insulting my special technique was…fine then. I’ll take your challenge!!
Suguru: Kinniku Driver—
Announcer: Kinnikuman is performing the Kinniku Driver, taking Mixer Taitei’s challenge----!!
Suguru: Ge
Announcer: What’s going on? The falling speed of the Kinniku Driver doesn’t have its usual force!!

58.
Suguru: My commencing timing is constant as always and yet…
Mixer: The technique called Kinniku Driver is a special technique that shows its initial power by adding your Burning Inner Strength to your 950 Thousand Power!! However, the Burning Inner Strength that is the current source of power from your body has been extinguished!
Meat: R…right: at the moment he took the Power Separator, the Burning Inner Strength was confined to the Great Temple of Evil in heaven…
Suguru: Wh…what are you saying? You may have stolen some of my Burning Inner Strength, yet my 950 Thousand Power will fully turn this around and the same will occur when your body crashes into the canvas!!
Mixer: Well, whether it really comes to that or not, you shouldn’t be predicting.

59.
VTR: I…I see here it’s my turn…
VTR: Situation Prediction Apparatus On!
VTR: Whatever I capture in the lens of this apparatus can look at the procession of every situation many times. In short: by watching the Kinniku Driver in my lens, I can devise a realization in advance on what situation will win this for Mixer Taitei.

60.
VTR: Well then, it’s as Kinnikuman said: even with 950 Thousand Power, he’ll have enough destructive power to KO Mixer Taitei.
Suguru: Uhyahya, so you see? My Kinniku Driver is a technique that hides plenty of destructive power, even if it can’t rely on Burning Inner Strength----!!
VTR: Well, Kinnikuman, I wasn’t going to say this to you but
VTR: This Situation Prediction Apparatus also has an editing function…
VTR: With this, if I take this frame of film at the moment of the explosion of your technique

61.
VTR: And cut it out with these scissors…
VTR: Then the scene where you crash Mixer Taitei into the canvas with the Kinniku Driver won’t come to occur, even if that scene is in reality……
VTR: Wi…with this…I’m free
VTR: To die…
Meat: Don’t do it, Prince! Stop your Kinniku Driver---!!
Suguru: Die---!!

62.
Announcer: Well, one of the evils in this world has disappeared again due to Kinnikuman’s Kinniku Driver---!!
Announcer: Evil survived----!!

63.
Mixer: Ha—ha—ha—defeating a Kinnikuman without Burning Inner Strength is easier than taking candy from a baby---!!
(TN: Mixer Taitei actually makes a comment here of “akago no te wo hineru yori mo tayasui”, which actually is “easier than twisting the hand of a baby”, but since that really doesn’t have any meaning in English, I went with the easier to understand “taking candy from a baby” with a similar feel)
Suguru: I…I really thought that it…it would end with the Ki…Kinniku Driver.
Announcer: Kinnikuman, the advance guard of Team Kinnikuman, has failed to get a third-straight victory from the effect of the damage of his previous two fights—
Narrator: At that moment, Terryman hurried straight to Japan so he could save Team Kinnikuman.
Terry: …………!
Suguru: Well…I should have replaced these shoelaces with a new pair!!
(TN: The breaking of shoelaces is considered a bad omen in Japanese culture)

64.
Voice: The breaking of your shoelaces is proof of a catastrophe………..
Terry: Robin Mask!!
Robin: Somehow you’re here for the same purpose too.
Terry: Somehow something has happened to Kinnikuman. Let’s hurry ahead!!
Robin: Right!!
Suguru: And…I had returned to the real world after all the trouble Warsman made in sacrificing his own life…
Meat: I think Warsman-san didn’t say he wished for you to win. I think he was happy just in you being alive. Well, you should please lie down.
Mixer: Well, it’s Short Stuff’s turn!!

65.
Suguru: Meat, you should look at this…
Meat: Somehow, it seems that this thing is like a screw but…
Suguru: Right: this is one of the screws from the pivot of Mixer Taitei. I took out this one during my match earlier.
Suguru: Fine then: with one good blow, you have to present a shock to the back of his head. If you can do that, you should have a chance to break his body apart.
Meat: One blow. Just one blow…
Announcer: The General of Team Kinnikuman, Alexandria Meat, enter the ring!!
Meat: Right!!

66.
(SCRAMBLE FOR THE KINNIKU THRONE ARC)
SPECIAL VTR IX
KINNIKUMAN IN THE CHOUJIN GRAVEYARD

TN: I'd like to take this opportunity to once again go over the bizarre and insane...and extremely powerful nature of the Choujin that is...Mister VTR. He may be dead now (well finally), but considering everything he's done...and all the potential he had, he screwed with things rather often in strange and amusing ways during his time in the series. And yet, now on top of all we already knew about VTR in his own fight, the last couple had proven he's even more sick than previously realized:
-First of all, I'm trying to figure out how the heck he was able to view things in the Choujin Graveyard...without any piece of himself there! Maybe he had some weird tracer on Suguru he placed on him...but that would be ludicrous. But then it came to me: considering that the series itself is filmed on "Special VTRs" that we see clips of at the end of many chapters, I realized...he can view any VTR in this world! Maybe not "control" them directly but just use them to allow himself to keep track of a particular target in a particular area, maybe even as spy satellites to himself. Though the funny thing: thanks to him viewing the Choujin Graveyard...Suguru was able to pull the chest-bursting scene from "Alien" on him to escape. (so this makes Mister VTR John Hurt...which luckily means he gets to eventually be on "The Storyteller")
-The second...and probably most broken ability (well aside from his pause button) was the very last one he used: the "Situation Prediction Apparatus". First of all, I don't think perse the power allows for him to directly "predict the future" 100%. Moreso, it allows for VTR to calculate the most likely conclusion based on all circumstances...and then merely uses a pair of scissors (no magic super Choujin scissors, just "scissors") to eliminate that option! It's not perfect and personally I say there was a potential that Suguru could have moved from the Kinniku Driver to another technique to destroy Mixer Taitei, but...of course, we needed him gone so it just failed and that's that.

Thinking about how much Mister VTR did in the last few chapters becomes even scarier when you think about it like this: these chapters were written close to 25 years ago. Back then, film manipulation and editing were still based on the usage of matters of manipulating film, using picture slides and such. But if Mister VTR was created today, in this era of Youtube and where anyone and everyone has simple editing programs to make whatever video they want and annihilate reality in their own ways to make a message, who knows how much more broken he would have been! Sort of just want to acknowledge that...thanks to plot concerns, he was defeated...but he is way scarier than people give him credit.

Though it was rather bizarre seeing this chapter as a mere means to have Suguru "come back, then still lose", this has a few weird and dumb moments looking it over. First of all, as I mentioned before, it's rather confirmed now that for the most part the "Burning Inner Strength" on a technique Suguru already used seemed less like him using it as part of the technique and more just an instant burst of strength to finish the opponent off. Compared to some of the more ludicrous usages of the power, this actually makes some sense...but think about it like this: Mixer Taitei has a massive amount of glass constructing his body, so of course he'll be easy to defeat (think Aaroniero in Bleach...maybe not, that was more like defeating a Spooble...yeah, I'll shut it with the Henson references)...well, if VTR didn't screw with probability! (and speaking of that: when will we ever meet a glass-based character who remembers that glass...is a liquid!? And have them reform even after shattering!?) And then there was the "magic removed screw" part...considering Suguru only really had three encounters with Taitei (the first body ram that lead to him in the Power Separator, the slam he did after chest-bursting out of VTR, and the Kinniku Driver), the only time he really could have time to pull it would have probably been the chest-burst...but we don't see it actually happening! We don't see Suguru unscrewing it, we don't see any particular screws come out...it just feels weird! (then again, considering he's glass...yeah, it wouldn't even be needed!)

Oh, there was also the whole matter of Meat's "big moment"...but that is best left for next chapter considering how it better fits there instead of amidst this chapter, which was VTR's final tribute.