Sui Ishida is continuing to put out some great chapters for his latest manga, Choujin X, as Chapter Six, “Apostasy” centers around a fun action sequence with some excellent artwork and good character development.
After Chapter Five, I figured that the next chapter would start with a flashback explaining how Ely located Tokio and I was right on the money with that because this is exactly how “Apostasy” starts.
We first see Ely walking down a street with a shaded figure talking about her powers.
It’s revealed to have been less than ten days since we last saw Ely in Chapter Two, and whoever this new shaded in character who she had befriended is, she does not seem to be a Choujin based on how she does not sense the powers like Ely does.
It is this Choujin homing beacon that draws Ely to Tokio’s side, where she immediately accesses the situation before trying to save Tokio by using her smoke powers to blast off with him, away from Nari.
Unfortunately, still being pretty new to her powers, Ely cannot get them far and Nari quickly catches up, wondering if Ely is Sandaq’s trainee before launcing another attack at her.
Ely is ready though and, after a tense moment where her power temporarily seems to fail, she manages to blow a blast right at Nari, engulfing her head in flames.
However, this does not put Nari down because she has one more big trick up her sleeve: Full Bestifcation.
With these words, Nari transforms into a giant snake in a fantastic panel, which Ishida actually colours in with a red background, potentially highlighting Nari’s deadly personality.
In this form, she easily defeats Ely but at a cost because it is explained that in this form she is way dumber than she usually would be.
This results in her getting stuck in the cage to a monkey enclosure, giving Tokio enough time to react now that Ely is too injured to fight anymore.
So, what does our hero do?
Well, wonder what Azuma would do, of course!
It’s what Tokio always does when he gets in dangerous situations and it’s no different here, however, this may actually be the start of him breaking away from this mindset.
One reddit breakdown of the chapter I saw speculates that the title “First Apostasy” hints at the beginning of many instances of Tokio moving away from Azuma.
This seems to be the case in the chapter as well because, after Ely tells Tokio to run, he instead looks up at the sky and sees a vulture, apparently causing him to come to some inner realization.
Not only does this moment show him going from thinking about what Azuma would do, to making his own decisions, but it is also another instance of great artwork from Ishida, as the vulture panel is coloured green, much like Nari’s was coloured red, potentially hinting at Tokio’s cautious personality.
Well, Tokio quickly throws this caution to the wind because, as Nari finally breaks free, Tokio makes his own effort to unlock his Choujin powers, trying to go Full Bestification in another really good cliffhanger panel.
So, next chapter we are most likely going to see what Tokio looks like in his full beastial Choujin mode.
It seems likely that he will look similar to the vulture monster we saw in the first panel of the story.
Another thing that will be interesting to see is if transforming will make him less intelligent, like Nari.
Speaking of, could this lessening intelligence for Nari be something similar to how the Johnny character went crazy after he became a Choujin?
Maybe it has a different mental effects on people.
Either way, I am excited to read Chapter Seven when we get it and see just how far Tokio will go with this new transformation.