Maria no Danzai - Vol. 5 Ch. 39 - Devouring Mercy

[Zejfi]

I think the manga will end in three chapters.
At least that's what I would do in this situation. You don't have to agree but I would end it this way:
ch 40 - Maria defuses the bomb only to find out it was fake, the chapter ends with Okaya approaching her and calling her by her real name.
ch 41 - Okaya gives the stereotypical "I knew from the begining, so I had to outsmart you" speech to which Maria replies with something along the lines of: "You can't outsmart the justice" and stabs him with the wire cutters. Why? Because he wouldn't anticipate her killing him in front of everyone but she has nothing to lose now.
ch 42 - Maria gets arrested, confesses to killing the other four teens (yes, she covers for Yuda) and gets death sentence. Time skip. Maria's execution. Among people watching it there is her husband but also Akiji. Someone from the audience (police chief?) calls her a monster before the deed is done. After the execution, a rookie cop comes to the husband and says something along the lines: "She wasn't a monster. She saved my life. It's a debt I will definitely repay", then he looks at Akiji (yes, it's Yuda). The end.

 

[RamenRider]

This guy is kinda stupid, since if she gets revealed, the jig is also up for him for doing a terrorist attack. She has way more dirt on him than he has on her if she saves any evidence.

 

[animan095]

It got axed huh?

 

[Keplite]

what the fuck is happening lmao

 

[vanCham]

Yes please. Kill the smug fucker and make sure the pacing stays nice instead of ending up a dragged-out story like too many others.

 

[arielsawesome]

she could have just forced an evacuation despite the principal's objections to begin with by pulling a fire alarm rather than risk entering further into a trap that she knows the bad guy has laid out for her.
Sensible strategy would be to choose battle on her terms rather than accept the enemy's prepared plans and trying to outdo him on the fly with no preparation.

bad writing. she wouldn't be this arrogant and foolhardy and ill-prepared earlier.

Pretty sure she'd be quietly fired afterwards.

 

[arielsawesome]

I bet he just ran to bluff having a real bomb.

 

[WanRa]

she could have just forced an evacuation despite the principal's objections to begin with by pulling a fire alarm rather than risk entering further into a trap that she knows the bad guy has laid out for her.
Sensible strategy would be to choose battle on her terms rather than accept the enemy's prepared plans and trying to outdo him on the fly with no preparation.

bad writing. she wouldn't be this arrogant and foolhardy and ill-prepared earlier.

Oyaka would simply make the bomb explode early.
To him it's a game, and everyone else is nothing more than an NPC.

 

[danbellucci]

Oyaka would simply make the bomb explode early.
To him it's a game, and everyone else is nothing more than an NPC.

If he has the ability to detonate the bombs remotely at will then she doesn't have the ability to stop him by attempting defusing the bomb by hand anyway. If he has the ability to detonate teh bombs remotely at will then she chances of defeating him by running to defuse the bomb in person are even less likely to succeed so she has even more reason not to engage . she should expect that this trap was set up by him for her so there's a decent chance that if the trap fails to lure in maria entirely then then he won't have reason to go through with bombing the school since that is unlikely to be a desired outcome for him.
yeah he might bomb the school anyway but if that;s his intent than maria should know that she most likely lacks the ability to stop him since he planned for this and he'd be aware of most of her abilities and worst-case scenarios.

 

[pureexe]

This is wild. She comes from an ordinary housewife in the first ch., and now she is defusing the bomb?!

 

[KazeFenrir]

A fucking bomb? Taking entire student body hostage? This shit jumped the shark so hard

Shits been escalating to a rediculous level after they tried to rob the cop.
Okaya has become fucking Hannibal Lector out of nowhere. Dude was shit stomping a nerd at school last year. I'm supposed to believe this dude has is at a level of bomb making and House level manipulation?
Okay, sure.

 

[KazeFenrir]

Pretty sure she'd be quietly fired afterwards.

Who cares? She's not there for the job. The job itself was to get close to Okaya and do peotic justice revenge. She could've killed every one of these kids from the shadows and been fine. That's why she says at the end there "nows not the time for revenge, it's time to kill Okaya".

To her this was a game to get satisfaction from while killing her childs murderers. For Okaya this is a stimulating fun project because he's bored and hasn't been challenged. Realistically he could've just assumed she is who she is and gone directly for her in the same way.

The writer is trying basically mirror that they're both arrogant sadists that let personal feelings get in the way of completing the task. The issue for me is that Maria basically has nothing to lose by not playing the game, whereas Okaya is specifically focusing on getting her to reveal who she is. I assume he has some kind of dirt that proves she murdered the other kids?

Otherwise he's doing that thing all high school manga villains do. They forget they're fucking school kids and real people with real issues WILL crashout on you.

 

[Joe17mama]

So Maria decides to choose to unexpected 3rd choice between entering in the right answer (thus revealing her identity) and letting a bunch of school kids die in the ensuing explosion (unless the bomb is fake) - to diffuse the bomb. She must've acquired bomb defusal skills as a part of her quasi-military training she must've undertook to accomplish her revenge. A little over-the-top, but considering she also used a thermobaric flour explosion trap to incapacitate the blond jock bully (kumigasawa or whatever his name was), it's within the realm of things she must've learned, so it's fine.

Diffusing the bomb still reveals quite a bit about her still, now Okaya nows she has skills unbecoming of a school nurse and this practically means her identity as the true culprit behind the murders is revealed.

She did say that the time for revenge is over, meaning she's unwilling to sacrifice or further endanger these kids to Okaya's plans (since he's shown he won't hesitate to put the enitr student body in danger for his plans) in a true motherly fashion (Maria is a mother first at heart), thus forgoing her desire for a long, drawn-out, and painful revenge against Okaya to simply settling for killing him and ending her mission to avenge her dead Kiri-kun. I do think it will be rather hard though, since she no longer has her ability to methodically plan and trap her victims this time, so she will have to improvise on the fly against Okaya on his own battleground.

I don't think she will succeed this time. It will probably be the first time her target(s) manage to get away from her assassination attempt, and this little school bombing arc will end with Maria true identity revealed to Okaya, thus making Maria fully lose her element of surprise in all future attacks/events, leveling the playing field between them (at least it would, if not for the fact that Okaya controls the entire police department, which is BS).