Muryoku Seijo to Munou Oujo ~Maryoku Zero de Shoukansareta Seijo no Isekai Kyuukokuki~ - Ch. 14 - Hidden Feelings

[KURENAIS]

PEAK
i love girls that love girls

 

[holicastral]

It's not about being merciful to Babalus. Once proven guilty she deserves punishment. Losing her post and jail time, I'd say. Execution would be too much imo.

It's about what @CannibalShinobi said, that torture creates false confessions. Torture someone enough and they'll start telling you what they think you want to hear, just to make the torture stop. And if you bring someone in for questioning, torture them, and they end up not being involved? That person and all their friends now hate your filthy guts. The better way is to ask questions over, and over, and over, see where the story changes, check their story against the facts, etc. If you have multiple suspects get them to tell the same story and see where the differences are. A lie will show cracks eventually. Interrogation > Torture.

But the second point is that Torture causes blowback. The US torture program under President Bush did not find many terrorists. But it did piss off the entire region and create more terrorism. It was counterproductive.

so basically only torture them if you already made sure they are guilty of it and you want them to confess? idk i think this might be a better way to use it...

oh well i guess torture is just a tool for intimidation

 

[Zhangar]

torture is a effective interrogation method, eventually you will have to open up after so much pain and the risk of death no? you need some monster guts to not fold under that kind of pressure and that woman was not the case at all

why would she deserve mercy? she fucked up with royalty and a saint and thats a big no no fair or not

To quote 1984, "torture is for the sake of torture."

Torture is great for making someone say what you want them to, but getting anything true and useful out of it is a "happy" accident.

Do you want a confession, or do you want the truth?

Edit: I started this post, got distracted for two hours, and then finished after you'd already been dog-piled. Oops.

 

[Manga_Is_Life777]

https://imgur.com/yqDnoq7

 

[holicastral]

To quote 1984, "torture is for the sake of torture."

Torture is great for making someone say what you want them to, but getting anything true and useful out of it is a "happy" accident.

Do you want a confession, or do you want the truth?

Edit: I started this post, got distracted for two hours, and then finished after you'd already been dog-piled. Oops.

all i needed was information not a dogpile : (

 

[nnnn20430]

Sesbian Lex really is the solution to everything in this world lol

The perfect world

 

[Kindablue]

Damn Alice waterboarded her. I want to say how unlikable that makes Alice. Torture isn't the most effective method of interrogation. You think they could have used some magical macguffin truth stone or something, if they needed to handwave Babulus into a confession. Instead we get brutality.

I blame how all the war movies these days feature hardened, sociopathic special ops types who don't care about the rules, who only see 'enemies.' It glorifies torture or violence in the hands of "good guys" while ignoring all the bad will and blowback that it's caused in reality.

Guessing this is more inspired by Chinese period dramas where characters get carted off to the dungeons to be tortured and executed for the slightest offense, and not like Zero Dark Thirty or something. This sort of thing isn't against the rules of almost any pre-modern society, it is the rule. That's why Daichi was the only one shocked by the torture scene.

 

[UdenEmpati]

Guessing this is more inspired by Chinese period dramas where characters get carted off to the dungeons to be tortured and executed for the slightest offense, and not like Zero Dark Thirty or something. This sort of thing isn't against the rules of almost any pre-modern society, it is the rule. That's why Daichi was the only one shocked by the torture scene.

yeah - that's the thing, this setting isn't exactly one of modern day contemporary society. It's still feudal, for one thing, and whilst technology isn't the end-all/be-all barometer for "all things civilization", the fact they don't have anything resembling industrialization makes me think we're meant to interpret their society as from before that period of our own world.

And, I'm assuming it was meant to be a dramatic moment; torture absolutely ups the stakes of a scenario, and there's also the fact that someone of the direct royal line was attacked by a hijacked saint's magic. Emotions are running high in everyone, and I can at least understand some amount of vindictiveness coming out against the person believed to be responsible.

Plus, there's nothing saying that nothing is going to come on Alice's "interrogation methods" against Babulus. Maybe this is treated as a matter of course, or maybe Daichi ends up reflecting further on it, brings it up with Eldora and Luliam and Nana, and something ends up being done about it down the line.

 

[outinthegardener]

@UdenEmpati I'd say it's a spectacular mediated image of a feudal society, not a dry historical recreation of one (Shoutout Guy DeBord!). It's tough for a modern audience to see a depiction of a feudal society without assumptions, misunderstandings, projections, or ignorant authorial intent. Heck, it's tough for two contemporary societies to view the other without those flaws. I don't want to see a fictional society and go "Oh, Medieval technology, they must be cool with torture." That would flatten the variety of medieval/feudal societies, some of which liked torture more than others. Or even modern societies, which still sometimes use torture.

@Kindablue Brings up an interesting point that this could be inspired by Chinese historical dramas, rather than post 2000's military propoganda films (Kudos for the Zero-dark-thirty call out, I was thinking of exactly that movie when I made my original post). But for me, who has lived in a western country, references to Chinese media culture flew way over my head; instead I am culturally attuned to the "is waterboarding bad?" debates during the failed war on terror. Just as I wrote about in the above paragraph- It's tough to depict a different culture without the reader's perspective coloring outside the lines.

No, the point is that even if this is a torture-approving society, I the reader knows that torture is a shit way to get confessions. And that makes me think that Alice is either ignorant of this fact, or she has a cruel side.

I think UdenEmpati does make a good point that the torture scene could have ramifications, or have been used to ratchet tension. If the latter, I don't think it has much impact on the story events. The plot is working to build up Eldora's tsundere personality by showing she's been under a ton of pressure from people like Babalus. I think the dramatic backstory was tension enough, and adding Bab Drowning didn't enhance Eldora's arc. It says more about Alice than it does Eldora. Even if Eldora wakes up and has to reckon with Babalus's betrayal, the story won't benefit if it's betrayal AND torture. Eldora will feel bad already. No torture needed. You could have accomplished everything with locking Bab up in the dungeon and giving her truth serum.

 

[UdenEmpati]

@UdenEmpati I'd say it's a spectacular mediated image of a feudal society, not a dry historical recreation of one (Shoutout Guy DeBord!). It's tough for a modern audience to see a depiction of a feudal society without assumptions, misunderstandings, projections, or ignorant authorial intent. Heck, it's tough for two contemporary societies to view the other without those flaws. I don't want to see a fictional society and go "Oh, Medieval technology, they must be cool with torture." That would flatten the variety of medieval/feudal societies, some of which liked torture more than others. Or even modern societies, which still sometimes use torture.

@Kindablue Brings up an interesting point that this could be inspired by Chinese historical dramas, rather than post 2000's military propoganda films (Kudos for the Zero-dark-thirty call out, I was thinking of exactly that movie when I made my original post). But for me, who has lived in a western country, references to Chinese media culture flew way over my head; instead I am culturally attuned to the "is waterboarding bad?" debates during the failed war on terror. Just as I wrote about in the above paragraph- It's tough to depict a different culture without the reader's perspective coloring outside the lines.

No, the point is that even if this is a torture-approving society, I the reader knows that torture is a shit way to get confessions. And that makes me think that Alice is either ignorant of this fact, or she has a cruel side.

I think UdenEmpati does make a good point that the torture scene could have ramifications, or have been used to ratchet tension. If the latter, I don't think it has much impact on the story events. The plot is working to build up Eldora's tsundere personality by showing she's been under a ton of pressure from people like Babalus. I think the dramatic backstory was tension enough, and adding Bab Drowning didn't enhance Eldora's arc. It says more about Alice than it does Eldora. Even if Eldora wakes up and has to reckon with Babalus's betrayal, the story won't benefit if it's betrayal AND torture. Eldora will feel bad already. No torture needed. You could have accomplished everything with locking Bab up in the dungeon and giving her truth serum.

thinking about it a bit more, I went back to chapters 8-10 or so; when Nana, Luliam, and Alice were at the village of Kologne and Luliam was abducted by that miasma-wielding woman.

Going back, we get an entire chapter on Alice Nash and her backstory, in the middle of her having a confrontation with Nana, and then with her and Nana going and saving Luliam. In that flashback, we see that Alice was nearly a nepo-baby due to the skill & renown of her parents, and she had immense pressure put upon her to succeed her own name and be even better than her forebears. She effectively gave up everything and put all of herself into her training, but ultimately she was powerless to protect her comrades in the face of growing monster threats and the miasma, which lead to the summoning of Daichi and Nana.
She had a moment where Nana was being self-deprecating, and Alice yelled at her - but after the flashback episode/explanation, Nana understood more, and reaffirmed her resolve - it in the aftermath of a magically-boosted Alice defeating a ton of monsters on her own, she took a renewed vow to protect Luliam and Nana in chapter 10.

So in light of that - I wonder if maybe we are meant to see Alice as going "further than necessary" in this chapter with the torture interrogation of Babulus. Alice has been shown to have a rather intimate hatred for miasma, given it took the lives of multiple people she cared about prior to the Summoning. She has great affinity for Nana (I know I saw at least a couple comments after the Kologne arc about "Ohhh maybe Alice will get with Nana too?" so even as a niche crack-ship, some people picked up on the amount of respect & admiration and devotion she has for Nana).
Given Nana was also gravely hurt in this ritual, I could see an argument that Alice is reacting emotionally to what happened, and is taking it out on Babulus. She saw the mage with the miasma-filled staff, and even though she was suspicious, she let Babulus go; she might blame herself for letting Nana get hurt again, and from miasma, no less.

If my thinking is correct, we might actually see something come from this. It doesn't look like anyone else in that room is reacting to what Alice is doing to Babulus; there's Alice, two other guards, and then Miko who had come to fetch Daichi and Luliam. We see Miko's face on p.14, downturned and in shadow with a grim expression/demeanor; there's a chance it's in reaction to what Babulus is saying, but it could also be just in response to the situation.
But Alice is also super intense, right from when she confronts Babulus and through the entire interrogation sequence. She's had that sort of intensity to her before, in terms of the way her face is drawn; and it was during chapters 8-10, when she was confronted with her dying comrades while she was powerless to protect them, and again when facing down that Demonic-ish Woman when Hannah and Luliam were abducted in Kologne.

Basically, there's every chance it's meant for dramatic, flashy effect - but there is some precedent that this is Alice going "too far" because of her emotional stakes in the situation. She vowed to protect Nana, and Nana got severely hurt, when she could have potentially circumvented it happening in the first place if she'd acted on her gut earlier. Now she's taking it out on Babulus, and maybe this is signalling that Alice has an upcoming arc where she has to confront this manner of acting from her.

 

[Alikruik]

This was not a good chapter for Luliam, both her sister and her lover are cursed.

Hopefully, the same method will work, but it is a little different. Luliam is the princess who can’t use her own magic, not the saintess. Does she just pour her mana in and hope Nana will cure herself while she’s still unconscious?

Then there’s the matter of feelings. Luliam told Daichi more about Eldora to give her that extra boost, but how does that work for the other couple? Does she talk to an unconscious Nana about herself and hope it somehow sinks in? I worry it might be more complicated in this case.

I was thinking the same thing, because how much has Nana told her about herself. Also Daichi came to an understanding of Eldoras feelings towards her while Luliam is still unsure

 

[wlftchtr82]

"so kinda like a kiss true love?"
"uhh, not exactly"
and then she does it anyway lol

Watch her tsundere ass pretend she was trying to do some magic mouth-to-mouth and definitely not some true love’s kiss like Sleeping Beauty or Snow White.

“Your universe doesn’t have CPR?”

 

[lowarctic]

tired trope:

tired trope yuri:

 

[yanderecoverl]

No way the 2nd couple was true. Can't wait for embarrassing parts from them

 

[MathMols]

If Disney ever taught us anything it is that sexually assaulting a sleeping girl always works

 

[Otaku_D_Gamer]

Peak Yuri is back

 

[Hakurei06]

it's less that I thought these people have a concept of the skies and beyond that match our modern understanding of outer space, than that It's not hard for me to believe that people have similar attitudes to academics in fields like astronomy and philosophy than we do now. and that specifically with the iconography of stars and planets in her panel, describing her as a "space case" isn't really much of a stretch. Personally, I'd think it was a neat quirk of magical isekai translation. And who knows, maybe with magic they do have a deeper understanding of outer space than we did at their point in their apparent cultural/technological timeline.