Wellp, folks, turns out that 'Jette wasn't quite up to the high-level challenge of fighting three Ayakami simultaneously. Gotta say, I raised an eyebrow at commenters earlier assuming she could do so, as she supposedly beat five of 'em back in vol. 3. Note that A) she didn't prevail over those first five Ayakami, and needed rescuing by Emp; and B) she only stayed alive by evasion and desperate cunning, stringing her foes out so she would only have to deal with one or two of of 'em at a time.

I'm no fan of lazy-ass group fights where the heroine is surrounded on all sides by a horde of enemies who obligingly attack one at a time while the rest of the bad guys stand in the background and vogue furiously like the BG sprites in a Streetfighter II stage. (Hell, even the great and otherwise unimpeachable Donnie Yen choreographed some truly unfortunate "one vs. many" battles in his later movies.)

Note that a fine example of a well-choreo'd "one vs. many" fight would be the Chateau fight from The Matrix Reloaded. The One though he might be, ol' Neo still has to constantly move up and down and back and forth across the environment to avoid getting surrounded. (Let us not speak of the far more overrated Burly Brawl and its painfully awkward, PS2-cut-scene-level CG work.)

Next week, the aftermath of Kozue's defeat is interspersed with two abrupt (if thematically relevant) flashbacks, as Empowered vol.7's aggressively timejumping narrative structure unleashes a final flurry of sudden cutaways!

Today’s Patreon update: Probably another dose of Vintage Con Sketches, from the late-90s/early-2000s era when I was cranking out a ton of ’em.

-Adam Warren