FB (written on Halloween): “Trick or treat! The trick is when we threaten even more of your civil liberties, and the treat is when we don’t! Or is that the other way around? Do you like our costumes? [cracks knuckles] SURELY you mean to say you like our costumes.”

My original last line for Taro here was “What about MY feelings?”, which is arguably funnier but a little out of context here. As it is, Taro seems to be saying HE might contest Iwatani’s claim, which is obviously…just more bluster from a kid who’s full of brag, nothing to…

A’ight, I’m just gonna spoil this scene, okay? If you’re a first-time reader and you somehow haven’t guessed already where this is heading, check back in a couple days.

So, yeah, the most important detail here is that everyone has at least sipped their orange juice except Taro. It’s a little ambiguous whether Misa (Taro’s sister) is actually sipping hers in the last panel there, and that, combined with her suspicion of him on the next page, led some readers to hope she might survive the next few minutes. There’d maybe be some precedent for that, since she was introduced as the kid too smart to fall into the trap with all the other kidnapped kids. Still, it’d feel a little deus ex for her to suddenly appear on the scene and match wits with Taro, and if she’s not his intellectual equal, then she wouldn’t have a lot to do.