WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Choujin X, Chapter 18 by Sui Ishida, Jan Cash and Snir Aharon, available in English now from Viz Media and Manga Plus.
The first few chapters of Sui Ishida's Choujin X introduced a pair of choujin who appeared to be working alongside -- or at least knew -- Nari, the White Snake Choujin who nearly killed Tokio the first time they met. One of the pair, Ririka Umezawa, made her presence known when the last panel of Chapter 17 showed her sitting beside Tokio and Ely with a paper cutout of a dog walking around on the train -- foreshadowing what was to come in Chapter 18.
Compared to the other choujins previously introduced, Umezawa doesn't look all that dangerous. She doesn't transform into a beast like Tokio or a snake like Nari, and her appearance doesn't look half as threatening as her partner who looks like an octopus. Umezama's powers don't allow her to change her body in any way like the Flexi Choujin, Johnny. But as always, it's the quiet and unassuming ones everyone has to watch out for.
At the Hishizume Festival, Umezawa makes her move at a rapid fire pace. The first hint of her presence came in a flurry of innocuous-looking cutout paper dogs. Ishida makes great use of dramatic irony here; while Choujin X readers know what those paper dogs mean, Tokio doesn't. He has little time to process the situation before he gets stabbed by knives, which are drawn in a way that makes it clear these are cutouts as well.
The tension gets hiked up further when Tokio collapses and starts bleeding, shocking readers that those weren't just some harmless paper knives. Umezawa's ability is called Papermoon (October Queen), which allows her to cut out shapes from paper -- but they possess the same qualities of the objects she's cutting out. The paper knives, the gigantic pair of scissors and the bundle of dynamite sticks are all very real and can kill. Her powers extend beyond that as well. She can use paper airplanes to fly and is even able to turn herself as thin as a paper, making her an extremely light, agile, flexible and formidable opponent.
Previously in Chapter 17, Tokio had been a less than effective hero when he was turned into a package by the Package Choujin. There had been doubts around where he would ever become the type of hero he yearns to be, but Tokio displays a remarkable show of heroics here. He blocks off Umezawa's scissors attack and uses his own body to act as a cover when the dynamite sticks detonate, allowing him to save a train full of people.
Even though Ely has a better handle on her powers compared to Tokio, she's still no match for Umezawa who quickly immobilizes her with a single kick to her eye. All the Kirigami Choujin wants is Tokio. In a hilariously sad parallel to Chapter 17, Umezawa folds the unconscious Tokio up in a neat and tidy envelope, showing only his tie and tucking it into her dress before meeting up with her partner.
When Tokio wakes up, he finds himself in a room with the tentacle choujin Ricardo. Having just been kidnapped, he's understandably tense. But the interactions between the two are surprisingly the opposite as Ricardo offers Tokio pizza after hearing his stomach growl.
Although he witnessed Umezawa attempt to murder a train full of people, talking with Ricardo puts Tokio into an unsettling mood to the point where he questions whether Ricardo and Umezawa are the bad guys. Granted, not much is known about either of them or the organization they're working for, but Tokio's moment of hesitancy could be a hint that there's more than meets the eye in Choujin X -- at least for Ricardo and Umezawa.
