This is another one of those Otoyomegatari chapters that’s an absolute feast of eye candy – scenery, cat, fabric and human – though there’s some plot progression here too to be sure.  At least as long as Inoue Takehiko is on hiatus from Vagabond there’s really no active competition for Mori-sensei as a manga artist in my book – one almost begins to take it for granted at times, but it’s good to step back and really look at these panels, especially in a chapter like this one.  That Mori is able to produce work like this month after month is pretty incredible.

I admit I didn’t (and don’t) know much about Antalya, an ancient port city on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast.  It’s currently the country’s fifth-largest city, but to judge from Talas’ comments about it being much more impressive than Ankara (which today has about four time as many residents) perhaps that wasn’t true a century or more ago.  It makes a wonderful canvas for Mori’s pen, a cityscape of multicultural faces and tall ships (which haven’t been a part of this series, for obvious reasons), ancient plazas and buildings, and of course the cats.  Being a port city Antalya is overrun with cats, for reasons Mr. Smith explains to Talas (who for obvious reasons, knows little of the ways of ports).

I have to say the interplay between these two is pretty damn cute, especially when Smith keeps going off on academic tangents and then catching himself in embarrassment.  Thing is, I don’t believe Talas says she’s interested just to spare Henry’s feelings (though I think she would if she needed to) – she genuinely is interested.  She’s possessed of a keen mind and hasn’t had much chance to exercise it, and she’s lucked into a relationship with a man who respects her right to think for herself.  Surely it’s Smith’s curiosity and intellect, almost if not quite as much as his kindness, that’s caused Talas to come to love him.

One interesting incident in the city comes when Talas spots a “Turkish swing” – basically what appears to be a large log suspended by two ropes and used as a kind of aerial teeter-totter.  The depiction of the two of them on it (I’ve come to think of it as Mr. Smith’s wild ride) is certainly stunning, especially when Mori depicts what Henry is seeing in his mind’s eye.  But I was immediately suspicious when one of the men in charge suggested he hold Henry’s bag while he and Talas rode the swing – he got the bag back, but I hope he checked its contents.

It seemed to me that Ali and Nikovski were unsettled about something and had the party leave Antalya more quickly than planned – I wonder if the swing situation had anything to do with that.  There’s also a scene where a Moroccan merchant offers to buy Talas’ shawl for his (stunning) wife, and she accepts, though the shawl was one she made herself.  I suspect this was here to show Talas’ devotion to Henry and the larger cause rather than material possessions, but I’m not ruling out that this was a more significant event too in some fashion.