Chapter 12: Main Round

Main Round is the twelfth chapter of the Splatoon manga. It was first released on 2017-06-15.

Plot
The opening ceremony of the Square King Cup starts, and the real competition is about to begin. Notable Inklings participating are the Blue Team, Gloves' Team, Yellow-Green Team, the S4 Teams, and Team Emperor. In the first round, Gloves' Team are up against the Retro Gamer Team in Block A, while the Yellow-Green Team are up against the School Cardigan Team in Block B.

The manga starts with Goggles and the rest of the Blue Team cheering as they are in the real tournament, only for Goggles to ask what is next, and Specs scolds him, but he too does not know either. Gloves then brings them over to Starfish Mainstage, where the opening ceremony is held. The Inkling girl announcer from the last issue is explaining the tournament system, which is in a knockout-style among the champions of the preliminaries. A crowd of Inklings then notices the group, which Specs think is for them, but they noticed Gloves, making Specs jealous. The crowd then sees Rider and Skull, who are known for being ranked S+. Goggles happily greets them by pulling both of their pants down, which the crowd is shocked and impressed on how he could get the drop on them, and then see him get beat up by the two S+ rankers, the crowd soon reaches a consensus that Goggles is just an idiot. Goggles notices it is only Skull's Team and Rider's team, and he asks Skull if the other S4s are here, to which Skull replies "who knows." Emperor soon arrives on the stage and congratulates the audience in winning the preliminaries, and tells them to strive harder so they can fight him in the tournament. Specs sees that Goggles is ridiculously relaxed by sitting and eating, unlike everyone else, which has Emperor notice him and the others yelling at Goggles. The Announcer then says that the first round will be Team Gloves vs. Team Retro Gamer and Team Yellow-Green vs. Team School Cardigan. Both Rider and Gloves are determined to win, which has both of them argue, with Headphones seeing that their personalities do not mesh together as they both say the same thing. Goggles finds out that their battles are on two different stages, and tries to watch one while streaming the other one on his phone, which has Headphones propose for them to split up with Bobble Hat and Specs watching Gloves' fight and Goggles and Headphones watching Rider's fight.

Their Turf Wars start with Gloves telling his team to win in a cool way, which has the Retro Gamer Team question it and say that they will beat Gloves in a manly way, as well in a rage of Gloves' team having girls on it as they are an all-boys team. Gloves retorts at them, which angers the opposing team more and they start attacking. In Rider's battle, he is against an all-girls team instead. He says that he will not go easy on them, and tries to splat the team, but he stops when the School Cardigan Team is scared of being splatted. Headphones, as well as Rider's teammates, School Uniform and Bamboo, point out his double standard when he did not hesitate to splat Headphones and Bobble Hat and did not ease up when having School Uniform and Bamboo fire Inkstrikes. Goggles keeps on cheering for Rider by waving a giant sign, which Rider tells him to stop doing. While he is distracted, the School Cardigan Team start attacking the Yellow-Green Team, and splat Stealth Goggles, School Uniform, and Bamboo Hat, leaving only Rider left. The scene then has both Rider and Gloves cornered by their respective opponents, and Goggles keeps on cheering for Rider until he waves his sign so hard that he makes a gust of wind ends up blowing off the School Cardigan Team's hair off, which turn out to be wigs, and reveal that they are all boys with the shaved hairstyle, and it was a ploy so they could win, angering Rider immensely. In Gloves' battle, the Retro Gamer Team keep attacking him, but Gloves reveals to them that his whole team covered the whole stage while they were busy chasing him. Both Gloves and Rider splat all of their opponents and both of them are declared the winner in their respective rounds. They soon give a few words of wisdom to their defeated opponents, which leads to the defeated teams chasing them respectively.

As they return to the Blue Team, Rider and Gloves compliment each other on their matches but they soon try to intimidate each other from the chance they meet in a battle. As the Blue Team get ready for their match, Goggles sees that all of the S4 are now in one team.

Characters

 * Team Blue


 * 1) Goggles
 * 2) Bobble Hat
 * 3) Specs
 * 4) Headphones


 * Team Gloves


 * 1) Gloves
 * 2) Half-Rim
 * 3) Clip-Ons
 * 4) Straps


 * Team Yellow-Green


 * 1) Rider
 * 2) Stealth Goggles
 * 3) School Uniform
 * 4) Bamboo Hat


 * Team Retro Gamer


 * 1) Tennis Headband
 * 2) Jogging Headband
 * 3) Squash Headband
 * 4) B-Ball Headband


 * Team School Cardigan


 * 1) School Asymmetry
 * 2) School Short
 * 3) School Bun
 * 4) School Long


 * The S4


 * 1) Skull
 * 2) Army
 * 3) Aloha
 * 4) Mask

Trivia

 * Two stages are featured in this issue. Block A's stage is Musselforge Fitness, while Block B's is Starfish Mainstage.