Jump

One Piece 635 was of course pure fanservice, what the whole arc – indeed, everything since the time skip – has been building up to. The Straw Hats show off their new powers, and of course nothing can stand in their way. Oda as usual knows how to mix the awesome with the absurd in perfect measure, and the result is a payoff that deeply satisfies. Next: the boss.

Naruto 551 slipped, after a few strong chapters from the ailing title. The pacing was all over the place. There are great elements at play here – Naruto more powerful than ever before, the 8-tails and even Itachi, still in action. But the huge beasts and summons have long looked daft in action, Naruto being dumb with what techniques to use fell flat, and as for Itachi giving an explanation, finger raised and all, on the brink of death was funny in all the wrong ways. Anticlimactic.

Rock Lee’s Springtime of Youth 4 remains a guilty pleasure, extremely silly and puerile but brilliant in its way. This time, the humour revolved around kancho, and would no doubt have been even more disturbing if I were not already familiar with the concept. It was exaggerated until funny, though, and Tenten makes an undeniably great tsukkomi.