HunterXHunter 318 began with a rather mawkish embellishment on last week’s excellent chapter, which I felt was unneeded and detracted from, rather than enhanced, the powerful idea.

Naruto 557 featured a ninja art that involved making a clone blow up to a huge cloud of water vapour with a face. Luckily, Gaara could protect everyone with a huge stand statue looking like a loved one. Kishimoto is too far gone now to know what is cool and what is totally lame. Or so it would seem.

No One Piece this week, so I caught up on a little bit of Fairy Tail – I’m still on vol 24, as I haven’t been keeping up for months, but the end of the Edolas arc is full of great emotional moments. I love Natsu’s instant willingness to play the villain for the sake of another. Great end for Mistgun, too. I should get back to watching the anime…

It was also the cheapest way to have an emotional scene of characters reunited with a sister they thought dead (AND a tearful goodbye) I can really think of, yet somehow it worked.

On the other hand…’We needed to give the mission of hunting dragonslayers for “cover”’ was a bit far-fetched…

One Piece 639: not a highlight of recent years, but setting up some very nice fights for the upcoming chapters. This arc has been a bit anticlimactic, but it’s getting somewhere now, and already there are some hints at what comes later.

HunterXHunter 316…showed me I’ve been underestimating Togashi. Finally we see the major characters…albeit Gon only in shadow. And it’s obvious that he actually has planned all this out and isn’t just cruising along to bring the arc to an awkward, rushed end. He’s got some good things planned and the Reina twist was done deftly. I just want there to be some more chapters so that Gon gets some closure with his father. Without him being shoehorned into this arc. Oh, and Kurapika and Leorio back, too.

Naruto 555 was typical Kishimoto disappointment. He tries the shounen conceit of some clever trick working to beat an impossible opponent, but it’s such a stupid trick and so easily-done that it feels like an unimportant piece of padding.