Thursday 13 October 2011

Jump manga day!

HunterxHunter 320 had a lot of treats for fans – many, many old faces from the beginning of the manga, even including Hanzo and Biscuit. Kurapika at least got a mention, though poor Leorio is nowhere to be seen – and I’m betting there’ll be a big reveal with him soon. I have to wonder if this is partly to entice new fans in the wake of the anime starting, but either way I’m happy to see it. What I didn’t expect was for Gin to be such a funny, carefree character (despite it being in large part an act), or for Hisoka to be centre-stage for a while, which was fun. Plus now we finally get to the last Zoaldyck brother.

One Piece 642 wasn’t a particularly strong chapter, showing some of the revamped fighting skills of the straw hats but mostly reusing jokes and not taking the plot much further.

Naruto 559 brought with it a bit of a twist that invites a lot of speculation, but I can’t help but feel the solution it brings will be a let-down. We’ll see. Some interesting art this week, thanks largely to Sai’s rather stupid power, but I have to say the idea that Naruto swans in and the tide of the whole war turns is quite annoying.

Bakuman 150 (last week’s chapter, I think) benefited from last week’s arc climax, even if it was a weak end to a weak story, but was a strong chapter because of a background character with gravitas taking the time to talk with the various characters. It had a nice balance of character humour and drama, so worked well.

Sunday 9 October 2011

Deadman Wonderland 48: a long chapter with an unneeded flashback that really brought no depth to some very obvious characters. Nice double-page spreads, though, and I did care what happened to Crow.

Fairy Tail vol 27: this new arc is short on originality, but I’m enjoying it a lot. Juvia remains my favourite character by far.

Wednesday 5 October 2011

Jump this week was treading water a little, with no pun intended for the One Piece storyline. Maybe HunterXHunter will be better when it’s released by scanslators.

One Piece 641 was an action chapter in which very little happened – Luffy tried to get near to the huge arc, Noah, but Hodi got in the way. He also destroyed the air bubble around it, and then it got put back again. So not a lot happened until the very last page, where we were promised a revelation next time.

Naruto 558 annoyed me – it was supposed to be a great, uplifting chapter where Naruto’s many clones come to the rescue in various places, but it irritates me that suddenly everyone seems so useless – and the humour fell flat.

(later)HunterXHunter 319 was a light chapter – it’s refreshing to be reminded how funny Togashi can be. I’m not sure it’s the right time, though, and several of the Zodiac are nothing like as cool as they looked in the last chapter, but I’m glad we’ll have more focus on Gin, and hopefully we’ll soon be back seeing our main characters and how they’re faring.