One Piece 980: As expected, the action gets started with a bang. Zoro was hilarious, telling Luffy off for something while doing the same thing much worse. Some of these minor adversary characters look pretty interesting, and Eustass Kid springing into action with his spectacular ability is always going to be pretty cool to watch. I would have liked to have seen how Luffy would deal with Apoo’s tricky ability without any help, though.

 Agravity Boys 21: Another great chapter. Though it didn’t tie in with the immediately preceding ones at all! Also good for this manga to show that it can be funny even when Chris isn’t at the centre of the story – he appeared here, but mostly to just be the outraged tsukkomi, or straightman character. But somehow this competition of who knows Geralt the best was absolutely hilarious, from the mercurial judging to the random questions from the ‘glasses’ category. And the ending to it was oddly touching. Totally inconsequential, very silly, but extremely entertaining and well-done. This continues to be the best gag manga I’ve read in a very long time. What have I read that’s funnier? Maybe Azumanga Daioh? Yakitate!! Japan?

Boku no Hero Academia 272: Yup, like I said last week, Shigaraki waking up here is going to really bring the action to a head – but it also gives a heavy impression of the series reaching its endgame. Just like Tanjirou and the Hashira and his other comrades clashing with Muzan is clearly where Kimetsu no Yaiba reaches its climax, Midoriya having a big showdown with the empowered form of Shigaraki could be where this title ends. On the other hand, with Midoriya-shounen only just getting to grips with new powers from his One-For-All predecessors and plenty more possible character arcs for the ensemble, we might see the battle end with no clear winner and this could be no more a final showdown than Naruto fighting Orochimaru was. We’ll see. Probably BnhA will continue for a few more years, that’s my gut feeling. At the very least, this story development is a devastating blow for the heroes. Fs in the chat for Crust.

Moriking 5: Yep, just as I thought – a gag manga with ridiculously overblown battles. Man, I’m getting a lot of points in the ‘told you so’ chart this week. Well, it was one or two panels that were overblown, but give it time, it’s clearly going in that direction. I enjoyed Oka’s display of power, and then Moriking’s very silly yet very serious response. This is a neat parody, complete with the wonderfully cheesy post-battle dialogue, but it maybe wasn’t all that inventive or original. I wonder if Oka will be a powerful ally in future?

Time Paradox Ghostwriter 2: Another colour page, eh? Very extravagant! But I feel this was the right way for the drama to go. He gets another copy of Jump from the future – and has to confront the fact that he didn’t come up with the idea in a dream, but totally ripped it off. Now, though, he assumes that because he published the story and it will no longer be possible to publish it in the future, he must be in a divergent timeline and can continue – and yep, the manga has ‘time paradox’ in the title, after all. This is actually very similar to Boku wa Beatles, the quirky little manga I’ve been reading about guys who travel back in time and start releasing Beatles tracks as their own – very similar moral conundrums are raised. Though here I guess we just have to take the word of the characters that the manga in question is that good. Not that many manga, even classic ones, are that good when they first start out, after all. But that’s just what we have to accept for the sake of the story. And already, his misdeeds are catching up with him. I’m interested to see next week’s confrontation. And of course the mangaka whose future work Teppei is ripping off is a real beauty. Of course.

Chainsawman 70: While it’s characteristic of Chainsawman to end things very quickly and simply, and actually a positive of the writing most of the time, I feel a bit short-changed here. Denji wins his fight but it’s largely a pyrrhic victory because this is just one of the many Santa Claus dolls in a vast network. But another of the enemies of the arc comes and sorts out that problem that would be impossible for Denji, and then Makima just has to sort them out. And while I guess it’s possible they’ll survive and return, that’s not really the Chainsawman style. While I did love the way Santa Claus was dealt with and the absolutely wonderful idea that when all the knowledge of the universe is poured into your mind, all you can think about from then on is Halloween – that’s just a brilliant piece of absurdist, macabre, twisted thinking that I love. It’s absolutely some of the twisted conceptual thinking that makes this series special. But it’s part of a cheap set-up that I disliked, which has left me feeling a bit dissatisfied. Things are just gonna go back to normal next time, after we saw these absurd levels of power on display. How much more can the dial really be turned up from here?

Bone Collection 4: from a really unique series to one really struggling to stand out as anything but generic. Still, it’s an enjoyable read. It amused me that Rino is just carrying a picture of Paira around, that’s how much she hates her. But compared with just how clever Agravity Boys is with maximizing the comedy of each new event, or how flat-out absurd Moriking is right from the description of the premise, Bone Collection struggles as a comedy. But with Abe, apparently extremely powerful, already on the scene and witness to Kazami’s crime, this might be more compelling as a drama, and after all, One Piece does dramatic storylines with a very comedic tone brilliantly. Perhaps Bone Collection can go in that direction.

Dr. Stone chapter 151: Hmm, I still have the same qualms I had last week. I really don’t like it when a new character can do everything that makes our hero special, but better. And that’s clearly happening here. They look so ridiculously villainous, too. I wonder if the fact they’re speaking English here will be remembered or not. I quite liked the primitive polygraph test and how that played to Gen’s strengths, but I’m really not sold on this arc yet.

Haikyuu!! 394: One of the real strengths of Haikyuu!! is that Furudate-sensei really knows how to give characters quirks and idiosyncrasies that are believable enough to be realistic. It’s a real trope of anime and manga that everyone has to have their key character points and be easy to understand, but when it’s subtle like Sakusa just liking to see everything seen through to the end and done neatly, with the proper preparation and the proper execution, it just works. But that’s not to say it’s necessarily that interesting. I’d actually say this chapter focusing on Sakusa was pretty boring. Elegant, but dull.

The Promised Neverland 178: someone asked me what I meant by the loose ends still left in YnN, and the two big ones were Emma’s promise and what bearing it had on the story overall, and then what they were going to do once they were in the human world, which after all supported this status quo where human children were raised as cattle and brutally murdered, the key hook the whole series was hung from, to use a maybe slightly unfortunate phrase. Then there are small nitpicks like where are all the numerous rebels amongst the demons there would inevitably be and was there seriously nobody who would take up Ratri’s cause once he was just talked out of his life’s work in a few panels by Emma? Well, this chapter dealt with the big ones, at least. The promise, well, it apparently was perfect with no need for quid pro quo, but I’m hoping there’s actually some twist to that. And now they’re in the human world, actually arriving in New York of all places, and the story isn’t over yet. I really am hoping for one more arc confronting the morality of this world, rather than a few easy wrap-up chapters. Everything has been way too convenient basically since the confrontation with the Queen, and for me at least, the rushed and unconvincing way this has been wrapping up hasn’t sat well at all. But there’s still hope for a satisfying ending, and I’m going to withhold judgement until I see where this goes.

Majo no Moribito 15: Always the last thing I read – totally taking the place of Samurai 8 at the bottom of the pile. There’s always something off about this series, something that feels amateurish. Claude flattened Fafner and then he just got back up again somehow, in a tiny panel that was very confusing in terms of why Claude allowed him to stand. Fafner had no counter to the gravity attack, but Claude just didn’t use it again and then the fight got interrupted. Seems like a really cheap way to get out of writing yourself into a corner. And the very premise at the core of this story seems faulty – the protector has to kill the witch when she’s too close to turning into an unstoppable evil, and one of the very first duos the heroes come across have the same moral qualms. Maybe we can just about accept that they only doubt because of the influence of the heroes, even though Claude didn’t really get much opportunity to be influenced, but can we really buy that this kind of rebellion doesn’t happen all the time when pairs who have bonded over months or years have to turn on each other? It seems like it would be happening very frequently, if we’re honest. Majo no Moribito stands on flimsy world-building, has next to no humour, average art, a poor grasp of fluid motion, a generic world and characters that aren’t especially interesting. Honestly, I don’t think it deserves to have shared pages with Kimetsu no Yaiba at all, and if it doesn’t improve drastically soon, I can see it getting cut before too long.