One Piece 803: Hmm, I didn’t expect the Mink tribe, though it’s not as though it’s the first time anthro-style creatures appeared in One Piece. We’ll see where this goes! 

D.Gray-Man 220: Back to being at best semi-coherent. Mana is in the Earl, and is not the brother of Nea but one and the same person split in two, and destroyed his face and identity after getting angsty that being the Earl would mean he had to destroy his identity…? Eh. I don’t think Hoshino is winning back many fans here. 

One Piece 803: a nice busy chapter – a shame there’s a break next week, but I liked the set-up here. I’m a little sad Bartolomeo’s stepping out of the series now, presumably for a long while, but we got a few last laughs out of him. It was nice to see a battle set up between the Revolutionary Army and Blackbeard that might not involve the Straw Hats at all, and the little snippet of Buggy was great. This transition has been done well and I’m interested in what’s coming next. 

One Piece 802: it looks like this arc is going to be mostly comedic, with Bartolomeo’s very silly crew, a silly ‘son of whitebeard’ coming to confront Luffy with his money-hungry old mother in tow, and a strange new setting. I look forward to how it develops. 

Yotsubato! 89: There aren’t many Yotsubato! chapters I feel are a bit of a dud, but this is one of them. I quite liked the futon bit, but the chapter didn’t flow, most of it wasn’t funny or cute, and even Yotsuba’s interactions with Yanda seemed off. A bit of a shame, but I’ll still always be quick to check out new chapters.

One Piece 801: the kind of chapter I wanted last week! The tension with the Marines wasn’t so interested, but the last part of the chapter with new bounties and Bartolomeo’s always-hilarious fanboying reaching amazing new heights was brilliance. His ship really made me laugh. 

One Piece 800: I did wonder how Oda would get around Luffy’s obvious aversion to organising like this, and this worked pretty well, and had some nice triumphant moments. The question is – where does the story go next?

One Piece 798: this was a bit of a slow chapter, setting up what the little Tontata had done to help, but then we got Admiral Fujitora doing something impressive, immediately undermined by Luffy being very, very Luffy – which is just another reminder why this is as successful as comics get. Nowhere else so perfectly mixes bathos, comedy and the impressively grandiose.