What Are You Reading?

[Avaitor]

thak you GSF, that was the joke.

[gunswordfist]

thak you GSF, that was the joke.

At least I know how to spell, Avaitor.

[Avaitor]

thak you GSF, that was the joke.

At least I know how to spell, Avaitor.

you say that now...

[gunswordfist]

I forgot to mention I read Shade The Changing Man: American Scream this weekend...what in the fuck was that?!

[Spark Of Spirit]

I dunno if EK still reads Kenichi, but yeesh this fight will NOT end.

I like Hongo and all, but if he wins (and they keep setting it up that he will), it will really feel like a massive cheat. You can't give someone like 57 death blows, be far more experienced and stronger, not take a single blow, and somehow lose a fight in one move. Hongo is one of the best, but he's been simply outclassed and story-wise he should lose here. I understand the whole "tenacity" argument in shonen for an underdog beating a better opponent, but in Kenichi, when someone is given tons of deathblows without even landing a single proper hit, they tend to lose.

Also, this fight has been going on for like Frieza Vs. Goku lengths and neither character are protagonists. For all the potential this manga has, they do some really dumb things to hold it back. That's probably why I barely ever read it.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I've read it on and off since I stopped reading it regularly just to see if it has gotten any better (needless to say, it hasn't). It seems to me like the mangaka for this series realized that he could just get away with being lazy and writing bare-bones story-arcs and dragged out fights since he's still getting paid either way as long as the series keeps on running (and unfortunately long-running series sort of have a loyal and developed fan-base that still support the series even if it severely declines in quality), so the result is what we've been getting for the last 200 or so chapters, or basically ever since the end of the D of D arc, which was the last enjoyable arc in the series. I thought up to that point it was an extremely generic but admittedly fun shonen series for anyone who enjoyed the genre. Now its just a glorified ecchi with fights that would put DBZ logic to shame. I have skimmed through the fight you are talking about since there isn't much actually going on in terms of "reading," in these chapters, but whereas Goku and Frieza's fight was really long, at least it felt engaging since both characters had their limits. This fight just relies in using the same exact fake-out trick every single chapter.

They show you that despite both of them being master class, Junezad severely outclasses Hongo, and if the fight had ended a few chapters back with Hongo clearly showing his tenacity but his effort ultimately being futile in the end, that would have been great, and it would have ended the matter right there. Instead, they make it so that he's basically a fucking zombie that won't stay dead, and despite the fact that he can't even land a hit on Junezad and clearly is far below his level of experience, they are still setting him up for some major underdog win, which is downright ridiculous in this case. The thing is, if he wins by just landing a single powerful blow on his opponent while having taken multiple fatal blows himself, that'll just once again repeat the logic that has killed this series (and many other shonen, for that matter), from being interesting in any conceivable way. Who wants to read a story where the good guy (or in this case the less evil guy) will basically never lose just because they stand for what's right and the bad guy will always lose no matter how much stronger he is just because he's the bad guy?

For the record, I actually like the idea of 2 villains fighting each other, and had this scenario been handled by a more talented author, it could have been an engaging battle. Instead its just another worthless piece of tripe that is pretty much representative of what's wrong with modern shonen series in general.

[Dr. Insomniac]

So in the latest Batman comic, Nora Fries is no longer Mr. Freeze's wife. In fact, she never knew him. She's just some human popsicle that Freeze found and got obsessed over.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Oh modern comics and their obsession with grit!

[Avaitor]

Now you're just some creep that I used to know.

[Daxdiv]

That's not creepy at all.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Oh, and Freeze killed his own mom back when he was a kid.

[Daxdiv]

Still not creepy. Still not creepy at all.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Stupid.

I think the word you're looking for is "Stupid".

[Dr. Insomniac]

Eh, Snyder's run is still a good run, all things considered.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I wouldn't really know, but turning an actual character with depth into a stock psychopath is pretty terrible.

It would be about as dumb as it being revealed that Alfred hires actors to play villains that Batman must defeat so Bruce can keep his sanity... Oh wait.