Currently Running Manga Discussion

[VLordGTZ]

Demon's Plan's reception has seemed more so mixed rather than negative.  I think Viz is likely waiting to see how it does in Japan before choosing whether or not to add it to the magazine. 

Excluding RWBY (since it will be a monthly series by the end of next month), Viz's Jump only has 5 weekly series right now.  Hopefully they will decide on some replacements by January. 

[VLordGTZ]

Black Lagoon will finally be returning from hiatus in Spring 2017.

Hopefully, Rei Hiroe will be returning to a more regular release schedule with the series.  Otherwise, I hope he at least finishes the Wired Red Wild Card arc before he goes on another break.

[gunswordfist]

Me too. I want new Black Lagoon anime.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, it has been confirmed by Oda's editor that the Whole Cake Island arc is about halfway done (meaning that it should wrap up by the Summer), and that we will be getting both the Reverie and the Wano arc next year.

The hype levels are off the charts for anyone who has been following One Piece for years, such as myself. That said, there's no way that the Wano arc could be anything other than a mega-sized arc, so it will have to come after the Reverie arc. The Reverie arc itself I can see being both incredibly significant but also understandably short, since it won't be involving any of the Straw Hat Pirates directly. This one I could see lasting about a dozen chapters or so to more or less establish what goes down without showing us too much detail to leave a mystery for readers to decipher everything (remember, Oda brilliantly did this before with the Ace Vs. Blackbeard fight). I know that CX has speculated that Crocodile will crash the Reverie, and while he may be involved in some way, if anyone is going to be the driving force behind crashing the Reverie, I'm calling it now that it's going to be Dragon, Ivankov, and the rest of the Revolutionary Army.

On a side note, if the WCI arc is already half-way done, then there's no way that Big Mom will be defeated before it's over. Most likely, the arc will climax with Sanji redeeming himself by sticking it to his family in a big way, thus bringing his current character arc to its natural conclusion for this point in the story. Most likely, the Straw Hats on WCI will then most likely regroup and escape in order to join the rest of their crew and allies down at Wanokuni. What's going to be awesome is that not only will they be reuniting with most of the Supernovas in that arc, but it has already been heavily hinted at that a lot of big league characters will be present for that story-line, making for an all-out battle zone with Kaido and his forces. We're essentially gearing up for another Marineford-level event in the story, and you bet your ass that I'm beyond excited for it.

[VLordGTZ]

The RWBY manga will reach its "climax" in January.

So, by the time Viz catches up with the manga in their Jump, the series will already be over.  Between Toriko, Red Sprite, and Love Rush all ending around the same time, World Trigger going on indefinite hiatus, and now this, Viz really hasn't had much luck with their lineup lately.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I really enjoyed the first chapter of the Rurouni Kenshin spin-off (which was revealed to be a sequel) this week. It takes place 5 years after the end of the Kyoto arc in which ramifications from Shishio's defeat are still being felt. I do wonder how this all will fold over into the series proper, but this chapter was a good start.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Weekly Shonen Jump Issue #4/5 (December 21st/28th, 2016):
WSJ Cast (Cover)
My Hero Academia (Lead CP)
1. One Piece
2. Black Clover
3. The Promised Neverland
4. Hinomaru Zumou
Gintama (CP)
5. Haikyu!!
Demon's Plan (Not Ranked)
Canvas (CP, One Shot)
6. Kimetsu no Yaiba: Blade of Demon Destruction
Ole Golazo (Not Ranked)
Tomatoypoo no Lycopin (CP, One Shot)
Boruto (CP)
7. Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Souma
8. Straighten Up! Welcome to Shika High's Competitive Dance Club
Haru yo, Koi! (One Shot Part 1)
9. The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.
10. Yuna of Yuragi Manor
11. Samon the Summoner
12. Amalgam of Distortion
13. Spring Weapon No. 1
Chronicle of Isobe ~Life is Hard~

Not bad rankings this week. Yuna is surprisingly low, but I'm guessing it was just a lame chapter. Next issue, Kimetsu no Yaiba, Promised Neverland, and Amalgam of Distortion, are getting extra pages. Straighten Up, Saiki, and Hinomaru are also getting color pages! Should be interesting to see the rankings in that issue.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

You know, I've gotta say, One Piece ranking in first place in many of these polls is really well deserved this year. While it has consistently ranked high since its inception, the last four or five years were not the best it had to offer by a long shot, IMO, but this year was legitimately the best the series has been ever since the time-skip. And next year looks like it'll be even better. It's once again a great time to be a One Piece fan.

[Spark Of Spirit]

So the second character poll for MHA is out, and I'm a bit surprised. Bakugo honestly deserved #1 after this last year ever since the final exam with All Might. He had the most character development and is easily one of the best characters in the series. Midoriya at #2, Todoroki at #3, and All Might at #6 were all forgone conclusions. Aizawa and Ida both ranked well too.

I'm most surprised at Uraraka's drop to #10 since she has only gotten more developed since the last time she ranked. Really don't know why she went down this time. I'm surprised that Jiro cracked the top 10 since she really didn't do a lot since the last poll, and yet Kaminari dropped out despite having some really good moments. The best part was seeing how high Kirishima jumped. He had a lot of great moments including his friendship with Bakugo that only got stronger. MHA has only gotten better since the last poll.

But Mineta's giant drop was hilarious. He can be funny, but there really isn't a lot to him that would boost him higher.

And for those curious, this was the final result:

20. Yo Shindo
19. Himiko Toga
18. Hanta Sero
17. Present Mic
16. Tomura Shigaraki
15. Fumikage Tokoyami
14. Hitoshi Shinsou
13. Momo Yaoyarozu
12. Mashirao Ojiro
11. Denki Kaminari
10. Ochaco Uraraka
9. Tsuyu Asui
8. Tenya Ida
7. Kyoka Jiro
6. All Might
5. Eijiro Kirishima
4. Shota Aizawa
3. Shoto Todoroki
2. Izuku Midoriya
1. Katsuki Bakugo

The NA results are here:

10. Eraserhead (Shota Aizawa)
9. Eijiro Kirishima
8. Fumikage Tokoyami
7. Ochaco Uraraka
6. All Might
5. Tsuyu Asui
4. Shoto Todoroki
3. Himiko Toga
2. Izuku Midoriya
1. Katsuki Bakugo

In other news, that was a great chapter. Really eager to see where Midoriya and Bakugo go from here.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Weekly Shonen Jump Issue #6 (January 4th, 2017):
One Piece (Cover, Lead CP)
1. My Hero Academia
2. Kimetsu no Yaiba: Blade of Demon Destruction (23p)
Straighten Up! Welcome to Shika High's Competitive Dance Club (CP, 33p)
The Disastrous Life of Saiki (CP)
3. Haikyu!!
4. Black Clover
5. Yuna of Yuragi Manor
Demon's Plan (Not Ranked)
Hinomaru Zumou (CP)
6. The Promised Neverland (23p)
Ole Golazo (Not Ranked)
7. Samon the Summoner
8. Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Souma
Haru yo, Koi! (One Shot Part 2)
9. Amalgam of Distortion (23p)
10. Spring Weapon No. 1
11. Gintama
Chronicle of Isobe ~Life is Hard~


Kimetsu had its best rank ever and is getting the cover next issue. It looks like it'll be sticking around for the foreseeable future. Come on, Viz. On the other hand, one-shots seems to be running until at least February, which means we probably won't be seeing World Trigger return until then. I just hope Ashihara is feeling better. Nothing else here is all too surprising. It looks like both Spring Weapon and Amalgam are headed for cancellation, and I'm pretty sure Demon's Plan won't be too far behind them. Oh well, at least it means other series should last a bit longer.

[LumRanmaYasha]

I was quite surprised that Bakugo handily won both popularity polls by a large margin over Midoriya, but his character growth has been excellent this year so it's well deserved. Toga coming in #3 on the U.S. poll and Jiro ranking #7 on the japanese one were also surprising since they haven't been as prominent as some others, but hopefully this means we'll see more of them in the future.

Not sure if Demon's Plan is really in danger since the unranked chapters are being placed fairly high in the lineup. I don't think we'll be able to call whether it'll be cancelled until it gets it's first ranking. Amalgam and Spring Weapon definitely are on the outs when the next round of Jump Starts start up in February though.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I'm only going off of early impressions. The ones for Demon's Plan have not been very good.

In other news, I'm pretty sure I'm just not a fan of Akira Amano. I read the free chapter of elDLive on Viz's site and it almost gave me a headache. The colors were aggravating, but the storytelling was just as flat as Reborn and the characters were just as one note. How she got as popular as she did with such boring work is beyond me. But hey, maybe it's your thing. It's obviously not mine.

[LumRanmaYasha]

The coloring in that chapter, while supposedly bright and pretty-looking, was an awful mess to make sense of and distracted from the contents of the chapter. It was a really poorly conceived color job; you can't just throw colors onto the page, they have to mesh and contrast, and help lead the reader's eye through the page and highlight what they should focus on. I couldn't tell what I was supposed to look at and when, which is just poor sequential storytelling in general. Didn't help that the story itself wasn't particularly interesting or well-thought out either. I didn't understand why things were happening and for what purpose, and the only character with a distinct personality was the snarky female lead. It is easily among the worst first chapters of any Jump manga that I've read.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Coming out of hiatus just to say that this Rurouni Kenshin one-shot two-parter was excellent. It's almost like Watsuki never left. And for those who want to know, it takes place five years after Kenshin first arrived at the Kamiya dojo.

The way he set up Ashitaro to be a man on a tightrope between Shishio and Kenshin was on the nose. Watching him struggle between monster and hero just before Kenshin arrives to stop him from making the wrong decision was perfect. Not only did he do that but making him a student of an older Yahiko was a masterstroke.

So for this new series we have all the pieces in place. It's years after the Revenge arc, Ashitaro is a target, Sojiro has a link to Ashitaro, Yahiko is primed to be a teacher, Saito has a reason to seek them out, and the others were all mentioned by name.

I'm really excited to see where this goes. This is easily the best thing Watsuki has done in years, which makes me quite excited.

[VLordGTZ]

Since no one has posted this week's Jump rankings yet:

Weekly Shonen Jump Issue #7 (January 16th, 2017):
Kimetsu no Yaiba (Cover/Lead CP)
1. Black Clover
One Piece (Absent in ranked issue)
2. My Hero Academia
3. Haikyuu!!
Samon the Summoner (CP)
4. The Promised Neverland
5. Straighten Up! Welcome to Shika High's Competitive Dance Club
Imawa no Juukurou (CP, oneshot)
6. The Disastrous Life of Saiki K
Yuna of Yuragi Manor (CP)
Ole Golazo (Not Ranked)
7. Shokugeki no Soma
8. Hinomaru Sumo
9. Spring Weapon No. 01
Demon's Plan (Not Ranked)
10. Gintama
11. Amalgam of Distortion
Chronicle of Isobe ~Life is Hard~

The Promised Neverland is getting the cover and lead color page next week.  Based on how low Demon's Plan is in the ToC this week, I'm assuming that it is going to have a pretty low first ranking.  Aside from that, both The Promised Neverland and Straighten Up are continuing to rank well, which is nice to see.

In regards to the english Jump, Viz will be publishing the 2013 Nisekoi/Haikyu!! Crossover one-shot and Naoshi Komi's recent Shonen Jump GIGA one-shot Tokidoki in the next issue.