Currently Running Manga Discussion

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Me thinks somebody be gett'n n' ass whoop'n next chapter.

I really want to see Ashirogi crush Nanamine with their story. In addition to just being plain bad-ass, it'd also be a great way to show the readers just how far they have come as mangaka.

[Spark Of Spirit]

He's gonna get crushed. He's doing the exact same thing that his readers are currently abandoning him for, and he doesn't even get it.

I can't wait to see how this plays out.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, yeah....he got raped by PCP....dude's lost it....

[Spark Of Spirit]

Classroom Of Truth was done only with 5 people? He should have stuck with 5 people. Too many cooks in the kitchen spoils the broth... Not to mention when your head chef is too busy trying to steal the krabby patty formula instead of improving his own food, this was always destined for failure.

There's nothing wrong with the team formula, after all Ashirogi is two people, but this is manga. Not a freaking corporation.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Utter defeat. Gotta love Kosugi taking care of business here. 

Glad to see there was a positive end to all this mess after all and a good end to the arc. I'm wondering what the next one will entail, though.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Heh, I especially love the part where Nanamine threatens to call the cops and sue Kosugi, and Kosugi challenges him to go ahead and try doing it and then punches him again anyways. He really knocked some sense into the fucker.

But, it was nice to see Nanamine still have the desire to surpass Ashirogi, and it was cool that he told them that he would return to challenge them again. I'm sure we'll be seeing him come up with a work that can actually compete with PCP the next time he comes back into the story.

I'm guessing that until something like that happens, we'll probably see Ashirogi once again divert their focus into trying to come up with a new manga series that can get an anime adaptation.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Anybody else here keeping up with Enigma? I kind of really enjoy the way it tries to carve its own path in the shonen genre, but still tries to keep it straightforward and focused on the characters first and foremost. Best of all, I really have no idea where it's going, and that's always nice.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I'd read it, but I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

Aside from Bakuman, the only other Jump manga that I have found worth it to keep up with is One Piece, though lately it has been moving too slow-paced for my liking. To be honest, though, its really the way OP has always been, in that its arcs are full of build-up before the big pay-off portions of the story later on. I do think its cool, though, how Oda is once again addressing important arcs from the really early parts of the series, and delving into the deeper history of something only lightly referred to earlier on in the series. The really interesting thing about it is that if you actually go back and read the earlier parts of the series, you can actually notice the clues there and can see that Oda clearly had these story elements planned for quite a long time, and isn't just pulling shit out of his ass like 90% of other shonen authors do with their series these days.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

This week's chapter of One Piece was really good. I usually can't stand the standard flashback scenes in shonen manga/anime, but whenever Oda does them I must admit he handles them masterfully (in a lot of cases even better than the usual current events of the major arcs themselves).

Fisher Tiger's speech at the end was really well-done, and it didn't come off as one of those BS speeches you usually hear. He didn't ever change his mind about hating humans, but he conceded that he knew deep down his view was only relevant to some humans and not all, but his overall experience as a slave really warped his heart. Yet, even then he controlled his rage just enough to not come off as a total monster by going on a revenge quest and killing people, since he knew in the end that would only bring a worse fate upon the Fishmen. Its pretty awesome how Oda managed to craft such an epic and memorable character and tell his story pretty clearly in just a few short chapters.

Meanwhile Naruto has about a dozen flashbacks per arc and accomplishes almost nothing with them for 90% of the characters which it involves (IMO, anyways).

[Spark Of Spirit]

At the risk of admitting I read Bleach (more like skim since a chapter takes like two minutes to look through)... This current arc seems like it's HEAVILY cribbing from Togashi, and by that I mean this arc is more or less Chapter Black.

Only with weaker characters and plotlines, obviously.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Well, its my belief that everyone always keeps up with at least a couple of things that they don't like. For me its Naruto if only for the occasional (but extremely rare) upturn of events that actually turn out good for a few chapters....out of every 100 of them or so, and while I gave up on Bleach a long time ago, I read about people bitching and moaning about it all the time, and I have heard instances of it being heavily compared to YYH, recently. Hey, Desensitized, when that part of the manga gets published over here legally, would you consider doing a specific comparison article between that and YYH's Chapter Black arc to analyze why the concept (whatever part of CB that its paralleling) works in YYH and not so well in Bleach? Just a thought, anyways.

I wouldn't mind doing a comparison article like that myself between 2 shows that tackle similar types of themes with a certain arc or set of episodes (I was thinking of doing something like that for a good superhero cartoon as opposed to a mediocre or bad one, actually).

[Spark Of Spirit]

My issue with Bleach is more that it takes a Lot of inspiration from Yu Yu Hakusho, but instead of living up to its legacy ended up falling way short of it due to the author simply not being a good writer.

Now while I never considered Bleach a rip off as it only really had passing resemblances to YYH other than the premise, this current arc is really showing the limit of Kubo's writing skill. The first two arcs were reasonably fine for shonen manga, but then he sort of lost the plot by including WAY too many characters, being unable to pace his plotting properly, and using a decent twist for his villain and making him a Mary Sue by making him completely dull and OP'd for no real reason.

So far the current arc has focused on repercussions from the spirit world leading certain people to acquire special skills and territories and Ichigo dealing with a new enemy who has his own power that seems to have some kind of ultimate plan of his-OH FUCK IT HE'S SENSUI. The most recent chapter had Ichigo being rescued by a kid with a game based territory that-UUUUGHHH...

Look, Chapter Black can't be improved upon by anyone but Togashi because it's pure Togashi. Oda is Oda, Toriyama is Toriyama etc... This is not Tite Kubo, this is Tite Kubo trying to copy someone else.

In fact there's only two things I had nitpicks about and they're minor stuff. I would have used the boxing kid from the early Spirit Detective arc who would be able to repay Yusuke with his own territory, and I wouldn't have used Raizen controlling Yusuke to finish off Sensui as that felt too jarring to me.

So far this arc is using very similar ideas (I'm waiting for someone to get kidnapped soon, even) and just changing around the plot a little. To be honest, it's aggravating me, but I have to know how much more he's willing to rip off here. It's getting ridiculous.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Wow, You actually got me interested in checking out just this arc only out of curiosity to see if it really does rip-off that much (not that I would doubt you, especially since other people seem to agree on this). What chapter does the Sensui rip-off stuff start on?

[Spark Of Spirit]

The new arc starts at 424. To be honest, he probably should have ended it right before that. It might have been a downer ending and boring as shit, but at least he wasn't rewriting an arc from a genre classic. The guy's mannerisms are even lifted from Sensui, if he used kicking attacks I probably would have learned Japanese just to flame him on twitter. 

The guy's a good artist and designer (despite his lack of backgrounds, use assistants dude) but man even Obata was a better writer than him and he uses Ohba for the story side now.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Well, If I'm not mistaken Obata was actually a mentor to Watsuki at one point in time (though, maybe that was only in terms of artwork). I do remember that Obata worked as a head artist on a certain manga from the 90's whereas Watsuki started out as an assistant. And yet another neat little bit of trivia is that when Watsuki was working on Rurouni Kenshin Oda was one of his early assistants before eventually starting to do early one-shot versions of One Piece (which were titled Romance Dawn), and then debuting with the series while RK was still in the middle of its serialization run.

You know, I would want to learn Japanese myself in this case, if only because I'm curious to see if any Japanese readers are actually calling Kubo out on ripping off YYH (but, then again, I'm wouldn't be surprised if they didn't seeing as how Japan seems to have completely forgotten that YYH exists and nobody there seems to give a shit about it, anymore).