Currently Running Manga Discussion

[LumRanmaYasha]

I was waiting for this one. This week the Weekly Manga Recap guys discussed REAL!

I agree with most of their assessments on the series, even with some of the criticisms they had, and am glad they really enjoyed it overall. One thing that I did disagree with is that I personally didn't think Takahashi took quite as long to become sympathetic as they made it out to be, but I can see why it would take some people more time considering how much of a douche he was in the beginning of the series. I was also surprised that Chris didn't care for Shiratori's arc, but at least Nick seemed like he really dug it (I thought it was great, myself).

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

It's great to see them finally take a look at this manga.

I'll have to listen to the podcast whenever I can manage to get some actual Wi-Fi to use.

[VLordGTZ]

It seems that The Seven Deadly Sins is a third of the way done

[LumRanmaYasha]

Doesn't surprise me, but it's good to know Nakaba has a plan for the series and an endgame in mind.

[LumRanmaYasha]

In celebration of their third anniversary, Viz's Weekly Shonen Jump is offering the next 4 issues of it's publication free, starting with today's issue.

This is neat, since it allows me to keep up to date with Gakkyu Hotei for a month since no one has translated any more chapters of that since the first one, as well as read the new Shokugeki no Soma and World Trigger chapters on time since the translators have been late on those for a while recently. Getting to read the bonus content in the magazine and participate in the rating is a plus too.

[LumRanmaYasha]

New promo for the Rin-ne anime.

Not much to say since so little was shown, but I think Rinne's voice fits quite well. It's also nice to see Kappei Yamaguchi in the cast, and playing Sabato no less. I hope the next promo shows off some of the other characters, though. I really want to know if they'll put Kain, Oboro, Kurosu, Suzu, Renge, Left & Right, Matsugo, etc. in the show. All of them take over 50-100+ chapters to appear in the manga, but they are easily some of the better and funnier supporting characters in the series (Jumonji and Ageha are so laaammmeeee) and tend to be a part of the better stories in the series. I'd really rather they just skip around to all the best parts of the manga than try to adapt it in order, since there are so many boring "Rinne and Sakura solve supernatural problem of the week" stories in the series that would be no less boring animated, and since this adaption is only going to be two-cours they might as well just do the most interesting stuff. That's basically the only way this adaption will be really worthwhile to me.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

You know, sometimes I have to remind myself when I'm reading a shonen. In this week's chapter of Magi, I was intrigued by the possibility of Alibaba playing the politics game with Hakryuu, trying to carefully avoid direct conflict with him, but then the chapter ends with Hakryuu wanting to fight because he's still in "1-Dimensionally Evil Sasuke-Clone" mode. It's funny, because in any other shonen, I'd probably be fine with that, but Magi has such a great set-up with all of its world-building that it just seems capable of far more interesting things than typical one-on-one fights.

Then again, I shouldn't be too surprised, since the series has basicslly been falling short of its potential since the beginning, outside of the Magnostadt arc. I don't know, maybe I just need to look at it differently, but even as a standard battle shonen series, it still only ever strikes me as decent, but falling short of being something more unique and interesting.

[LumRanmaYasha]

No, fuck that. It doesn't matter if it's shonen. I hate it when people say "oh, it's just a shonen/shojo so it's okay for this [insert lame writing] happened." Bad writing is bad writing and the whole Hakuryuu thing is shit writing pure and simple. It's shit because the character's turn into this state was done abruptly and unconvincingly within the course of two chapters in a ridiculously over the top way, and it ruined what could have potentially been a more interesting and nuanced character. Instead he's just become a one-dimensional Sasuke-esque caricature who is now irrationally out to kill his former friends and family just because he just subconsciously needs an object to redirect his pent up rage towards the world now that Gyokuen is (supposedly) dead, a concept which could've been developed in an effective way, but hasn't.

Seriously, what happened to Magi and Toriko? Both were my favorite weekly manga at the beginning of last year, sorta fizzled in the middle of the year but were still okay, and then they just suddenly took a massive dive in quality around the same time in the last few months and are now meh as fuck. It's really disappointing.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I wasn't insinuating that battle shonen aren't capable of better story-telling. I was stating that it was foolish of me to still expect more from Magi when it has constantly fallen short of its potential in the past, IMO (keep in mind, I was never as big of a fan of it as you or Dalek, Magnostadt aside). That doesn't mean that I was excusing the poor writing quality or calling it good, but rather I was saying that I really shouldn't expect any more from this series at this point because I've already given it more than enough time to redeem itself, and it failed my expectations.

[LumRanmaYasha]

So, I haven't been doing my weekly manga recaps for a while now. I just got really swamped with a lot of work in the beginning of last december, so I didn't get to write about any of the chapters that month. I felt bad about that, so in the first installment of my Monthly Manga Roundup for the blog, I decided to cover all of the manga chapters that were released last month. Yes, I'm well aware that January itself is almost over by this point, but I didn't want to leave talking about that stuff as unfinished business. However, I plan for the January installment to be on-time, likely being put up either this weekend or early next week.

Those of you who've been reading my weekly recaps might notice that I'm no longer doing a ranking of all the series at the end of it. I just felt the whole scoring and ranking thing was too arbitrary, as my scoring tendencies rarely made use of the full spectrum. I also felt it just wasn't the most useful way to highlight what I liked most in manga or how good I thought something is, since even though it was all supposed to be relative, how close or how far I thought something was in enjoyment or quality couldn't really be measured. While this was fine for a forum post, I didn't think it would be appropriate for a blog series where I was trying to be more critical and unbiased towards things. As such, I don't plan on doing those anymore for the Roundups for the blog, though I may still do them in this thread just for the heck of it. As for the weeks I missed, I might put up my rankings for those later today or tomorrow.

[LumRanmaYasha]

So, this week Viz' Shonen Jump made the following announcement:



Cool news! MHA has been very entertaining so far and I know a lot of people have been wanting to see Viz license it. It's great that it'll now be getting legal exposure via Viz's Jump.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Now that I've caught up on Haikyu!! I'm keeping up with every major currently-running Weekly Shonen Jump series (excluding the stuff that hasn't been translated into english). Finally! Honestly, I think Jump's current line-up is actually quite good. The only real bad series I'm currently reading of theirs is Bleach. Nisekoi is at worst just mediocre, and while Toriko hasn't been great lately, outside of last month it hasn't become terrible either. Everything else is pretty solid and while some series have weaker weeks more often than others, they are all quite good for the most part. It's hard to really compare them, though, since some are so much longer than others and had really great stretches but aren't as strong now and stuff, but if I were to compare them based on how good I thought they were in 2014, in order of favorite to least favorite, I'd go:

Excellent:

Assassination Classroom - I've wrote about why I've really enjoyed this series' output last year multiple times at length. It's been very impressive and the story and characters have developed in fantastic ways and it's one of the weekly series I look most forward to reading these days
.
Shokugeki no Soma - Incredibly fun the whole year through with no mediocre chapters to speak of. Fantastic cooking manga. 

Gintama - Honestly should probably be #1, but the fact there are still whole chunks of the series I haven't read yet did admittedly weaken how powerful certain moments in the series this year should have been for me. The fact that this is still #3 should tell you how great I still thought it was even despite that, though.

Good:

World Trigger - I'm not sure if I'll ever be in love with it as much as the WMR guys are, but I do think the "Invasion" arc was very impressive and the series showed it could use it's large cast in interesting ways and have tense fights that operate on careful strategies and well-organized teamwork, a welcome refresher from the one-on-one power battles pervading most battle-shonen these days.

My Hero Academia - One of the best starts I've ever seen for a shonen series. It didn't waste any time to establish it's essential characters and their personalities, insecurities, and motivations well, then move right into an intense arc that had personal issues on the line, started to develop the characters further and expand the world and cast, and in addition it has a unique style and execution to it that sets it apart from it's contemporaries. I'd say it's overnight success and popularity is well-deserved.

Hinomaru Zumo - Another series with a strong start. I really enjoy all the core characters so far, Hinomaru's intelligence and confidence especially making for a refreshing and likable protagonist, and the action is really well-drawn and exciting. I honestly got more out of it's first 14 chapters than I have out of reading 140 chapters of Haikyu!. 

Average:

One Piece - The hit and miss nature of the series last year, alongside some annoying issues with how Oda treated certain characters, developed certain plot points, and the overall messiness of the chapters in how much content is juggled in them these days, did really grate on me. But that said, there were about as many really strong chapters as there were mediocre ones. There were a lot of really good moments in the series last year too, and Law's flashback especially was phenomenal. It wasn't a great year for OP, but all things considered it wasn't a terrible one either.

PSI Kusuo Saiki - Technically the chapters of this series translated last year were not released in 2014, but whatever. I really like the character of Saiki and there is a lot of really great humor in this series which, in spite of it's weak artwork, makes it stand out as a really fun gag manga. I would really love to read it more regularly, if only the translators would put it out faster.

Haikyu!! - I just read through all of what Haikyu!! put out last year in the last two-three days, and I honestly could only tell you maybe two or so moments that really impressed or stuck out to me in the whole stretch. It's an enjoyable and solid sports manga with decent characters overall, but fairly average for the genre and just has not produced enough impressive material to endear itself to me on a level where I'm really invested in it on more than just a casual level. 

Below Average:

Toriko - The last 4 months have really dragged it down, but it was still really good in the first 2/3rds of the year. I really hope it can return to form.

Hunter X Hunter - Kurapika finally came back. Ging and Pariston had some cool moments. Otherwise, what we got from HXH was mostly just set-up for things to pay off later in the arc, but as of now all of it by itself wasn't that entertaining to read and oftentimes kind of a drag. HXH is usually slow at the beginning of it's arcs and there was so little of it put out last year anyways, but there's no way I could say it was remotely better last year than just about anything else in the magazine.

Nisekoi - It's not a bad series, but it's such an average and stereotypical shonen romcom/harem type of series that's been done a million times to death and easily better elsewhere. There were quite a few funny chapters, and the series is capable of those, but most were just lame and overly common for the genre. It's only at worst mediocre, but at a time when most of Jump's stuff is pretty solid, that just makes it's mediocrity stand out even more.

Shit:

Bleach - If you've been reading my thoughts about it last year you already know how bad this thing has been. It's been shit for years, but wow, somehow it managed to reach new lows this year I never even thought possible. I really hope it finally wraps up this year.

And in terms of how much I like them overall:

One Piece
Hunter X Hunter
Gintama
Assassination Classroom
Shokugeki no Soma
Toriko
World Trigger
My Hero Academia
Hinomaru Zumo
PSI Kusuo Saiki
Haikyu!
Nisekoi
Bleach

I'd consider myself a fan of everything PSI Kuso Saiki and up, which goes to show how much I like most of Jump's current series overall. Keep this up with more well-done titles like Gakkyu Hotei, have some series currently in rough patches like Toriko improve, and give Bleach the boot, and they might just enter a bronze age of quality.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

While I agree that HXH was mostly just set-up last year, I couldn't rightfully say whether it was good, average, or below average based on just 9 chapters, which in all fairness are typically very slow and expository at the beginning of any new arc (the YNC and CA arcs were just as slow in the beginning). Thus, I personally wouldn't even bother ranking it, myself. If it at least ran for about half the year and was STILL just boring set-up, then that would be a different story.

[LumRanmaYasha]

I agree that I also find HXH's arcs have always started off slow, and I do believe that how enjoyable the remainder of the Dark Continent arc will be and how these initial chapters will hold up when it's done still remains to be seen. But as they are now I jusr don't think they were a particularly impressive chunk of chapters from the series, which is a shame, especially considering they came off of it's longest hiatus to date. And a lack of quantity does not mean they couldn't have still been more entertaining to read than they were. I've enjoyed Hinomaru Zumo considerably more than I have Haikyu!!, and that series has only a tenth of the chapters the latter has right now. And even HXH's chapters last year were still more interesting to read than Nisekoi's and unquestionably better than Bleach's, both of which put out 5 times as many chapters as it did. Hence why I see no problem comparing it's output and enjoyment level relative to the rest of Jump's crop last year. 

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

In my case it's more of an issue with this being a middle arc. It's easier to judge a series that has started from scratch, but with HXH, it has gone on fir years, and technically this arc started before the last hiatus, so when we got back to it, we just got a few chapters in the middle of an already going story, which personally wasn't enough for me to properly judge it by. I wasn't exactly bored with all of it, as I really liked all of the scenes with Pariston and Ging,  as well as Leorio, and while too exposition heavy, I was interested to see where Kurapika's story-line would go. That said, we never got to see the actual pay-off for the more tedious parts of these few chapters, so in that regard I just couldn't really rate them as a whole, myself. I do agree that they were sub-par overall relative to the better parts of the series itself, but I don't know if I'd label it on the low level of quality of the series that you compared it to, either, if only because I barely had any material to go on, as it was.

Basically, my problem with HXH last year was more that there was hardly even anything for me to judge, rather than the actual overall quality of it being poor, which I still can't say.

For reference, I found the beginning of YNC to be boring (actually, pretty much everything until the auction), the first time that I watched it, but enjoyed it a lot more on subsequent viewings when I knew where the characters and story were going and could actually see some of the seeds being planted. Togashi doesn't plan out his story arcs, but has atalent for naturally developing his characters in a way that just makes it seem like he did plan it out, even though he just made it up as he went along.