Random manga chatter

[Dracos]

Hah.  That's a really mean way to read that.  Given how shmalzy everything was, I'm pretty sure the black hair was meant to be showing it was Sasuke's kid.  They were really really lazy on making characters come across as genetically matched, such as none of Hinata's kids having the supposedly pretty dominant Hyuuga eyes (Given her whole clan had them).

[Dracos]

I don't even know.  The ending seems like it's trying to have me play a little game of "guess who the parents are" with these kids, and all I can think is I don't know any of you.  Am I supposed to assume Hinata's kid with whiskers means she got together with Naruto?  If you're gonna spend page-count on Naruto/Hinata fanservice, instead of inventing a kid, wouldn't it be better to have some pages of Naruto actually interacting with Hinata romantically?

And what's with Naruto's kid defacing the mountain?  After Naruto did it because he has no family and everybody he knew hated him, having a new kid do it because his dad is too busy to pay much attention just seems really cheap.  Heck, why not just have Naruto himself deface the mountain in the ending to parallel the first chapter?  I'm having trouble imagining an in-character reason Naruto might do so that wouldn't make the ending slightly more interesting, or more nostalgic, or more elegant.

Jump made money off of Naruto for a decade and a half, but they couldn't spring for another ten or twenty color pages for the big finale?

I honestly think it was more artist laziness on the closeout than Shonen Jump not being willing to give him the space.  Given how timing wise they are getting scanslated, I almost expect that both will ship in the same issue.

[thepanda]

quote author=Dracos link=topic=101597.msg1054215#msg1054215 date=1415328721]
Hah.  That's a really mean way to read that.  Given how shmalzy everything was, I'm pretty sure the black hair was meant to be showing it was Sasuke's kid.  They were really really lazy on making characters come across as genetically matched, such as none of Hinata's kids having the supposedly pretty dominant Hyuuga eyes (Given her whole clan had them).

Not gonna lie; when I first read the part where Salada mentions Bolt's daddy issues resemble her own I thought she was talking about their looks (being from the same clan).

I thought the time skip was 15ish years, myself. Kurenai's kid looks about that age.

KLSymph: I think they're leaving NaruHina stuff for The Last Movie, if the trailer is any indication.

[Merc]

[Jason_Miao]

Annoyingly, I keep calling this manga DFR in my head.

[thepanda]

Everytime I go catch up with One Punch Man I leave angry that there isn't more.

[Dracos]

There's more now.

We can now be angry there isn't more.

[thepanda]

Surprised she's only b-rank.

[Merc]

Been reading Miss Shinozaki, You Might Turn into An Otaku at This Rate! which is about a girl who used to be popular and claims to hate otaku, but didn't really make a lot of friends at her new school and so she latches onto the first friend she makes. Except the first friend she makes is an otaku. And then she kind of just gets sucked into her new friend's pace.

I'm enjoying it because the girl is so expressive in her attempts at denial and she's literally driving herself insane trying to lead a double life. Her self-made suffering is great.

...and I'm probably a terrible person for getting so much enjoyment out of reading her suffering.

[Dracos]

Surprised she's only b-rank.

I think that's supposed to be more personal driven.  She's had a number of chapters now indicating defeats at larger challenges, getting rescued or shown up by her sister and being focused on putting together her faction.

[Dracos]

Gate and Maou Yusha updated.

[Merc]

I really need to ask myself why I continue to read Ippo. Whats been happening with the characters baffles me.

I honestly don't understand how Sendo being slow/unable to catch other boxers is still a thing when a huge plot point of his early fights was him developing his leg muscles for more explosive/instant movement and its such a big part of WHY he should be so intimidating now. Because you know that at any second he will just pounce and destroy you.

In this fight, he just....never moves his feet. They are lead weights and all he is doing is swinging when his opponent closes in. Its like...he got so intimidating that he stopped having to move and his legs got fat and flabby?

[Dracos]

Basically from Ippo's loss onward, it's been a wave of 'who are these people' type fights. :(

[Dracos]

So read through Spice and Wolf to current.  Thoughts...

Well, translation quality goes pretty strongly downhill later in the scans.  Possibly the official ones, that go through volume 10 instead of 6, would give a better feel but...

As a story, it kind of isn't that good.  It delivers major plot concerns without the requisite foreshadowing.  The big one in Volume 5 and 6 is lawerence getting into trouble on margin trading, which comes out of another deceptive trading guild trying to bribe him to keep quiet about their shady tricks, an event sequence that gives no real hint of him getting into a transaction on greed.

So far there has been 4 significant transaction, of which Horo just turning into a giant wolf and beating everyone up has been the decisive factor in 2.  Horo outsmarting everyone has been the decisive factor in the other 2.  Pax made the comment about it being the story of a wolf and her pet merchant, and that's pretty fair as Lawerance overall doesn't get to shine much on his own merits.  As a direction though, economy and strategy generally aren't big parts of how problems are solved, so much as the setting by which problems are introduced.  I think Maoyuu Yusha does better here in economy and diplomacy actively being tools to solve problems.

Horo's personality can be somewhat all over the place over it.  Certainly, she's lonely and a bit clingy, curious and insightful, but she'll just react erratically at times as well.

[Merc]

Gamma, by Ogino Yun

A slice of life/drama about a superhero counselor, a former/retired heroine who tries to help other heroes with their problems. It seems almost lighthearted....at least until things begin taking a darker turn. It seems to balance the dark stuff with the more light-hearted stuff for the most part, mixed in with a healthy dose of action (as expected for a series about heroes), a bit of comedy, and drama. I like the art style too.

It's generally episodic in nature, with each chapter being its own story almost (outside one two-parter so far), although the dark stuff is clearly brewing up an arc in the background.

I'm definitely enjoying it, though there's only 8 chapters out, and it releases glacially slow.

Translator's said they'll be speeding up a bit as of this chapter, but we'll see how that goes. Chapter 8 -was- released one week after the last, instead of months apart, so there's that.