Random manga chatter

[Merc]

Been reading Magi.

The start is fairly slow and more of a comedy/adventure story while it focuses on Aladdin, as it seemed to look more of a treasure hunting manga.

However, it starts to become more serious and action/battle-driven after only one (or rather, during it) dungeon dive.

Aladdin starts to discover more about his powers and what's going on in the rest of the world, while Ali Baba (Aladdin's ally in that dungeon dive) slowly seems to be morphing into the role of primary protagonist while Aladdin gets shifted to secondary, as the Merlin to Ali Baba's Arthur.

I'm enjoying it, and it's nice to see a story involving magical items that doesn't revolve around tournament arcs and huge casts where -everyone- gets a focus to the point that nobody shines. So far, this story is very clearly about Aladdin and Ali Baba, even with all the other characters getting introduced, they're still developed kind of off to the side of Aladdin/Ali Baba.

[thepanda]

I swear to god if those are natzi I'm giving up on Bleach. -_-

[Merc]

It's not nazis, it's evil undead quincy! =p

[thepanda]

Yeah, I know they're Quincy, but still. =P

One does not necessarily preclude the other!

I wonder how stupidly powerful the new enemy is going to be this time. Kenpachi doesn't use bankai so he's obviously going to get sidelined somehow. Each new arc makes it feel like he's the only one written as brokenly powerful as a captain is supposed to be. And now there is yet another army of people probably as strong as captains after all the training to fight Aizen. If my eyes rolled any harder at what happened with Sasakibe I'd have to pick them off the floor.

[Merc]

For what it's worth, we have that announcement from last page that this is the last arc! So no more ridiculous powerups after this! =p

[thepanda]

You realize how long an arc in this series is, right? Execution is the only one that hasn't taken half past forever to conclude.

[Merc]

It's only going to be 3-6 years! That's not long at all! :p

[thepanda]

You could start and finish college in that time.

[thepanda]

Bleach. Oh Bleach. It FEELS like you're finally setting up an arc where the humans aren't useless. (Of course, Ken-chan can't bankai and the rest of his troops generally don't on principle so...) Let us see how long it takes for you to throw that out the window.

[Dracos]

They have an anti-bankai thing?

Really? :(  Well anyhow, trying to stick to SJA's posting schedule, so that it becomes natural instead of 'behind'.  So I guess I'll see in two weeks.

[Muphrid]

Negima doesn't end until Wednesday?  Well, the scanlation's out already.

Spoiler: ShowHide

1) Somewhat surprised Akamatsu didn't commit on who ended up with Negi.  I say "somewhat" because, were I in the same position, I probably would've done the same.  Better not to worry about the crapstorm that would've resulted from picking one girl.  Nevertheless, one could never be sure with this guy.

2) The last chapter overall feels like a great epilogue to an action arc about Negi defeating the Lifemaker and saving his father--too bad this arc never took place, yet the results are just there.  I think this is an undeniable weakness of the conclusion of the series.  You just can't do that.

Nevertheless, I was saddened to see it end so quickly, and to me, the ending did all it could, under the circumstances.

[Dracos]

It's something many mangaka sorta ignore: Your budget could run out at any time, same with your attention, so if the coolness is '200 chapters away', well...  Sure, epic length stuff is fun, but I think Negima floundered too much in randomness and cast and left itself in a challenging place to come to a reasonable conclusion.   (Really, the villian team is 4 super boys who look the same, a guy called lifemaker who is ancient, responsible for every bad thing in the series, and has his dad possessed?  I wonder if he just had no idea how to take that section either)

Hearing of it, I'm left mostly glad I dropped it a while ago during the magic arc when the girls were starting to look so similar and plentiful that I was having a real hard time telling just who was in frame at any time.   The flounding incoherency was almost a necessary background at times for some of the high points of comedy it delivered, but looking back, it reminds me really of a more advanced one of those mangas that introduce between 4 and 20 hot girls as the beginning of their plot and...also the middle and end of it really (Which, to be fair, it did).

MMm...

It makes me feel like giving some tribute to an author who's pretty good at avoiding that.

[thepanda]

The final arc felt like a middle arc. The setup is there. I just don't know why they chose to end it here.

Oh well, at least Fairytail losing is still entertaining.

[Dracos]

I guess?

I kinda enjoyed Fairy Tail winning more and the setup is so 'nya, gotcha!' that its hard to feel that anticipatory about them beating down the folks behind it all.  Basically, the front line folks beating them have no motive other than 'make fairy tail look bad', and it's hard to see why if there's been seven years of them failing so far.  The sabretooth folks are so ridiculously above that, sure, it'd be like punching cyclops in the face when they win, but they're hard to get into as rivals (Frankly, the old faces are more interesting there, but there's being almost no sideplay on that).  And then the actual villians behind it all have been off camera the whole time so far, so they're still faceless.

[Merc]

For Dracos:

Spoiler: ShowHide

Itagaki wins. Boo! =(