Random manga chatter

[thepanda]

Ouch.

[Dracos]

So who else is enjoying Ippo's return to a fierce fight?

[Rukatin]

Currently Bleach has been getting serious. Sure it has It's moments, But I think It's on it's final stretch and has finally decided to be enjoyable to read. For instance, Rukia went Bankai an actually won a major fight.
I think the problem most people have with bleach is that they watch it as an anime first. If you try and watch it all at once like that, well... It gets repetitive. Read it in Manga form, and in arcs at a time. Otherwise, it comes off as Shit.

Anyways, I like the Direction Fairy Tail has been headed as well. That has always been my favorite Manga.

[Dracos]

Sometimes I click on Bleach or Naruto alongside my One Piece reading.

They've been pretty terrible lately.  Zombie vs Zombie vs Zombie vs Undead God vs... "Really, how many dead things are going to be front and center in a non-horror arc?"

In the same spot I encounter those, they scanslate History's Strongest Disciple.

And that is always a resounding statement lately that it could be much much worse.  Lots of nudity of fairly poorly drawn women.  It's gone from a tits and street fighting story that was at least swallowable as cheesy read to "Wow, hey we don't have to worry about nudity guidelines anymore, so here's naked women every couple frames, and btw, everyone is fighting for stupid things."  If naruto and bleach both have been in a land of wacky all over the placeness lately, HSDK has just been in a ridiculous tailspin.

[Empyrean]

I've been a little surprised at Naruto lately. It's been going downhill for a long time, and got hilariously bad when they introduced a new real ultimately villain behind the other villains like five times in a row over the course of a couple of chapters. Then they actually had a couple of decent chapters in a row earlier this month. They're just fighting chapters, but they remind me of the earlier stuff (Clones! Subterfuge! Punching!) instead of the more recent fights which are all just spamming high powered jutsu that don't work.

Couple other things I've been reading:

http://www.batoto.net/comic/_/comics/mahou-tsukai-no-yome-r10801

This one has a pretty unique feel to it. I was wary at first; the premise had some serious squick potential (an older man buys a girl at a slave auction, and says she's going to be his wife?) but it's actually turned out really well. There are only 8 chapters out so far, but they're about 40 pages each. It's a monthly release. Pretty mellow pace, not much actual romance for a "romance" manga. So far it's got a lot of build up, hinting at secrets well kept, and encounters with the various denizens of a hidden magical world. Published in a shounen magazine I guess, but it feels like seinen to me.

http://www.batoto.net/comic/_/comics/lasboss-x-hero-r9399

There is a lot of meta weirdness going on in this manga. It's about a mangaka who is trying to salvage his crappy manga from poor ratings. He decides he needs to kill off the heroine of his story to encourage somebody else to have a big showdown with a final boss of some sort, and then somehow end up inside his own story. He can still exercise some degree of control over the story world itself as the author, but things start screwing with his plans for the story and he relies on messing with tropes to keep events rolling as he wants them to. It might be a metaphor for authors getting in fights with their editors; I don't even know. The art kind of sucks (still better than Bleach, in my opinion), but the story gets engrossing as it goes on. Hell of a cliffhanger with the latest chapter.

Oh... don't read the comments section. It's packed full of unmarked spoilers, because people are morons.

[Merc]

It's a short read so far, only 8 chapters released, but I'm enjoying Tate No Yuusha No Nariagari (The rise of the shield hero) so far.

Spoiler: ShowHide

It's a pretty cliched set-up... four young men are summoned from the normal world to a fantasy world, each meant to be one of four legendary heroes: The Sword Hero, The Bow Hero, The Spear Hero, and The Shield Hero. Their task is to defeat waves of monsters that are planning to invade the kingdom.

The Shield Hero is the protagonist, and from the start it's obvious he gets no respect because his legendary 'weapon' is a shield. The world apparently runs on video game logic (ala The Gamer or other video game type stories) and according to everyone, nobody ever levels up shields outside of newbies (the other heroes think they're in a virtual MMO).

To make matters worse, he gets framed as a rapist and thief simply because someone wanted to take advantage of the 'unpopular' hero and be better geared to join her preferred hero.

Along with all the shit piled on him, the only way to get home is to defeat all the coming monster waves, as the only way that he could be replaced is if all four legendary heroes died. So he's pretty much expected to stick around and fight, or at worst just stay out of the other heroes' way... But because he's so clearly a terrible person, everyone in the kingdom will know his crimes!

The shield hero basically has a breakdown, and he's willing to do dirty things as a result of his weaknesses, including purchasing a slave to fight for him for example. Despite it all, he stays a decent human being underneath an exterior of hatred, rage, and almost bordering on misanthropy. Where all the other heroes go after the fame and glory, he's the ones defending the people that think him a rapist and thief.

So, yeah, utterly cliched but what can I say...? I'm just a sucker for underdogs.

[Rukatin]

1/2 Prince finished...

Spoiler: ShowHide

horribly. I mean we went from 'bloody final boss' fight to 'hooray everyone lives happily ever after' in only several pages! What the hell! It even slapped mpreg in there for some reason! Terrible ending to a good manga.

[Dracos]

I read a bit of tate, but really couldn't bring myself to continue a story that was lining up from the very get-go to have everyone shitting on the protagonist as an important part of the story.  I can enjoy underdogs, but it seemed like it was going toward piling bullshit on top of bullshit.

[Empyrean]

I read a bit of tate, but really couldn't bring myself to continue a story that was lining up from the very get-go to have everyone shitting on the protagonist as an important part of the story.  I can enjoy underdogs, but it seemed like it was going toward piling bullshit on top of bullshit.

It's not really like that, although it seems that way at first. More detailed spoilers follow:

Spoiler: ShowHide

The last time that Heroes were summoned, there was a conflict of sorts between the humans and the demihumans. The Shield Hero sided with the demihumans, which is why Raphtalia (his demihuman slave) grew up hearing stories from her parents about what a great guy the Shield Hero was. He's got awful PR with the faction that summoned him, but he's not universally hated and he does have a few really solid allies. Plenty of WAFF from his interactions with Raphtalia, too.

[Dracos]

Fair enough, still too much, too quickly, with too little sign of positive.

[Dracos]

So Naruto ends with a classic fanservice: Here's how everyone hooked up.

[KLSymph]

Well, let's all pat ourselves on the back for going with the book ends cliche.

Seriously, what do you guys think of the ending?  I'm not feeling it.  By that, I mean I don't feel anything about any particular aspect of it.  Not satisfaction in finishing the story, not triumph in the protagonist's victory, not longing for more.  Maybe a vague sense of "I guess that happened" lightly spiced with "why does full color make the character art look uglier than usual" and "introducing a bunch of kids doesn't make me care about them".

This ending seemed really impersonal, honestly.  If you're going with book ends, and the first chapter was a 50-page narrative showing Naruto and his place in the village, then I think the last chapter should be a similar view of what Naruto's day is like now that he's grown through this story.  Not some twenty pages of flitting between multiple families and a bit of Naruto towards the end.

[Dracos]

Well, they basically added a decade onto everyone and the coloring wasn't very good.  Naruto was one of the few that actually was angled at a way to not look terrible on top of that, positioning-wise.  Shannaro.  @_@  It'd be really unlikely for any of them to really come across well.  Some of them explicitly were made uglier as well.

It does largely lampshade the ridiculous culture/tech difference having giant cities around this apparently pointless village that dictates everything important and of course the giant animal creatures are just hanging out, totally comfortable in these cramped towns.

[thepanda]

So Sakura is taking care of Karen's kid? Am I reading that right?

[KLSymph]

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?