Random manga chatter

[thepanda]

Umi no Misaki continues to be good.

Negima has had three laugh out loud chapters in a row.

Hayate the Combat Butler is still pretty good.

One Piece is One Piece.

I haven't read Bleach in a while. Not since [spoiler]Ichigo broke down crying. What. A. Turnoff. He will never live that down.{/spoiler] Never.

[Dracos]

Both One Piece and Fairy Tail are in really kind of weird places.  I suppose One Piece is trying to set up Luffy for overcoming an overwhelming disaster but a lot of it just sort of comes off as awkward.

Fairy Tail post timeskip...

Spoiler: ShowHide

I get that pretty everyone who had even a single level in badass was on that island, save Marco.  I get that they lost their magical macguffin of generally enhancing all fairy tail magicians.  I get that their main representative on the council is gone and they literally went from a population in the 60s to in the 20s.

Still, they had friendly allies and Marco was a bit of a badass prior.  You'd think there would be room to recruit.  I guess actually marco wasn't S-rank though, so they also have no S-rank mages in the guild at all and only one B-A ranker trying to hold things together...

Still, looking forward to 'Fairy Tail the Disaster Arc' flipping around.  Seriously, kinda pathetic of the remainder that in seven years, they couldn't make enough money to at least consistently cover rent of their building.  It pretty much establishes the remaining crew as The Fairy Tail Pathetics for the entire rest of the story, no matter what else they do.  They've been permanently removed from the list of folks that can go show off a Moment of Badassery...which is horribly weird given that it was pretty much taken for granted that the entire guild was made up of folks that were ready to do that whenever needed.  Basically, Marcao and his son are they only ones who would even have an opportunity (and really just his son).

Also gotta admit, a seven year skip is a heck of a lot more wacky a time frame to leap than One Piece's 2 year one.  Especially with armegeddon dragon flying around afterwards.

[thepanda]

Not gonna lie, the latest chapter of Naruto was damned good. All the kages should have been godly, but only Madara seems to have been delt with in such a way that you realize just how big a threat he is. That one ninja's "...we're fucked" moment was just perfect. And I now how a working theory on who masked-Madara is.

I guessing he's the will/clone of dead-Madara shaped by the Rinnegen and given life by the Sharingen.

[Dracos]

Eh... it was something.  Sure, it was definitely epic, but it has the problem that countless Kages have shown up already.

Eh, actually, on it's own the chapter was cool.

As a continued escalation level in the Zombie War, well, the zombie war really can't get any more ridiculous so it's kind of like painting a smiley face on it.  The bad guy is pretty much casually summoning without effort folks that are individually equal to an entire city.  The notion of chakra as a limited resource seems to only really apply to the good guys, as the bad guys throw gigantic attacks and summons around effortlessly.   The Kages on the good guys side are shown to be folks that could legitimately take down a dozen or so jonin by themselves.  Comparatively their predecessors are folks that can take on 2-3 of them at the same time with an army behind them.   Hey look, I'm a Kage, I can at least counter a single supermove of Madara... "No, No you can't.  Also my single super move is enough to wipe a village off the map pretty much."  Madara: Now I will show off that I have other awesome leaf moves.

"We were tricked and lured into this war as a group by the name of Madara?"

Really?  cuz either 'fake-Madara' or Snake dude shows enough power to wipe any one great village by themselves in the same way pain did (if not better).  It seems like without everyone joining into the war, it'd be pretty much a no brainer victory for the bad guys.  They could just wipe any of the ninja villages off the map.  Seriously, summoning 3-4 kages seems plenty to wipe a village out of existence.  It isn't even a question of numbers as  they clearly show they can produce sufficient numbers to deal with any mass of ninja.  It looks more like everyone teaming up to literally beat 3 people is the only viable strategy.

Really?  3 people are on the same level as every kage and their entire village, with the most powerful Bijuus thrown in?

Now another single technique shall be used that is equivelent to the 200+ uses of the 4ths best technique?

I gotta admit, more than any other chapter, this has gotten me along to ShaperV's manner of thinking: The villages are peanuts compared to a handful of missing nins that are simply so much better than anyone in a village, it isn't even funny.

While neat for individual scenes, I still prefer S'TarKan or Brian's take on the world, where simply the differences are either more profound at all levels or just generally narrower.  It's not that I mind cool ninjas (exactly the opposite), it's just that the 'limits' have vanished.  It's not just that they can beat the crap out of any ninja of any rank, but that they can beat a near infinite number of ninjas of any rank.

[thepanda]

Thing of it is, this isn't new. The fourth was old, sealed inside a barrier, and had to fight a sage that had already killed and replaced a kage alongside TWO immortal kage and only just lost that fight. Sharperv pretty much nailed it. As far as I can figure, the only reason there weren't more Pain instances is because they weren't in open warfare and every important country had a nuke in the form of a tailed beast.
Hell, Pain lost bodies during the invasion; that fact that he could resurrect them doesn't change that. And with the Sand/Sound invasion Leaf was getting pretty damned wrecked there, too.

[thepanda]

Badass

Spoiler: ShowHide

http://www.mangareader.net/naruto/562/16

[Dracos]

Agreed, that's a cool setup.

[Merc]

The part about "oh, these three random guys? They know the fourth hokage's prized technique btw" was lame though.

[thepanda]

Genma isn't random! He's been around since the chunin exam arc! <-voiced playfully.

Also finally decided to catch up on Bleach and One Piece. Both benefit a great deal from not reading it weekly. I finally figured out the pace for this arc in one piece, and Bleach tends to be light on content anyway.

[Merc]

Well, okay, Raido isn't a new character either if you want to get picky about that. =p

That actually makes it worse too!

Here are two of the guys that got their asses kicked by sound nins right before the sasuke retrieval arc. Sound nins that got -their- asses kicked by genin. Yes, it was two vs four instead of 1vs1...but still, do something to earn your jounin rank! Seriously, 'elite hokage guards'? >_>

The hokages gathered together in a group shot was also honestly not -that- cool either...mostly because the tsuchikage floating there just not to appear the shortest made the scene feel more ridiculous than cool. Which is still good in its own way, I actually laughed at the page spread.

[thepanda]

I kept thinking Naruto was holding him up from behind. >_>

[Merc]

That was my first thought too, actually.

[Dracos]

Mmm, I think it is a cool setup for a fight.

But it's silly in a lot of ways.

All of their heavy hitters (pretty much) just gathered all on a single spot.  Really?  So there's nobody around but Naruto in any of their other spots when Masked Madara decides to fight?
Tsunade has already lost once badly to someone of that level.  Now she's getting wounded to rush there and sacrificing her ace?  Really?  They were that far away from the front?
Merc already hit the retarded 'btw, we can do the super jutsu one'.

meh, don't want to ramble on it more.

Do want to go: Man, power levels are whack in naruto.  Jonins are really the worst there.  They're all over the place, and not even consistently more capable than a team of genin.

[Kt3]

I've been taking a look through Eden no Ori.  Looks rather entertaining, although the premise is a bit worn and beaten.

It's basically, so far, something of a survival genre.  A high school class going on a field trip gets on a plane, runs into what looks like a black hole from nowhere good at noon, and wind up on an unmarked island populated by creatures that should have been extinct thousands upon thousands of years ago.

Yes, there's a Saber-Tooth Tiger in there.

Edit: lazy link

[Dracos]

wahhhh to the recent fairy tail. o_o  Surprising/strange.