I'll get super excited for a new opening when it's actually announced! Unless they surprise us like they did with opening 12 Kaze wo Sagashite, but I wouldn't know as I wasn't caught up back then. To me all but one was a surprise somehow.
But until I know there'll be a new opening, totally gonna support We Go! staying.
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What is it, pj? We finally get to one of the vets (pre-2005) of the magazine and into the best stuff of SJ: Battle Manga! So the premise goes that "No-Good" Sawada Tsunayoshi finds his normal life interrupted by a talking hitman baby named Reborn, who tells him he's the heir of the italian Vongola mafia. Reborn is going to tutor him to run a mafia, which is hard because Tsuna lacks intelligence, physical aptitude, confidence, and even motivation! But when Reborn shoots Tsuna in the head with his special bullet, Tsuna is "Reborn," the last unfulfilled desire he thought of becomes his sole motivation for a few minutes and does everything in his power to achieve it. Pretty zany, huh!? It was the premise of a gag manga that after 7 volumes ditched the genre to hop into full battle mode, but still manages to never ditch its premise, though I suppose it does get forgotten in the complexities of the arc stories.
Characters Probably where the series falters the most, mostly because of 1-dimensional characters all around. Not that many of them aren't entertaining, but you'd expect the zero-to-hero premise to create a more interesting protagonist. Because of the nature of Tsuna's transformation, he pretty much acts as zero AND hero without development at all. He manages to not have grown at all since the beginning and yet transform into a super cool badass so that he can fight when the battles come up. The transformation IS cool, but still you'd think his normal self would merge or something. Then as part of this team of people, you have a bunch of his friends that are pretty much the most boring side characters you could ever have, just waiting for villain's henchmen to appear so they can get their battles in. The villains fare much better. The rival protagonists are all anti-hero types that through various circumstances end up helping out Tsuna now and then, and end up having more depth to them even if it's silly sometimes. Can't really say too much without going really in-depth and/or spoiling so we'll just leave it at that. I said villains in the beginning but Reborn! follows Dragon Ball syndrome where the main cast is pretty much full of defeated villains.
Story Despite Tsuna's story about becoming a mafia boss kind of boring and never really gone into because of the whole "status quo" thing, there are a lot of subplots and backstories that are interesting and slowly get revealed as the series goes on. The reason why a baby is one of the strongest hitman alive, the story of the founding of Vongola, and even Tsuna's own family have cool consequences to the story that are nicely woven into the plot of the current arcs. The author even throws mysteries at the reader, for example, introducing a mysterious character who helps the protagonist, and then disappears without any resolution in the arc he appeared. It's kinda One Piece-like, when the author promises mysteries to be unveiled in the future. Good plot overall that even puts uninteresting characters into interesting positions (or forgets about them if they're that bad).
Art Good stuff. The characters are drawn from lots of different angles, their clothes and backgrounds can get pretty detailed, and there's a whole lot of style, especially in regards to shading. Lots of sharpness and memorable varied designs. Probably one of my favorite artists.
Action It's pretty good all around. Lots of different styles of fighting, though mostly stylistic differences. A cool energy system that differentiates itself from others. Essentially described as the "flames" of willpower that manifest themselves in all people, based on weather patterns or bodies. For example a person might have Rain flames, Sun flames, or Lightning flames. The flames dictate what kind of properties their moves; a Mist person is usually a master of illusions, while a Cloud person tends to have a weapon that specializes in multiplying or cloning something. Finally, they tend to serve as a horoscope of sorts. The Storm person has a fierce personality and the Sky user is the leader of the group. There are downsides though. It suffers from the Bleach syndrome of one-sided talky battles being ended by a sudden power-up or new weapon. Exchange of blows isn't common. What makes it worse is that these power-ups and new weapons are usually obsolete by the next major battle. Every arc introduces new additions to the arsenal that are essential to fighting the current villains and then forgotten by the next time. It got a bit better though. Worth mentioning the humor aspect of the gag portion would probably receive a fairly low grade. It just eventually gets old when each character has their quirk that just gets re-used every chapter. The only new source of material comes from a character introduction, and that eventually stops after about 2 volumes.
Story: B+ Characters: C Art: A Action: B
Overall:B+
Didn't expect to write so much! What can I say? Battle shonen is my passion!
This really sucks. Forlaget Carlsen (Danish puplishers of some big manga series) announed that they will no longer puplish One Piece in Volume 59 which came out this week.
They dropped Fullmetal Alchemist and Fruits Basket last year. Naruto would be all they have left then, unless they drop that too. It's suddenly impressive that they managed to complete Dragonball. 1/5 out of now 2 possible.
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Nio-chan and Ctes: http://img.imgcake.com/nio/Untitledpngyn.png BroAndCharAndCtes: http://i.imgur.com/oBQfY.png
Seriously, I can't get this out of my mind right now. First there's no new chapter, but hey, Volume 59 to read in Danish now, the peak of the war, all good, and then all terrible again when I get to that page.
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Nio-chan and Ctes: http://img.imgcake.com/nio/Untitledpngyn.png BroAndCharAndCtes: http://i.imgur.com/oBQfY.png
I guess they might. I mean it did sell well enough. Naruto has surpassed it, but it did fine. I emailed them, asking them why they hell they even did so, when it was selling good enough.
Here's still hoping that it's a three day late April Fools joke -_-
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Nio-chan and Ctes: http://img.imgcake.com/nio/Untitledpngyn.png BroAndCharAndCtes: http://i.imgur.com/oBQfY.png
I also began (re)watching Dragon Ball today. I remembered the first episode quite well. There's some parts out there I haven't watched though. Now I'm going through all of it.
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Nio-chan and Ctes: http://img.imgcake.com/nio/Untitledpngyn.png BroAndCharAndCtes: http://i.imgur.com/oBQfY.png
GranzonEx posted... The only insurance you can buy is learning Japanese.
Iunno I took Japanese for three years in high school and was nowhere near fluent enough to read untranslated stuff (and I'm even worse now that a few years have passed!). Seems like way too much work to ensure you can get your manga fix!
-- No I'm not a damn furry. Looney Tunes are different. - Guiga I wanted Sonic/Shadow romance at that time, not sex. - MWE
That would have been cool to follow Death Note like that.
I followed it with English volumes, back when I was a baby manga follower. I don't even know if I had seen anything One Piece related yet. Probably just Dragon Ball and Naruto.
Whatever they do next should be amazing too. Hopefully something completely different too.
I still remember people raging about the second half every week.
It's gonna be interesting to see how much longer they are going to take to wrap this thing up. Still crossing my fingers for a Bakuman manga in the manga!
They've done two mangas that completely breaks the WSJ mold. I'm very excited for their next piece. Maybe they will do something like Panty Flash Fight LOL
From: GranzonEx | #282 There's a special place for Bakuman in my heart. I truly am blessed to have followed both Death Note and Bakuman while they were still printing.
Speaking of this....from a post I saw on OT about the latest chapter of Bakuman...
"If we think about it normally, they'll have a new enemy, like a grey (Near) or gold (Mello) one." "Is that a joke!?"
Lulz, Ohba and Obata are really bitter about having to extend DN, aren't they?
Gotta like it when the creators make fun of their own work.
So she's the daughter of Gildarts! Interesting, and now it seems like I'll see him fight, awesome. Although Cana was just about to have a great moment there.
New and good opening and ending too. Mostly the opening. The ending didn't feature any character, instead it's a little trip through all the arcs, except the filler one. That makes it even dumber of them to not make ending 9 focus on Cana.
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This crossover was pretty good, except for the animation in the Toriko part. One Piece part had good animation. I prefer the best and the hottest character ever over Sanji, so yeah nice change. Though he could be there too, well he was later on. Part 2 was clearly surperior.
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Nio-chan and Ctes: http://img.imgcake.com/nio/Untitledpngyn.png BroAndCharAndCtes: http://i.imgur.com/oBQfY.png
Freed and Bickslow are back just in time, cause Levi, Lisanna and Lily (oh triple L apparently) couldn't have won that match against Rustyrose. Azuma really became their trumpf card this episode though. Destroying the tree, sucking out the power of all Fairy Tail wizards. That also means he has to fall next for the other mathes to really continue. It better not affect Gildarts vs. Bluenote in a bad way. Ultear isn't fighting Gray so it doesn't really do anything there. If Fairy Tail wins this, Azuma can look back and see that they wouldn't won had he not given Erza the chance to fight.
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Nio-chan and Ctes: http://img.imgcake.com/nio/Untitledpngyn.png BroAndCharAndCtes: http://i.imgur.com/oBQfY.png