I guess Usuta makes/made enough to support the family, so she's not too pressured about having to make a living out of it. It's probably easier for her to control the workload with having a kid and all.
Oda's fight choreography is still great - when he takes his time to actually show it. A shining example of it is the recent Katakuri fight which gets almost universal acclaim from all around the very broad One Piece audience.
Is this a "why does a mangaka do manga" kind of question?
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I thought the fights in Dressorosa was disappointing honestly with Zoro's fight with Pika being among the worst fights in the series (then again Zoro's fights has deteriorated sharply as the manga went on). A big criticism from what I've seen with his fights nowadays is that he tends to stall which drags them out a lot, of course we remember the infamous birdcage from Dressorosa, even now with the current fight with Katakuri gets bogged down due to frequent switching between events and not much progress being made so a potential good fight will become boring quickly.
Ohkubo's art was very amateurish before Soul Eater anime so the shift was pretty big though his strong point has never been his character designs rather his technical skill as an artist and his tendency to experiment a lot with shading and detail which actually has not been lost when he stopped doing monthly serializations. I'll say he benefited a lot from anime influence. I'll say Kubo regressed a lot as an artist the more Bleach went on with his only claim to fame being his character designs and even that got bad towards the end where he lost his motivation. I think I just need to see him draw something other than Bleach to see if he really lost his touch or if it was just him getting sick of Bleach.
All of this is connected - with the world expanding and narrative becoming so dense with characters, Oda has to disperse his focus and slow down the pace of the story. Of course, I won't argue that the birdcage was a major factor in slowing down the Dressrosa arc story pace - but the way I figure it, it was the solution Oda came up with to his Straw Hat Grand Fleet plot. Certainly, Oda could have done better, but I don't think that at this point he is interested in stalling for its own sake, it's the opposite, really, he's been 20 years at this and isn't getting any younger. That doesn't change the fact Oda is at his best when he focuses on a single scene. Which I think applies to the Katakuri fight - it's comes in self-contained segments and doesn't get interrupted without need.
Soul Eater anime had some interesting visuals but they were mostly along the same lines that Ohkubo's art has been developing so I don't recall any signficant shift but rather a gradual progression. Initially, he was very heavily inspired by modern street art, and still shows in every aspect of his work, both technical and creative, and especially his strong character design (which has been limited in Enen no Shouboutai somewhat.)
That's why I said that I think he regressed as a comic artist - during the serialization of Bleach he was heavily influenced by anime and cinema to the point his manga came to resemble a storyboard. Which isn't a bad thing on its own and can do wonders if done carefully - but not when it becomes the default look of a comic book with pages of intense camera closeups and dramatically swirling dust or what have you. However, on a technical level he developed by quite a lot. So I agree with you that we need to see a new work of his to find out where exactly does that all put him - for example, his coming one-shot.
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Volume Release Dates:
Initial reactions before watching the video: I want to see if I find out anything new or interesting.
The video didn't revel any new information that people who follow WSJ each week didn't already know.
I still don't entirely buy that the editor in chief decides the final placement of the where a series is placed in the TOC depending on his mood that in MY OPINION gives the Editor in Chief way more power then he should over something the company harps the is supposedly a philosophy that the readers decided which series survives or not. Also I take things that mangaka and by some extension editors themselves say in regards to how WSJ operates with a grain of salt because either A.) It's just there own speculation on how it truly works mainly since we don't know how much their editors are allowed to share with them on things like that, and B.) I wouldn't be surprised if the former Editor in Chief was not being truthful since to me WSJ would have some sort of gag-order on all employees and former employees that restricts them from reveling company secrets. That's not to say I believe that the TOC is a 1:1 with the actual rankings but there is still information that we are missing in regards to that and I honestly don't think it has to do with the editor in chiefs mood of the week.
Is a ironic post, right ?
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He received it. Last week was fifth.