Mag Talk Weekly Shonen Jump [2018] - Discussion and TOC Talk

[Tymano]

What was your top 5 manga (WSJ) for the year? Mine are:

1. HZ
2. One Piece
3. Kimetsu No Yaiba
4. HxH
5. Jujutsu Kaisen

I haven't really gotten the chance to read Gintama/MHA since Im more anime fans for those. Im curious to see which series you guys enjoyed the most this year. (not overall)

1. World Trigger
2. One Piece
3. Kimetsu
4. Dr. Stone
5. Jujutsu

I'm glad that both World Trigger and Jujutsu were able to surprise me this year.

 

[101nemesis]

I can't really rank any series since;
I haven't read all of Jujutsu, just about 15ish chapters.
I stopped Dr. Stone.
I haven't gone past chapter 10 of TPN despite loving the first 10 chapters and being intrigued as fuck.
Haven't read Kimetsu after chapter 50 ish despite loving it till that point.
Didn't even read the chapters of HxH.

The only manga I read on a continuous basis are One Piece, MHA and Kingdom.Can't really seem to find time otherwise.

One Piece this year has been the best it's been since before the time skip. So, there is no way I could stop now.
Kingdom is my fav series of all time, so no way am I stopping that. it's the series I look forward to the most.
And MHA is just me enjoying the art and the characters even if the last 40-50 chapters have felt only about 6/10 at best. The fight bit with Hawk was great tho.

 

[Nakura]

1. Hinomaru Sumo
2. Kimetsu no Yaiba
3. My Hero Academia
4. Teenage Renaissance! David
5. Jujutsu Kaisen

For reference, I don't read:
Food Wars, Act-age, We Never Learn, Jimoto Ga Japan, Dr. Stone, One Piece

I am behind on:
Haikyu, Hunter x Hunter, Yuuna

 

[DyanSon]

I read all the series except Stone and TpN(just going to anime this)
OP
HXH
MHA
KnY
AA

 

[savethecat]

Spoiler

You're just making another stock comment. You're not saying why its interesting or why its fun juts that YOU find it as such.


Character A - I need a particular skill
Character B- I have that skill
Precedes to use thus skill and have no character or relevance outside thus skill. And this goes on for the rest of the manga. This is not how a dynamic works.

Like I said. The people who like this manga have a very hard time explaining what makes it good.


Where did I ever say its impossible to like it? What you like is your own damn business I'm just trying to prove that not anyone will find the same things you like fun or interesting.

--- Double Post Merged, Dec 6, 2018, Original Post Date: Dec 6, 2018 ---

You using those as examples does not prove you case especially Kubo.

You keep negating the reason why people say they like it.

1. The character are just cool to me. I love Senku. I love Chrome. I love Kohaku, Suika is a cute character, and Gen is pretty funny.
To me, those characters mesh well together, and Senku and Chrome’s dynamic as “Modern day genius” and “Stone Age genius” is always fun to me.

2. While I’m aware that a lot of characters are only defined by their skills, I don’t really mind or see it as a negative in context to the series. Sure Magma is the jock who’s only defined by his strength. But his rivalry with Senku and constantly trying to kill him is funny to me.

3. The art is amazing as well as the designs. Especially the the designs for the Stone Aged inventions, like Senku’s tank. Currently

Spoiler

they’re building a ship, and I’m excited to see how’s Senku’s stone aged boat will look

.

4. Sometimes seeing the Stone aged designs of this modern day objects and seeing how they work is motivation to keep reading.
When Senku ended one chapter with “Now we’re going to make a cell phone”, curiosity got the best of me.
“How will a cell phone even work in the Stone Age?”. “How will the cell phone look?”
Seeing how he creates it and how it all comes together is reading motivation.

And as people said, Stone is clearly meant to be more kid friendly than a lot of other series. When I compared it to the Simpsons I was more so thinking American cartoons in general. Was just naming the Simpsons as an example
I get the same from Stone as I do watching a Cartoon Network Show. Every chapter/small arc is a new shenanigan, and
Something new to invent.

 

[CuriousReborn]

I read most series except the David, HxH, Yuuna and Japan.
1-KnY
2-One Piece
3-Haikyuu
4-Neverland
5-WT
6-Gintama
7-Dr Stone
8-AA
9-BC
10-MHA
11-JJ
12-WNL
Last- Soma
MHA is my favorite manga, but I would be lying if I said that I enjoyed it nearly as much as I did with the other series.

 

[Lizard_Boots]

I really got to give it to you guys for being able to follow so many manga at the same time. I don’t know how you guys do it. The only two I’ve actually bothered to go from start to finish are Naruto and Gintama and even then, I only got into Gintama because of the anime.

 

[TyVip]

One piece, act age, TPN, mha, david in that order of enjoyment. Caught up to mha this year. New series are rank higher.

Only One Piece manage to go “OMG OMG i want to read the next chapter asap.”

Kei Yonagi is too precious. TPN magic is slowly running out, i still like it but when there are weapon in the formula it doesn’t work.

Caught up to MHA couple months ago. Fun series but maybe because i binged it/got spoil on here none of the arcs are Hype. Best arc is Stain. Casts are super under develop.

David jokes are cliche as it gets but the famous painting stuff is what pull me in lol.

Plan for next year hopefully catch up to hinomaru zumou, gintama and black clover.

 

[ChocoBar9]

Its progression of character skillsets is paced extremely poorly, with the majority of characters never levelling up except during "class wide training arcs" which showcase them for ten seconds and then are never seen again.

Everything that was showcased throughout this current arc are improvements on stuff that was shown in previous arcs. We were also shown Kirishima's unbreakable phase during the Yakuza arc.

Even deku's powerups are getting boring. We've already seen 100% technically. So what could possibly be next? As opposed to nen and devil fruit which are more flexible yet make internal sense, the powers in boku no hero are getting extremely restrictive IMO which leads to it being tough to make this better as well.

You say this when OP just introduced a fruit that can allow users to travel into the future and steal souls and infused them into objects and nen which makes no sense under any situation and is whatever is convenient at the story's expense.Deku is more so trying to expand his moveset than increase his power level number since that was something he would have never attempeted otherwise without the circumstances in the arc present. I actually feel the restrictiveness if a positive because far too often in manga do we have a "can do anything" mindset with abilities that not a lot of time is being spent on how they would work beyond the initial setting, their weaknesses and plot hole inducing "well why didn't XXX do XXX". Its why Araki had to essentially reboot Jojo because the powers got way too out of hand.

Also, at this point characters are just pulling moves out of their ass, or training in the background and then pulling moves out of their ass, or doing moves that in-universe make sense but that we've never seen anything about the character before so there's no way it can't make sense. Especially in the recent team fight chapters. So it's literally the same in my eyes as black clover at this point in terms of how ass-pull the attacks are, which is toning down the realism for me. Especially Manga's attack, like how do you expect to keep the realism in the manga without building that up for a while before introducing a literally sound effect attack. Even Koichi in Jojo built up his sound powers up over a hundred chapters, and even then there was a feeling of shock and discovery of the characters to facilitate that skill growth.

I don't think there's ever been a point where a character just pulled a move out their ass in MHA, plenty of "near death situations being saved by willpower" but nothing in the realm of "Hisoka having to ability to revive himself with his nen" yet. And I con't care how many detailed explanations fans can push on me that's still an asspull. Its like how Luffy first used his Gears now nowhere in the manga did we see him actually train to do this BUT its perfectly logical (in OP's sense) that he'll be able to utilized his devil fruit abilities in that way and Heroaca works on that sort of stance because we know that teh characters are always working to improve.

Up til now, I think the team fights have not been meeting their potential. In the past, all team fights have been is character A attacks and then character B attacks. There are way more fights that essentially end up being mano a mano despite technically having more people involved. The ones I can think of is Stain, in which the "team" component is both Deku and Iida punching/kicking the guy at the same time, and also when Todoroki wasn't paralyzed he used his powers. I wouldn't call that great team play.

Stain fight was not mano a mano, one character had to essentially be on one another because Stain was not only physically durable he was also incredibly fast. The last clash being Deku and Iida was more so do to Todoroki trapping him in a corner for Iida and Deku to hit him with one final powerful hit followed by Todoroki's fire to knock him out...and it still technically didn't work. None of them could actually fight him head on so they essentially had to trick him.

When they rescued Bakugou that was making an ice ramp and running on it. Not a creative use of all of their abilities IMO. In the playing with toddlers arc Todoroki did what...? Oh, he made another ice structure. And then the wind guy did what? Oh, he made a hurricane... which is literally all he's done since he was introduced, to break the ice structure. And luckily it looked as beautiful as a lights show.

This doesn't make any sense since none of these were about fighting. The rescue attempt was about Deku utilizing the abilities of those around him in a very narrow and limited timeframe to escape with Bakugou in hand without fighting which also needed to account of Bakugou cooperating to begin with. The next one is just grasping for straws, there was not much they could have done but put on a pretty lightshow for kids also you're criticizing someone for using this quirk the way he's always does. I don't get it.

I honestly find the battle scenes to be hard to understand. I actually agree that the gomu gomu enemy had one of the best battles for fight choreography, but choreography is my next point. Here, I want to point out that it's really convoluted and hard to understand. This image https://s2.mangadex.org/data/4f1aa1421cbd51a6516acb0d9cc4dd5f/A8.png (not picking and choosing too unfairly here) represents the confusion. So panel one, gomu gomu jumps on Deku? But next panel we see Deku has taken a blow to the gut? And next panel he's moving in straight lines all around the panel, which I'd say is logically easy to understand, but not a great way to do it.

In the first panel we see Gentle attacking Deku through the rib as we see the impact in the second the in the third we see him gaining more momentum with his quirk by bouncing it against the trees to set up another powerful attack in the fourth panel which is suppose to convey the moment in speed Gentle is going to hit.This is simple stuff.

I think Bellamy's hops around the screen, Luffy's snake mode arm hopping around the screen, and even Speed of Sound Sonic hopping around the screen to an extent is done better than this hopping around the screen in terms of understanding his actual motion. In that panel it just feels like the motion of a bowling ball being launched around, instead of a human having to adjust his landings, actually creating the rubber landing spots, etc. etc. Not all of this is well conveyed to the fullest of its potential.

Now you see that was already portrayed in the previous chapters.

Spoiler

The exact same thing. What you're complaining about is a shorthand version of the same attack we already saw as stance. Funnily enough this is what you consider an improvement.

Spoiler

In terms of choreography, I would say, check Gintama for amazing hand-to-hand/sword-to-sword fight choreography, which is essentially what 90% of Boku no Hero's battles boil down to anyway, punching and kicking or occasionally launching projectiles.

Yeah this is where you lost my. Sorachi's strength is definitely not his art let alone fight choreography considering none of Gintama's fights are choreographed well or even last long enough to be considered a fight (though the last one did drag considerable but that was mainly because not much was being done.) Also in case you don't know all fights come down to punching and kicking or occasionally launching projectiles at least where shounen manga is considered.

As you can see in the gomu gomu battle the choreography is basically the guy bouncing around in straight lines. Basically Bellamy, and that guy only deserved two pages to take him down. It's simply not interesting for the battle

Once again you're in the minority and I don't even think people even remembers Bellamy's fight to begin with, the whole point of it was that Bellamy talked a big game and that Luffy never took him seriously that all he needed was one hit to beat him as a character Gentle was a lot more pronounced and the way he utilized his quirk was not only more interesting but not even close to Bellamy's springs.

The Endeavor fight was shooting fire, then getting ... actually let me check again, it was so bland I already forgot. Okay so the new model enemy was swinging its limbs. Endeavor blasted the guy with fire.

His first attack was trying to ensnare him with his flames like a Spider Web

Spoiler

Then he launched himself with fire and punched him. Then he did that again, but extra hard and called it prominence burn.

How is this a punch?

Spoiler

And for teamwork Hawk threw some feathers at the guy.

Hawks was the one who brought Endeavor up to launch his final attack using his feather to destroy it.

Spoiler

Of course, it was presented beautifully, and especially launching Endeavor through the building was jaw-dropping. But the choreography boils down to "punch him away" except it's really hard punches that push you in a straight line through a building now.

Endeavor wasn't trying to "punch him away" he was trying to incinerate his body cells to stop him from regenerating. This is literally the only punch thrown in the entire fight. And even then it was just a launching point for his attack to burn him up entirely with his flame.

Spoiler

Boku no Hero's first and second seasons went crazy with the amount of translating motion but in the 3rd season it's been a little rough especially due to the movie, and it's been a lot more linear in nature, since that's all the original work gave them in terms of motion anyway.

Even the sakugabooru for it shows that third season was more consistently well animated and fights were mostly changed from the manga as well so yeah don't know what the hell you're talking about here.
And all of that is not even considering the untapped potential of the larger world, even within Japan; character development/backstories; pacing and having more cohesive themes throughout; having better flow and transitioning between stories, etc, which I think are bigger issues than all of the above.

Honestly to be the devil's advocate maybe if Horikoshi took a break, and reviewed a bit of what other mangaka are up to, not that he's any less than them, but just as a quick refresher, I think he could come back with a lot more ideas. Because slowly, it does feel like he's, if not writing himself into a corner, making it harder and harder for him to write an interesting story, since he is so burdened by the rigid laws of the society he created, the rigid boundaries of the super powers he created, and the unchanging, constant school setting he locked himself into. The initial setup of a manga is everything, even 300 chapters down the line, and Boku no Hero made a few choices in the beginning that could have been chosen better IMO.

Taking a break won't change anything . Togashi takes break all the time but the writing and art for HxH is still the same. Ashihara took a break for two years and World Trigger's writing and art did not change. Hell Kubo took a one month break from Bleach and still dished out the worse written, sloppily drawn arc in the series. Its like people just don't know what they're talking about.

However one thing that has changed is, it is developing the world better than Boku no Hero is now, since in Black Clover, the original setting is that they get to go out and adventure randomly, which is nice and unrestrictive, but on Boku no Hero, they literally need an excuse to leave the school since they're trapped in there for security's sake. Horikoshi literally has to write himself out of plot holes just to get them to go out of the school, and the school setting has been getting stale for me. He says he wants to continue it for 30 to 40 volumes but at this rate if the whole time they're in school... anyway that's a digression.

You mean having internships, which has been established since the beginning, is him writing himself out of plotholes.

Also, mostly simply, "quality" and all aside, Black Clover has just gotten to be more fun to me than Boku no Hero. Which is 100% taste-based, so the majority of you that enjoy Boku no Hero more, are 100% in the right. For me, it's just that Boku no Hero doesn't seem to have a clear direction throughout, and even within smaller arcs. It doesn't paint you a picture of coming events IMO. Like could you expect this progression of events? Raid on training camp -> Fight against the endgame boss -> Another tournament arc -> Attacking a Yakuza's base -> School festival -> Endeavor and Hawks vs ??? -> another tournament arc (basically) -> I don't think I'm being unfair with this, the tone and theme shifts around too much to be realistic, but takes itself too seriously for us to feel that this kind of thing can happen naturally. Right now the simplicity of Black Clover is really to its favor. Each chapter we know that they're going to fight the elves. And then after this arc there is a vs. Diamond Kingdom arc. Etc.

What tournament arc? There's only been one tournament arc throughout the entire manga. The Internship arc was one big long school free arc that needed to be followed by a relatively light Remedial arc which was to kickstart Endeavor's character development then the School festival which was a breather from the last big arc followed by the Pro Hero arc which was following up from Endeavor's character development in the Remedial arc leading to much more development of the plot followed by another training exercise the first we've gotten in a good while, this is how its always operated since the very beginning the manga is and always will be about Deku's adventures at UA training to be a hero how does it not have clear direction when its still about that? Seems to me that you just don't care about that aspect of it. I would give Black Clover a lot less slack if what what happening was actually interesting , won't deny that there's an audience that just want simplicity in their battle manga but you act as if there's a lot more going on when there's simply not and it doesn't help that the elves themselves are not interesting antagonists.

Imagine Boku no Hero but instead we already know that next, the MC is fighting Big Mom, and then Kaidou, and then Blackbeard, and all the challenges he has to overcome, etc. I think there's a direction that's lacking.

And this is why you're not a writer. I think Horikoshi knows what he wants to do with his story more than you do, his characters are another story, but the lowscale and slow progression isn't a bad thing in the slightest. I personally like the fact that he's avoided the pitfalls of Naruto and Bleach in trying to up the ante every single arc by "increasing the stakes" and instead focusing more on developing his characters and setting since they're all still in their first years after all. Its the opposite of Black which just goes fast paced negating the character development entirely for more battles against literal whos with no investment to care, look how many people gave a shit about the 3rd match up in a training arc for MHA than any battle in the current arc in BC which just goes to show that both series despite coming from the same genre and having near identical stables are appealing to widely different audiences.

--- Double Post Merged, Dec 7, 2018, Original Post Date: Dec 7, 2018 ---

?

His writing gets really shaky when it comes to Bakugou and the fans don't really seem to care.

--- Double Post Merged, Dec 7, 2018 ---

You keep negating the reason why people say they like it.

1. The character are just cool to me. I love Senku. I love Chrome. I love Kohaku, Suika is a cute character, and Gen is pretty funny.
To me, those characters mesh well together, and Senku and Chrome’s dynamic as “Modern day genius” and “Stone Age genius” is always fun to me.

There's not a lot to any of those characters, Kohaku in general is just there and feels like the obligatory female lead but does less and less as time goes by.

2. While I’m aware that a lot of characters are only defined by their skills, I don’t really mind or see it as a negative in context to the series. Sure Magma is the jock who’s only defined by his strength. But his rivalry with Senku and constantly trying to kill him is funny to me.

I'm of the opinion that a character needs to have more than a single trait about them to be compelling

3. The art is amazing as well as the designs. Especially the the designs for the Stone Aged inventions, like Senku’s tank. Currently

Spoiler

they’re building a ship, and I’m excited to see how’s Senku’s stone aged boat will look

I'll give you that the art is generally stellar but the designs (character designs) suck and not in the deliberately ugly way like Oda does but in general Bouchi thought this looked cool/attarctive shit when it clearly doesn't

4. Sometimes seeing the Stone aged designs of this modern day objects and seeing how they work is motivation to keep reading.
When Senku ended one chapter with “Now we’re going to make a cell phone”, curiosity got the best of me.
“How will a cell phone even work in the Stone Age?”. “How will the cell phone look?”
Seeing how he creates it and how it all comes together is reading motivation.

Then just watch The Flintstones.

And as people said, Stone is clearly meant to be more kid friendly than a lot of other series. When I compared it to the Simpsons I was more so thinking American cartoons in general. Was just naming the Simpsons as an example
I get the same from Stone as I do watching a Cartoon Network Show. Every chapter/small arc is a new shenanigan, and
Something new to invent.

So it has the average quality as an average modern CN show? That makes sense.

 

[Tamil]

Maybe Ill get into David eventually. I remember being put off by David since it has European inspirations. Sick and tired of series having inspirations only from like Europe/USA . There's other parts of the globe, jesus christ. JJBA, my beloved series gets on my nerves at times with this too. Its a small personal nitpick really, nothing to hinder the quality of the manga too much.

Pretty hyped to read Hoshin Engi since it has inspirations from chinese mythology . (If I can find the time)

 

[RafaFedKilla]

From what I’ve read of Jujutsu I like it.
I was one of the few people that had faith in it from chapter 1.
However I don’t get the immense praise it’s been getting. Like jeez, it’s a solid series, but I see people acting like it’s the best series in Jump this decade.

People are hungry for battle shonen because of the crap the EiC is putting out...

 

[savethecat]

Everything that was showcased throughout this current arc are improvements on stuff that was

Spoiler

shown in previous arcs. We were also shown Kirishima's unbreakable phase during the Yakuza arc.


You say this when OP just introduced a fruit that can allow users to travel into the future and steal souls and infused them into objects and nen which makes no sense under any situation and is whatever is convenient at the story's expense.Deku is more so trying to expand his moveset than increase his power level number since that was something he would have never attempeted otherwise without the circumstances in the arc present. I actually feel the restrictiveness if a positive because far too often in manga do we have a "can do anything" mindset with abilities that not a lot of time is being spent on how they would work beyond the initial setting, their weaknesses and plot hole inducing "well why didn't XXX do XXX". Its why Araki had to essentially reboot Jojo because the powers got way too out of hand.


I don't think there's ever been a point where a character just pulled a move out their ass in MHA, plenty of "near death situations being saved by willpower" but nothing in the realm of "Hisoka having to ability to revive himself with his nen" yet. And I con't care how many detailed explanations fans can push on me that's still an asspull. Its like how Luffy first used his Gears now nowhere in the manga did we see him actually train to do this BUT its perfectly logical (in OP's sense) that he'll be able to utilized his devil fruit abilities in that way and Heroaca works on that sort of stance because we know that teh characters are always working to improve.

Stain fight was not mano a mano, one character had to essentially be on one another because Stain was not only physically durable he was also incredibly fast. The last clash being Deku and Iida was more so do to Todoroki trapping him in a corner for Iida and Deku to hit him with one final powerful hit followed by Todoroki's fire to knock him out...and it still technically didn't work. None of them could actually fight him head on so they essentially had to trick him.


This doesn't make any sense since none of these were about fighting. The rescue attempt was about Deku utilizing the abilities of those around him in a very narrow and limited timeframe to escape with Bakugou in hand without fighting which also needed to account of Bakugou cooperating to begin with. The next one is just grasping for straws, there was not much they could have done but put on a pretty lightshow for kids also you're criticizing someone for using this quirk the way he's always does. I don't get it.



In the first panel we see Gentle attacking Deku through the rib as we see the impact in the second the in the third we see him gaining more momentum with his quirk by bouncing it against the trees to set up another powerful attack in the fourth panel which is suppose to convey the moment in speed Gentle is going to hit.This is simple stuff.


Now you see that was already portrayed in the previous chapters.

Spoiler

The exact same thing. What you're complaining about is a shorthand version of the same attack we already saw as stance. Funnily enough this is what you consider an improvement.

Spoiler

Yeah this is where you lost my. Sorachi's strength is definitely not his art let alone fight choreography considering none of Gintama's fights are choreographed well or even last long enough to be considered a fight (though the last one did drag considerable but that was mainly because not much was being done.) Also in case you don't know all fights come down to punching and kicking or occasionally launching projectiles at least where shounen manga is considered.


Once again you're in the minority and I don't even think people even remembers Bellamy's fight to begin with, the whole point of it was that Bellamy talked a big game and that Luffy never took him seriously that all he needed was one hit to beat him as a character Gentle was a lot more pronounced and the way he utilized his quirk was not only more interesting but not even close to Bellamy's springs.


His first attack was trying to ensnare him with his flames like a Spider Web

Spoiler

How is this a punch?

Spoiler

Hawks was the one who brought Endeavor up to launch his final attack using his feather to destroy it.

Spoiler

Endeavor wasn't trying to "punch him away" he was trying to incinerate his body cells to stop him from regenerating. This is literally the only punch thrown in the entire fight. And even then it was just a launching point for his attack to burn him up entirely with his flame.

Spoiler

Even the sakugabooru for it shows that third season was more consistently well animated and fights were mostly changed from the manga as well so yeah don't know what the hell you're talking about here.
And all of that is not even considering the untapped potential of the larger world, even within Japan; character development/backstories; pacing and having more cohesive themes throughout; having better flow and transitioning between stories, etc, which I think are bigger issues than all of the above.


Taking a break won't change anything . Togashi takes break all the time but the writing and art for HxH is still the same. Ashihara took a break for two years and World Trigger's writing and art did not change. Hell Kubo took a one month break from Bleach and still dished out the worse written, sloppily drawn arc in the series. Its like people just don't know what they're talking about.



You mean having internships, which has been established since the beginning, is him writing himself out of plotholes.


What tournament arc? There's only been one tournament arc throughout the entire manga. The Internship arc was one big long school free arc that needed to be followed by a relatively light Remedial arc which was to kickstart Endeavor's character development then the School festival which was a breather from the last big arc followed by the Pro Hero arc which was following up from Endeavor's character development in the Remedial arc leading to much more development of the plot followed by another training exercise the first we've gotten in a good while, this is how its always operated since the very beginning the manga is and always will be about Deku's adventures at UA training to be a hero how does it not have clear direction when its still about that? Seems to me that you just don't care about that aspect of it. I would give Black Clover a lot less slack if what what happening was actually interesting , won't deny that there's an audience that just want simplicity in their battle manga but you act as if there's a lot more going on when there's simply not and it doesn't help that the elves themselves are not interesting antagonists.


And this is why you're not a writer. I think Horikoshi knows what he wants to do with his story more than you do, his characters are another story, but the lowscale and slow progression isn't a bad thing in the slightest. I personally like the fact that he's avoided the pitfalls of Naruto and Bleach in trying to up the ante every single arc by "increasing the stakes" and instead focusing more on developing his characters and setting since they're all still in their first years after all. Its the opposite of Black which just goes fast paced negating the character development entirely for more battles against literal whos with no investment to care, look how many people gave a shit about the 3rd match up in a training arc for MHA than any battle in the current arc in BC which just goes to show that both series despite coming from the same genre and having near identical stables are appealing to widely different audiences.

--- Double Post Merged, Dec 7, 2018, Original Post Date: Dec 7, 2018 ---

His writing gets really shaky when it comes to Bakugou and the fans don't really seem to care.

--- Double Post Merged, Dec 7, 2018 ---

There's not a lot to any of those characters, Kohaku in general is just there and feels like the obligatory female lead but does less and less as time goes by.


I'm of the opinion that a character needs to have more than a single trait about them to be compelling


I'll give you that the art is generally stellar but the designs (character designs) suck and not in the deliberately ugly way like Oda does but in general Bouchi thought this looked cool/attarctive shit when it clearly doesn't


Then just watch The Flintstones.


So it has the average quality as an average modern CN show? That makes sense.

I'm not trying to convince you to get into Stone. I'm only explaining why i, and possibly other's like it. It that it's not just latching on to it's continued survival in the magazine.
It's all personal preference, but I believe everything in my list are legitimate and valid reasons to enjoy the series.
And although I wasn't necessarily comparing it to modern CN, I think Modern CN is just as good as old CN

 

[Haru Hana]

I haven't read enough to have my top 5, so here are some of my thoughts, contain some spoilers btw:

Edit: Oh shit I complained a lot. I didn't mean it. Sorry everyone.

Kimetsu is still my most favorite. But it's a lie if I said the series has been great the whole year. The end of Red Light District arc is great. The two training inbetween arcs are great. The start of the current arc is great. But the village arc has some questionable development. I still like it tho, but not as much as other arcs.

I read MHA occasionally since I prefer the anime more. Not really a big fan of it and not a big fan of S3 either since the director left the anime to worked on the movie. But Endeavor arc is amazing. His development is the highlight of the series this year. Regardless of what people think about Endeavor I think Hori did a pretty good damn job in writing this character.

I used to love Neverland a lot, the first arc is still one of my most favorite arc of all time. But then it went downhill from that. The tension is almost gone. Of course they still have to facing a lot of threat and people die left and right but I just can't bring myself to care about other side characters at all. Well to be fair the current development is interesting so far, so I'm looking forward to it.

Dr.Stone is a weird case. I binge read it few weeks ago and I can't help but think the whole time that it's such a waste for Boichi's art. Don't get me wrong I kinda like the series, not as much as other but it's still fun and informative. But I miss Boichi's (not shonen) art. Also I don't get the hype for it in the West. The characters are fun but they are pretty much one-dimensional. The story is decent and original but not engaging enough. All in all it's a fun little manga that I can easily forget if there is a new exciting series getting published.

I read Shokugeki Soma just to laugh at it, the same as what I did with Fairy Tail final arc and Nanatsu no taizai for a while now. I just want to see how ridiculous the story can get, and join the hilarious discussion thread every week. It's actually fun.

I only read a bit of Act Age and Jujutsu. Not feeling any of them so far. Since Glass Mask is my favorite acting manga of all time I know I will have hard time to get into Act Age, but I will try it again soon. For Jujutsu, well I know I'm a weird one since I think paneling and action direction is the worst part of this series and also the thing that turn me off so I'm thinking about waiting for the anime. It will get one, that's for sure, around 2020-21. And if it's Bones doing it then you can bet I will definitely going to watch it.

Not a fan of echi/romcom/comedy/sport so I don't read Bokuben/Yuna/David/Japan/Haikyuu. Can't say anything about One Piece since I need to catch up with it. Still need to read Black Clover but I'm feeling lazy. The new series is too new to say anything. And I already forgot about all the axed manga, poor things.

It's a decent year for me. Not too good not too bad. In fact aside from Kimetsu's anime announcement it's been a little bit boring. The most exciting new discovers this year for me all come from outside WSJ, that are Beastars, Kaguya, The Duck Of Death And His Black Maid, Gokushufudou and last but not least Thunderbolt Fantasy.

 

[CuriousReborn]

That protag looks so generic and uninteresting.

 

[savethecat]

The new Chainsaw Man color page looks fantastic.

 

[kazisbad]

I haven't read enough to have my top 5, so here are some of my thoughts, contain some spoilers btw:


I read MHA occasionally since I prefer the anime more. Not really a big fan of it and not a big fan of S3 either since the director left the anime to worked on the movie. But Endeavor arc is amazing. His development is the highlight of the series this year. Regardless of what people think about Endeavor I think Hori did a pretty good damn job in writing this character.
.

Kenji Nagasaki was still series director for s3

 

[ChocoBar9]

^I believe he's referring to the animation director/character designer Umakoshi.

 

[TyVip]

man has a pair of Rinnegan

 

[Haru Hana]

Kenji Nagasaki was still series director for s3

^I believe he's referring to the animation director/character designer Umakoshi.

Yes I mean Yoshihiko Umakoshi. That's the reason why some people said S3 is not polish as S2 and S1.

 

[Aipom626]

1. Act-Age - Everything has really come together brilliantly for this one. The characters are fantastic, the pacing has been excellent, and the ploy has been consistently enjoyable. Truly the underdog we needed.
2. We Never Learn - The inevitability of an Uruka loss is bumming me out, but it has otherwise been good. I'd be floored if Fumino doesn't win this one
3. Yuragi-sou no Yunna-san - Massive hype for SOL filler chapters, not as much of a fan of the serious/battle chapters
4. Shishunki Renaissance David-kun - This could easily rise up if it continues to be super funny and build up a great cast. I hope this can be the successor of Saiki.
5. Dr. Stone - I'm enjoying the more recent developments more than the space flashbacks from awhile back, so I'm glad I caught back up on this.