Fairy Tail – Chapter 261

I could have selected a more suitable image. I chose not to.

Here we find ourselves in the middle of a training arc. It’s something we haven’t actually seen from Fairy Tail yet, which is more than a little surprising. You would have expected a series that’s primarily about the daily lives of an adventurer guild to spend some time on their combat preparation. Hell, the last arc dealt with the S-Class Exam, which sounds like something you’d do a little training for. But now everyone has been warped into the future, and they need to get their strength back up to compete with the other guilds. I would spend some time talking about the bizarre choice of splitting up the time skip and the training arc when they could have been done simultaneously, but I think everyone who reads this series already knows all about that. Moving seven years ahead was a poor choice in general, and while a part of me still thinks there was a point to it, it hasn’t done a good job at proving that.

Liar Game – Chapter 139

Akiyama knows how to make an entrance.

Well, it’s finally here! We waited a year and a half for a new chapter of Liar Game, and now our waiting is over. It’s good to see that after all this time, the series still knows how to present itself. We’re only one chapter in and Nao is getting in touch with her ideals while Akiyama is already making deals with the other players and Yokoya is setting up his new plan for the game as a whole. We don’t even know what this round is going to be, and I’m already excited.

I’ve gathered up a big list of things I could write posts about – Nao and Akiyama, Yokoya’s overall plan, the nature of the Liar Game or whatever the hell Fukunaga is still doing – but since we’re at the beginning of a story arc, I think it’s wild speculation time!

Kimi ni Todoke – Chapter 62

I wish I could make this funny. I really do.

I think I can understand where Chizuru is coming from. The more I read about her and her history with Ryuu, the more complicated it seems to get, but somewhere in that complexity they became much easier to relate to. At the start, they were part of a much simpler triangle relationship, and you might have expected that to be where their development was focused, but that wasn’t the case. What really matters with they two of them – and what makes them so understandable – is their long friendship. Most of us have people like Ryu, who have been there for us as long as we can remember and who we’d never want to let go of, but who we would never think of in a romantic light. There’s something that can be very alien about thinking of romantic love where it should never be.

The World God Only Knows – Chapter 166

YES! SAY YES!

I’ll openly admit that it takes a lot for me to be emotionally moved. I’m not sure how long I’ve been that way, but it’s true. A lot of the time, I see something and know how I’m supposed to react, but it’s not often that I go along with the feelings I’m given. Maybe knowing that sort of thing is part of the problem, but I’m also the sort of person who tries to fully comprehend everything I see. Looking back on this chapter of The World God Only Knows, I can understand why Keima acted the way he did. Right now, the most important thing for him and everyone around him is finding that last goddess (who is in Ayumi, for those unaware). He discovered that when he was a little too far into Chihiro’s route and was forced to backpedal hastily. On some level, I knew that even when she was confessing to him, he wouldn’t be able to accept what she was saying.

But I didn’t care. I wanted Keima to kiss her and embrace her and say that he loves her, even though it didn’t make sense.

Mahou Sensei Negima – Chapter 343

I'm not sure which part of this image to explain first...

So there I was, reading the latest chapter of Negima and getting ready to write a post about the way fighting is portrayed in it when something else caught my eye. The last chapter hinted at Asuna and Negi coming up with a concrete plan to defeat Evangeline in a fight. It turned out there was no real plan, but that didn’t stop them from kicking an enormous amount of ass. I know it has nothing to do with what I’m about to discuss, but let me just say that the shot of the two of them frozen in a crystal of ice, both smiling because they’re just that confident they’ll escape, is the sort of thing that made me fall in love with this manga.

So the fight goes on for a bit longer, and just when I’m wondering how long a training fight can last for, Negi accidentally strips both Asuna and Eva naked. Yup. I thought Negi’s sneeze from a few chapters ago was just a call back to the early chapters, but it turns out I was wrong. A big, badass fight scene getting interrupted by gratuitous fanservice, and there’s only one thought that comes to mind.

Why am I not bothered by this?