Hayate the Combat Butler – Who the Hell is Suirenji Ruka?

You’re gonna have to get in line.

Anyone who watched the recent Hayate anime for more than a few seconds would likely have noticed the presence of an idol singer who wasn’t in the series before. That girl’s name is Ruka. She’s like Hayate in a suspiciously large number of ways, up to and including the need to work off a 150 million yen debt her parents dumped on her. Her method for dealing with this debt, however, was to take on the role of an idol. While she has been trained in how to become a successful idol from a young age and seems to enjoy her work, the busy schedule has both given her serious health problems and gotten in the way of her secret goal of publishing manga. So she’s also like Nagi in a suspiciously large number of ways.

Toriko – In Which Four Guys Want to Cook and Eat a Godzilla Sized Creature

Yes, we now have a Spirit Bomb. Made of appetite.

If there’s one thing Toriko knows how to do better than any other series, it’s how to create a sense of scale. I see other manga talk about big stuff, whether it be creatures, places, or just a massive world in general. But Toriko knows how to make things truly feel gigantic. It sends the characters against colossal ruins or monsters the size of the average city to make them overcome what feels like insurmountable hurdles.

This chapter took that to a whole new level. It’s one thing to face gigantic obstacles, but the difficult part is how you get across the protagonists not simply meeting them, but surpassing them. In their own way, they’ve become something grander than the creature that used to tower over them. So the question is how to convey that climactic moment with all the grandeur it deserves?