Fairy Tail – Animal Abuse

No! Don’t hurt the kitty!!

Somehow over time, I’ve gotten used to the level of brutality the members of Sabertooth possess. That doesn’t make the events of this chapter any easier to watch. At first I didn’t respond to the backstory of Sting and Lecter very well, since it seemed to come a little too late and I didn’t think it fully justified his attitude. That was when I thought the previous match between him and Natsu was the last part of his story arc. As it turns out, that was only the midpoint. And while being angry because you made a promise to a friend isn’t a very good motivation, being angry because that friend was just killed right in front of you is a great one.

Fairy Tail / Kenichi – This One Goes Up To Eleven

I’m surprised these characters know the word “shame”.

Fanservice in manga and anime is like the government in dystopian novels: it’s always there, no matter where you go, but if it does the job it’s supposed to you shouldn’t notice. Of course I’ve seen far too many examples of it being used in both good and bad ways, but there was always one series that went further over the top with it than any I’ve read. That was History’s Strongest Disciple Kenichi, which started as a Panty Fighter and spent over 450 chapters pushing it’s own limits. Reading that series has actually produced an interesting effect in that it caused the fanservice in other manga to feel tame and wholesome by comparison. Nami’s outfit in the current One Piece chapters seems much more acceptable when you see Miu’s spandex, which I can only assume is vacuum-sealed. For a while I assumed I would never come across anything worse than that, or at least not willingly.

Recently, something strange has been happening that I never anticipated. Somehow over time, Fairy Tail has accomplished what I considered impossible and made the fanservice in Kenichi feel more acceptable! It managed this by taking a slightly different path from what that series did in terms of extreme content. Since it can’t compete in terms of ridiculous outfits or ways to remove those outfits, Fairy Tail went to the furthest lengths to make every situation it could as absolutely perverse and uncomfortable as possible.

This Week in Manga – Cutting The Knot

I’ve thought about it, and decided to make the multi-chapter posts from before into a recurring type of update. The way I see it, there are certain series not many people who visit this site read, and some others where the chapter may not contain enough information for a full post. For instance, Law’s current plan from One Piece or the subject of Food Honour in Toriko could easily receive their own posts, but the most recent chapters don’t have quite enough information to write about yet. At the same time, there were other topics in those chapters and many others which I can analyze, but not at great length. Plus there’s the occasional time where I’ll miss a chapter just because I’m like that sometimes.

So my solution is “This Week in Manga”, a series I hope to come out each week where I quickly go over several chapters I couldn’t write a full post about. The ideal number is seven in one update, but it’ll most likely change depending on what comes out. For this week, we have Toriko, One Piece, Fairy Tail, Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai, Kimi ni Todoke, Natsume Yuujinchou and Nisekoi.

Toriko – All’s Fair In Friendship And Cooking

Chefs in the Toriko-verse can be dicks sometimes.

The relationship between Komatsu and Take seems to have gone down a direction I didn’t expect. Even though I understood how he was being portrayed as a corrupt chef, I still thought he was going to end up a victim of the Bishokukai. With all the criminal acts they have committed so far, slavery doesn’t seem all that out of character for them. But in the case of Take, and most likely the other kidnapped chefs as well, it appears that they had some sort of brainwashing applied to them as well.

From this chapter, I think I can make a prediction or two. First is that Komatsu will get healed, most likely by Chin Chinchin and/or the Bubble Fruit. Nobody is expecting him to die right now, so it’s just a question of how he’ll get better. The second prediction, and the one far less likely to happen, is that Take will become a recurring enemy for Komatsu. He isn’t strong enough to just get beaten by Toriko, especially with this new powerup, and an act like stabbing Komatsu can’t just be forgiven in a few chapters, so turning him back into a good guy now is unlikely. With those two out of the way, the most likely option is for him to leave and return in a later arc, at which point it’s hard to say what he’ll be like. I hope that’s the case, because Komatsu could use a good enemy that is only his and not Toriko’s.

Catching Up on Things – Seven Posts in One

So my exams for this year have finally ended, and now I’m free from all that stuff for another few months. Now all I have to worry about is my GPA and work and my website and countless other things. I suppose this is what being an adult means. Well at least I can be an adult and still enjoy manga the way I do. Since I’ve had difficulty talking about the most recent manga chapters lately, I thought I would make a post briefly discussing the things I might have blogged about had I not been busy. These won’t be as long as my normal posts, but I thought I should do a little catching up regardless.

One Piece – Caesar Clown’s Playhouse

His favourite song is Jumpin' Jack Flash, in case you were wondering.

Enemies in One Piece tend to fall all over the morality scale, from honorable soldiers like Smoker to professional killers like Rob Lucci to complete sadists like Moria. What I found interesting about Caesar Clown (aside from the name, of course) is that he’s managed to convince people he’s much more honorable and less insane than he really is. Listening to Brownbeard talk about him, you would almost think he was a decent guy with a passionate love for science. Of course one look at him shows that he’s every bit as insane and sadistic as the term “passionate love for science” would imply. This series used to tiptoe around the use of drugs and WMDs, which makes Clown’s behaviour feel all the more extreme and cruel. I honestly think all of Luffy’s training will have been worth it just so we can see him punch this guy in the face properly.

Fairy Tail – Relationship Values

That sound you hear is a mix of a million squees and four million hisses.

Is romance something you think about a lot? When you read an manga or watch an anime, how much thought goes into the potential partners that could come about? I know when I was younger, I was much more into shipping and everything it entailed, so I know the mindset that goes into it. Now it’s something that happens very rarely unless I can clearly see a romantic subplot. Sure, sometimes I’ll wonder about romance in other series, but it’s less “Should Yuuki hook up with Zero or Kaname?” and more “Could Yuuki be having sex with both of these guys and get away with it?”. You know, weird theories and ideas like that.