Nisekoi – All The Planning In The World…

…can’t beat the impact of a single spontaneous comment.

The perfect thing to ask on Kirisaki’s birthday.

So, that happened. I love how completely casually this series can reveal important plot points to other characters, like back when Onodera and Ruri were told about the fake relationship. I still never expected anything on this level, because even with that history, there was never anything in this chapter to indicate any kind of confession was coming. It’s just something they decided to share all of a sudden. 

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.

Nisekoi – That Outfit Needs a Snappy Hat

Tsugumi knows to go into combat with style.

For those of you who have never read this series before, I’m gonna say what happened in this chapter before going into my discussion. I’m curious if you can tell how the chapter ended before I show it.

The boy on the left and the girl below are Ichijou and Kirisaki. They have to pretend to be dating or else their yakusa families will go to war. The one on the right is Tsugumi, who has called their relationship into question and challenged Ichijou to a fight to see if he really loves her. The two of them apparently made a promise ten years ago, so Tsugumi is rather protective of Kirisaki and will even resort to murder to see her safe. Ichijou comes to the conclusion that he may have a rival for his “love”, but realizes in this chapter that he’s probably wrong.

Now, from the above picture and what I just said, I’d like you to see if you can guess why Ichijou thinks Tsugumi doesn’t want to go out with Kirisaki.

Current Manga Rankings – 2011 – Part 1

I started reading manga a few years ago, and in that length of time I’ve acquired a surprising number of ongoing series. They have quite a bit of variety to them, from shonen to josei, weekly to whenever-the-hell-it-feels-like. I’ve had the chance to talk about quite a few of these series, and even reviewed some of them already. Since it’s the end of the year, though, I thought I would take the opportunity to rank all of my ongoing manga. This way I can discuss some series I couldn’t before, and I can state which manga I like the most and why.

30. Bleach

Here’s the thing about Bleach: it’s the one series on this list that I never read the old chapters for. It’s not something I would do by choice, but then again, I never really intended to start reading Bleach at all. One day I heard that the manga would be showing Gin’s bankai, so I read that chapter to see it and just didn’t stop. That’s a big part of why I find it so hard to get mad at this series. It takes a good deal of effort to feel anything towards it, really. I’ve been told that not caring about something is one of the cruelest things you can do to it, and that’s why it gets the lowest spot on this list.

Nisekoi – First Impressions

Always a classic.

Naoshi Komi is a manga creator who I’ve heard quite a lot about. He worked on a short lived series in Weekly Shonen Jump called Double Arts, and he also created a number of one-shots, as many manga artists do. I never got the chance to read his first series, but I have read some of the one-shots he wrote, and I’m starting to understand why this guy has so many fans. His stories have some of the most unique premises I’ve come across, which makes him stand out from the crowd. In fact, the people he reminds me of the most are the protagonists of Bakuman. Simply read the premise of his story Personant and you’ll see what I mean.