I'm still here and yes I read the recent chapters of Big Three. The grades are A, B, and F for last week.
The year in review:
One Piece - C
This year we got the closure of the Fishman Island arc, which was given a solid ending with tidbits that really pushed story porn buttons. Now we're on the Punk Hazard arc, which had a very promising start and got a lot of people excited for One Piece again.
But on the flip side I cannot ignore how slow paced One Piece has been lately. It isn't the content itself, it's the execution that is lacking. It isn't really the paneling, cause honestly if you find that a problem you shouldn't even be touching the comic medium (Protip: panels with lots of stuff happening is a good thing). It's really how the story is progressing.
One can argue that One Piece has always been about slowly developing it's story through it's arcs, and while that's true you have to take in consideration what One Piece was compared to what One Piece is now. One Piece is at a point where we're getting resolution; back when One Piece was new it was completely appropriate to setup the world with lots of mysteries. In Fishman Island arc, we got resolution for Arlong that tied the story together and gave closure. And then you got Punk Hazard, which is more story porn after story porn with a mix of a shitload of random new characters that they themselves will end up having to get some form of story closure in the future. So when these arcs are being read all it's giving is the readers more questions, and after 15+ of publication that does get pretty old as people are expecting to get more answers than more questions.
Punk Hazard as an arc would've probably been better received if we learned such things like how Devil Fruit are created, how Blackbeard got two powers, and maybe even explain some things about Kuma. Instead we got a bunch of new characters with solid appearances by Law, Smoker, and Tashiji + a shitload of questions still not answered.
Bleach - D
Bleach has been pretty much as mediocre has it's always been. The current arc is going at a decent pace but that really doesn't fix a lot of the fundamental problems the series still has.
The closure of the Fullbringer arc was just shit. The latest arc is already riddled with pointless twists and made one of the most badass characters in the manga look like a weakling. And now we're in the midst of ANOTHER training arc, cause that's what Bleach really needs right now.
All the problems One Piece suffers from, Bleach suffers from twice fold. At least One Piece tries to insert some story progress. In the past year, what exactly have we learned about any established backstory in the series? You can give very few answers to that question while with something like One Piece there's still a lot of storytelling actually going on in the madness.
One thing I'll give Bleach props for is that it seems like Kubo actually is trying to improve. The pacing is a lot better than it was in the infamous Arrancar Saga. Even the Fullbringer arc was better paced than that shit, so I will commend them for that.
Naruto - F
Naruto continues to be one of the lowest quality manga on the market. Even though Sasuke has played a very small role in the current war, his stench is too strong not to notice on everything else this manga has to offer.
Let's see...Tobi's identity reveal was done poorly, with a backstory that made no sense and won't make sense even after it's properly explained; fanfiction NarutoxHinata shit; Uchiha = god (still...); amongst other garbage. I really appreciate that Kishimoto spends hours writing and drawing this every week just so I can see a part of my early fandom sodomized by this garbage. I meant every word I said about Naruto this year, this shit is bad.
Naruto, like One Piece, got worse than better. The manga itself was shit in the first place so to go down like this, especially since we're nearing the end of the manga, is just awful. How can someone even remember the good parts in Naruto if most of the pages of the entire manga are full of garbage characters, garbage art, and garbage writing?
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I really wish I could say I've read more manga. It really hurts being a casual manga-fan and you got everyone around me in this thread reading all of these series. Maybe 2013 will be the year of manga for Big One, then I can prove to you guys that I actually do enjoy reading more manga than the Big Three.
