Manga Day: relatability

Is it just me or is everything else out there under-par when compared to the brilliance of One Piece? Today’s a bit of a sad manga day for me. I didn’t have much new stuff to read all week and the ones that I did turned out to be the regular jump big 3. Every other series I follow seems to have not updated their chapters in a while, and now I feel like I’m forgetting what they were all about. I’m looking at you Btooom!, mysterious girlfriend X and Nozomi to Kimio. All 3 are great series, with no bloody updates on their chapters for more than 2 weeks. I’ve been reading the regular stuff and slowly catching up on a manga called Sankarea, but it doesn’t soften the feeling of having a manga drought.

The Big 3

OK so as usual One Piece this week as just as you’d expect, or realistically unexpected, as the story tends to be an organised chaos of high impact moments and great story telling. This week I’m going to do some comparison with the 2 other manga I read today and this one as I feel it’s important to show how great the writing in this one is.
As usual I started my mangaday with Naruto. I didn’t start it the usual way out of bed with coffee or tea but rather in a lazy way curled up on my bed with my phone in hand. The chapter was good. A bit confusing for me at some points, but I’m sure Chihu’s review will clear up anything I missed. All in all I think it was a good chapter. The way that they showed Naruto actually needing the help of Sasuke and the Edo kage’s being immune to the effects of Madara’s jutsu was all well done. The appearance of what’s his name (Yamato) at the end was a bit “meh” though. I couldn’t care less and just ended up turning the page without a second glace.

So after the appetizer that Naruto was I set out to spoil my meal with some bleach. Bleach as usual was underwhelming and as you guessed, everyone else is getting their arse handed to them or can’t do anything to help and you guessed it Ichigo comes to save them. Is it just me or is this character becoming the Jesus (savior) of this manga, heck who am I kidding, he already is. They stopped developing the other characters in any “meaningful” way after the first arc and since then it just seems to reset after each arc.

Plot of each bleach arc:

• Everyone is all cool
• The get attacked
• Ichigo loses his power
• Ichigo goes training (rocky style)
• There are a ton of long drawn out meaningless fights
• The big bad guy is god level compared to every character
• Ichigo comes and saves the day.
• Repeat…….

Wtf? That is not a plot. It’s a joke, one that has no one laughing. I admit I like the art a lot and the high moments are awesome, but they are short lived and then it all goes back to overdone familiar territory.

Ok so what about One Piece?

I admit I’m a fan boy for what Oda puts on the page, but with that said I’m a realist too. If One Piece ever started looking anything like what Bleach is I’d bash it the same, thankfully it is not and I can enjoy the world’s best long running series week after week. Taking this week’s chapter into consideration, it shows that no matter how strong each straw hat member gets there is always someone that can take them out  in a fight and no one is over all the saviour of the team (“cough, cough, bleach!”). The fact that even luffy who is considered to be so strong has to run when Pekka attacks is a testament to the great writing. It puts all the characters on an even scale and weighs them on an even scale, treats them like living creatures that react to stimulation in a natural and realistic manner. They fear, they are weak, they are brave, they are strong, and they are alive. This is the fundamentality of what makes One Piece so good and bleach so bad, relatability.

With that I’d like to end this week’s manga day article. Happy manga reading to you all my buttonsmashers family and for those of you that are reading comics today, I wish a happy comic day. 😉