Solo Tremaine

[quote name='Gavin'][SIZE=1]At the moment though it reeks of DBZ, not that that's a bad thing I'd just prefer Bleach sticks to being Bleach.[/SIZE][/quote][COLOR=#503F86]So does every other Shounen fighting manga based in existence.[/COLOR]

[quote name='Tatsubei Yagyu'][SIZE=1][FONT=Comic Sans MS][COLOR=Navy]LOL THERES NOT MUCH KONOHA TO GOVERN ATM[/COLOR][/FONT][/SIZE][/quote][COLOR=#503F86]Haha, well, yes. But there was at the time. I'm a little annoyed with the sudden "He's surpassed them!" comment. We haven't actually seen much of a progression of that growth. From what I've seen he must be on a par at least, but aside from his strength in Sage Mode we haven't actually seen any elemental manipulation things as impressive as Yamato or Sandaime's. That's what I want to see.[/COLOR]

[quote name='Gavin'][SIZE=1]I have to admit I didn't think badly of this week's chapter, in fact I consider it to be one of the better ones in recent weeks. Sure there were a few lapsed moments, such as Robo-Pein coming back to life yet again though his subsequent ignominious death was welcome and the Failkage apparently having pulled a suicide-for-the-village-no-jutsu makes relatively little sense in the grand scale of things given how little she actually bloody fought. One thing about Naruto not recognising he's in Konoha might be because he didn't know Pein has been there and trashed Konoha royally. Remember all Naruto knew was that the messenger toad was dead, for all he knew Chouji just got hungry for some French cuisine. That said he acquitted himself pretty well for a lad whose home, sensei and favourite ramen shop in the world are all gone. Give it time, things are starting to look up.[/SIZE][/quote][COLOR=#503F86]Same here. With regards to Tsunade though, while she fought against Orochimaru, she is primarily a healing ninja, and as Hokage, rushing into a battle that would potentially get her killed would leave Konohagakure without a leader at a time it desperately needs someone to govern it. It makes less sense for her, now vowed to defend her village, to rush off on her own agenda when she'd already been concentrating her chakra into Katsuyu for the entire battle previous. To be honest, though, she's still been less than impressive in her role, doing far less than we saw of the Third, and even the Fourth given how little he's been in the story; they weren't surgically attached to their chairs, for one thing. Does Tsunade actually leave her office? I don't think it's unreasonable for Naruto to not know where he is, either. He appeared in a massive veil of smoke. I bet if you were blindfolded and put in the middle of a field somewhere that was chock-full of smoke [I]you[/I] wouldn't know too well where you were either >.>; I'm a little annoyed Pein-o-matic has revived himself, though. It would've been better to stick with the one body that hadn't been expunged; I think it'd make for a juch more dramatic fight. Anyone else notice Kakashi's lost his forehead protector? Symbolic, or irrelevent?[/COLOR]

[quote name='Ace'][FONT=Comic Sans MS]Oh, I forgot the latest chapter was out. [/FONT][/quote][COLOR=#503F86]It's not out yet, but spoilers are. I haven't seen a full script, though.[/COLOR]

[quote name='Ikillion'][COLOR=#35160f][SIZE=1][FONT=Trebuchet MS]The anime just finished up the Thriller Bark arc, but its going into fillers currently. Also, the next chapter features [spoiler]the return of Mr.3[/spoiler] just if you were curious.[/FONT][/SIZE][/COLOR][/quote][COLOR=#503f86]Ooh, are there spoilers already? [quote] [COLOR=#000000][spoiler]Eustass [SIZE=1](kind of name is that? How do you even pronounce that?)[/SIZE] Kid and Trafalgar Law[/spoiler][/COLOR] are a couple more favorites.[/quote]It's pronounced [spoiler]'You-stas'[/spoiler], I would imagine. I have a friend with more or less the same surname :p With regards to [spoiler]Luffy beating Moria[/spoiler], if word got out that [spoiler]he'd beaten not one, but [I]two[/I] Shichibukai, the balance of the three powers would shift in favour of the pirates, and the World Government would collapse. The Shichibukai are there as agents of the World Government, but it seems the grip on their seat of power is tentative at best, especially where things stand at the moment.[/spoiler][/COLOR]

[COLOR=#503F86]That's odd that they'd start censoring stuff like that. They've hardly had a problem with blood before, have they? Oh well.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#503F86]Yeah, Zoro is my favourite character too, but to be honest I like the ideals of all of them, save for Usopp who tends to grate after a while [spoiler](but has one of the best fights in the story later on)[/spoiler]. [spoiler]Robin[/spoiler] isn't given much to do, unfortunately. She's really more interesting as a villain than [spoiler]a member of the Straw Hats[/spoiler], but is quite nice to have around as the 'real' straight guy. As for arcs... definitely once they're into the Grand Line. I think Alabasta was probably the most exciting as I remember, for all that happened and the real sense of urgency that was built up over it. Nothing has *quite* topped it yet, but other arcs are more dramatic in different ways. Generally it's always kept interesting, so I've not had any reason to doubt it so far. One thing Oda is very good at doing is not forgetting what he's written; everything seems to happen for a reason and looking at the plot as a whole, looking at the characters, their relationships and the main events and how they all link together, it's incredibly well-structured. It'll take till later to see just how much attention he pays to his own story, but it's really refreshing. Do you mean Foxy, out of interest? Yeah, he's annoying. It's one thing to have a character you're not meant to like, but another to have a character you just don't want to see in the story.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#503f86]And we haven't learnt [I]anything[/I] about Zetsu yet, either, more or less. With regards to Kabuto, he is slowly becoming more Orochimaru by the minute, so I'm sure he'll find some way of involving himself as an antagonist. Didn't he say he was going to come back for Naruto at some point? I confused myself about Killerbee, but either way there's still that whole story to play through. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=#503f86]It won't be over for a long time. You've got Kabuto, Killerbee, Konan, Pein, Madara, Sasuke, Danzo; all these antagonists and the interfill to go through before we're getting anywhere near an ending. EDIT: Seen a spoiler in more detail and the Pein Konohamaru wanged wasn't killed; it gets up and is about to kill him and Ebisu when it gets deactivated. So that's good. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=#503f86]No. According to Oda in one of his Q and A sessions in the manga volumes, if you eat a second one you'll die. I think o_o; EDIT: Ah, it's actually mentioned later in the story. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=#503F86]Screw you all, I still like Hitsugaya.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#503F86]I presume this means that Kakashi really is dead now. Bollocks. I'm not so sure that Deva Pein is Nagato, though- it's been said loads of times that 'the real one isn't there' and that the bodies are all dead, so what I think that means is that is deifnitely Yahiko's body, but Nagato is using his chakra from wherever he is to create that attack. But yay for making things interesting again, heh.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#503F86]Yeah, Crocodile really impressed me when I got to his section. I love villains [spoiler]that have seem to have a back-up plan for everything[/spoiler]. It's so much better than seeing the cliche of those who put all their eggs in one basket, heh. I think the thing about the friendship in One Piece is that they do actually look like and do things as friends (especially fight and take the piss out of each other), as opposed to a lot of manga where they just happen to be together and don't share as much of a personal connection.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#503F86]Oh, that wasn't even the one I meant :P The one I was referring to was in the anime much later on, but yeah, they still happen >.>; Haha, it makes you wonder whether his hairstyle or his rank came first.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#503f86]Haha, I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought of that ^_^; I used to be a big Pet Shop Boys fan.[/COLOR] [COLOR=#503f86]I don't like the idea of trying to pander to popular culture when it comes to history or language. Considering there's such a base of farmyard animals and nature in children's books I just can't understand how removing 'piglet' seemed like a good idea. And putting in 'MP3 Player' just seems plain cynical. Fair enough 'television', but technically if you put that in there, you need things like 'MP3' to back it up. And I just don't see a reason for kids to need to learn that from a dictionary. Although I guess the more it comes into use, the greater necessity there is for it to be known as it becomes a bigger part of people's lives...[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#503f86]Smoker! He's up in my favourite character list too, hehe.[/COLOR] [COLOR=#503f86]With regard to fight length, they are pretty long in One Piece, and certainly later into the story they only get longer, especially in the anime. You can start to get a bit tired of the way they're structured from time to time, but generally they maintain your interest because the characters are always developing at the same time. It doesn't tend to suffer from the same sort of problems as Naruto does with always winning with a Rasengan or whatever, though.[/COLOR] [COLOR=#503f86][quote name='Magus']And I suppose I already know the answer since it's shonen, but is the artwork consistent?[/quote]It does vary from episode to episode, but you can see where they've paid extra to amp up the animation in certain sections. Because it's a relatively simplistic style there's not too much to go wrong, so I don't tend to notice it myself, and normally I'm quite hot on stuff like that. Digimon was particularly awful at times.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#503F86]Okay then. If you need me I'll be in my happy place.[/COLOR]

[quote name='Gavin'][SIZE=1]Meh it's all down to how awesomely manipulative Kabuto is written in them, or the mutual loathing that goes on. They're not happy fics but they're often quite good reads.[/SIZE][/quote][COLOR=#503F86]Oh, I see. For a scary, scary moment I thought you were shipping the two >.>; I'd like to see how this all turns out. Having re-read some of the earlier chapters I think it still has a lot going for it if Kishi can pull himself out of this fairly confused funk.[/COLOR]

[quote name='Gavin'][SIZE=1]His skills would certainly be of use to Konoha now in dealing with another necromancer and I've always had a weird liking for Kabuto/Sakura fics. O_o[/SIZE][/quote][COLOR=#503f86]You like say what now? o______o;[/COLOR] [COLOR=#503f86]In other news, I'd actually forgotten about Kabuto. I wouldn't particularly mind if Shizune died either. I think if Tsunade and Shizune both go then that's all but paved the way for the elder guy to take over, and for Naruto to come back and teach everyone what it means to be Hokage when Sasuke finally gets his sorry arse back to try and destroy everything, or something like that.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#503F86]Ooh, Naruto having to face off against Jiraiya Pein! Although his body sunk into the marsh, so maybe it won't happen. And it would be too interesting for Kishi to put into play when he could just as easily choose another three chapters of "ZOMFG We know what Pein's secret is lolollloolool!" And Kakashi's not confirmed dead yet, so shush >.>;[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#503F86]To be fair, it was a very small Rasengan, and we don't know that he's actually harmed Pein, except for slamming him inot the wall. Although assuming he is gone, we've got how many Peins left, three or four? And once this one's finished with Tsunade, they'll all be heading to the Froggiest Place on Earth to meet Mickey Naruto. Although we've got Gai's team coming in at some point, I hope. I am getting a mite fed up with Pein at the moment if I'm honest. Six separate battles running at the same time does not for good sequential storylines make.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#503F86]The anime gets much better as the animation improves. It becomes much more mature, so gradually you don't really notice it. Certainly by the time you're into the 200s it's pretty hard to fault on a quality basis. The only thing that drastically changes is the quality of Chopper and how well the overblown reactions work; sometimes in the anime they're a bit too extreme to be funny. There are one or two duff moments, though, but if you're into it then you don't really notice too much. but then, it depends how fussy you are :P The fights are generally very smoothly done, and it follows the manga more or less exactly (aside from altering a frame or two in some places to be slightly less brutal, but they're still pretty damn intense). The best thing for me about the anime is the accompanying music, though. It's very high quality in comparison to a lot of other animes and really just helps build up the dramatic atmosphere. Flashbacks are a given though, unfortunately. When you're into a main arc they don't happen nearly as often as other series, but there's an almost unforgivable sequence of six in a row during one of the highest-emotion arcs in the anime later on, as they were close to the manga releases at the time and needed some filler >.>;[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#503F86]Well, at least there's a clear definition of ability levels here, as opposed to certain other mangas. Imagine if Don Kanonji had taken it out instead >.>; (Although admittedly, that could actually be quite awesome...)[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#503F86]Ahahahahahaha. *dies* (In Kishi's world, this means I'm either incredibly powerful, or a tertiary character whose death suddenly becomes relevant for no reason. Hmm...)[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#503f86]Yeah, I know what you mean ^_^; It's always unfortunate that the chapters seem so short whenyou read through. Whenever I get to the end there's always that "...No! Need more!" moment, heh. Same with the anime, too. The last few episodes have been incredible.[/COLOR] [COLOR=#503f86]It does look pretty impressive, does Impel. I'm just amazed at how many characters Oda hasn't forgotten about in his story. [spoiler]Watching the Marines all gather at Mariejois was like slowly opening a can of awesome right in front of my eyes.[/spoiler][/COLOR] [COLOR=#503f86]EDIT: Oops, didn't see Magus' post.[/COLOR] [COLOR=#503f86]Yeah, you are way, way, into the early days of the manga there :P I had real reservations about the art style when I first started it too, and I think it really comes into its own during the Arlong arc; each backstory you see gives that extra bit of impetus to be interested in the characterm and I have to admit Usopp is still probably my least favourite crew member. He gets much better when he actually does something, though. He's overshadowed by Luffy and Zoro quite a lot on the Kuro arc.[/COLOR]