I think the two week jump break has mellowed me a little. Unlike Kabitzin and Divine, I actually thought Naruto this week was pretty decent and this is coming from the guy who is always so negative about Kishi recycling old sequences. Hell, I even thought Bleach was tolerable and that hasn’t happened in years....

For some insane reason, last week I ended up choosing to talk about Bleach’s lame-as excuse of a chapter instead of picking up on Naruto. Seriously, I have no clue why I continue to do this, but I’ll try my best to do both this time. The only reason I can think of for missing...

A sword stabbed Orihime, through the heart. Yet she doesn’t die. Story of Bleach so far, no one ever really dies in this supposed dog-eat-dog world. You could argue that for the story to get anywhere at this point, its main characters need to stay alive to show some semblance of development. But hasn’t this...

I’ve been wondering this for a while now: does anyone find the humor currently present in Bleach funny? If you ask me, I personally find them to be of the “forced” variety. They don’t seem natural and as a reader I pick up on this and I feel uneasy instead. Well, I guess there are...

This week we’re treated to another setup chapter in Naruto, as the Kinkaku-Ginakaku brothers were dealt with rather anti-climatically last week through the Ino-Shika-Chouz combo. Rather than move on to Gaara’s battle with his father and the other former kages, the story chooses to stick to this side of the mountain, as we will be...

Bleach decides to keep up with its “slow and steady” approach this week with the long-awaited release of Ichigo’s full-bring ability. Typically seen in all of his training arcs, Ichigo discovers the ability from within at the most critical of moments, this time with some help from...

Well, Kubo managed to troll us for one more week. While I thought that this chapter was better than the last one, that’s like saying that paint dries faster the longer you wait. Inevitable, but it doesn’t stop the process from being as horrifically dull as the last. I read this alongside Naruto’s release and...

This sure didn’t feel like a set up chapter. After the anticlimactic ending of Kakashi and Zabuza’s second bout, we were treated with a lull chapter of sorts, whose main purpose was to establish the key characters and encounters in the next impending battles. But to me it didn’t feel like that. I felt that...

Kubo is officially back into his typical arc cycle, since this week’s return treats us with another one of Ichigo’s training mini-arcs. Didn’t we have this like a few months ago? Forced into another one of his patented method training battles, Ichigo now has to face what is possibly his most daunting opponent yet: a...

To be honest, nothing particularly memorable happened in the first half of this chapter. While I was right in predicting that we were gonna get some sort of flashback scene to really make this touching reunion “touching”, it wasn’t really pulled off in a way that I was satisfied with. But let’s be fair, I’d...