Anime

Kristina Pino

Fairy Tail Episode 138

Now that an actual plot is forming, we've got a new opening. Yay? So, let's go over the basic points. Hughes is a total biatch. Mirajane is crazy strong, but they let out the next takeover a but early, I think. It does come up in the manga, but later on in the story when all the characters get some beefing-up to compensate for being out of the game for seven years. I'm guessing that for now it's still a forbidden takeover, but once Mira gets stronger, it'll just be the next level. As for Lucy and co., I'm glad to see that Natsu was able to, with the help of the others, beat up the huge octopus, but he's still no match for Byro. Even so, Byro now has gained a bit of respect for Fairy Tail guild, so at least some good came of it.

What is kind of annoying though is some dialogue Aquarius had for Lucy saying she needs to work on having two spirits out at a time so she could fight together with Scorpio. It struck me as odd because I thought she was already capable of summoning more than one spirit at a time? I suppose it'll be no problem after, once again, the power up happens. Finally, we've got Panther Lily and the folks at home. Nothing too big happened at either place, except Asuka has realized something terrible about the prophetic story and smarty pants is about to tell Lily about it, too. We don't know what the deal is yet, exactly, but we do know that a whole lot of people are obsessed with the idea of the end of the world. I don't feel as upset toward Byro and them now, simply because their intentions aren't necessarily bad, but they don't seem to be aware that their religious leader might be a total psycho. I expect this will lead to the Naruto-style seal of friendship later on when everyone figures out what the real problem is. Now that things finally got a little more coherent, I'm more interested in this arc, even if it's total fluff.

[Catch it at Crunchyroll, Hulu and FUNimation!]

Chris Walden

Hunter x Hunter Episode 37

It's the back-story episode! Well, another one at least, but this is something we all wanted to know about! Just who is the mysterious lady looking after Gon on the island, and just what is up with his Dad? Well, we find out that she is in fact Ging's cousin, so she is indeed a relative. It also seems that she once had the hots for Gon's old man, but I guess that's another story!

Besides talk of the past and exploring the island with Killua, the plot is allowed to advance by means of a mysterious cube. After some crazy aura destruction and practical use of Gon's hunter license, the cube is opened to receive a strange ring and a cassette tape. I feel it won't be all that long until they hit the road again, and they certainly don't seem like the kind of people to hang around unnecessarily. What I want to know is whether we get to see Hisoka fighting the floor master!

[Hunt for this over at Crunchyroll!]

Manga

Naruto chapter 592

Oh, boy is there a lot of padding going on here, and not in the cool way. Undead Madara is still around, as was dick-moved last time, but the insult adding to this injury is that, oh joy of joys, Tobi resurrects his giant godzilla statue. Yaaaaay~

That aside, the only new plot point of note is Suigetsu and Jugo finding Sasuke with their new scroll, which prompts a search for Orochimaru, because of course that dude's alive, right? Right?!

Sigh.

Bleach chapter 499

In the runup to the magical CHAPTER 500, Bleach spends the week mostly doing technical lectures and catching Ichigo up on the situation in Soul Society (two thousand-plus casualties, several bankais Bogarted), and how Quincy work (as I predicted, that "Blut" thing they do corresponds to offensive and defensive modes).

After that, a plot twist! Ichigo, the one man the enemy fears, gets trapped in a cage! The guy Urahara killed isn't dead! Chad loses pounds of flesh! Will Bleach people ever learn to make sure dead people stay dead?! Find out next week!

That said, much as I make fun of it, the plot's actually taken a turn for the exciting. They've managed to squeeze a genuine sense of crisis out of what looked like a clone of the final battle against Aizen and co., so I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on this. To chapter five hundred!