In case you didn’t know there will be no One Piece manga Chapter this week  as Eiichirō Oda is taking a break to prepare future Chapters for our enjoyment. If you’ve been following the One Piece manga regularly, I think you will agree, Oda has definitely deserved it!

The pace has been frantic and the artwork of a consistently high standard, especially when you consider how detailed each cell of the One Piece manga has been as each cell seems crammed full of, not new weird and wonderful characters but also, some of the most important characters in the whole of the One Piece universe! If you’ve been following the manga, you’ll know what I mean.  

Things are beginning to heat up in Bleach. OK that’s not entirely true, things are beginning to boil up and out of the saucepan that is Karakura Town, that’s how hot it’s getting!

At the end of the previous chapter we saw Kensei step in to protect Mashiro against  Wonderweiss’ surprising strength that caught Mashiro a little off guard, leaving her severely injured.

If you’ve got over the shock of the previous week, Tite Kubo clearly decided it was worth continuing the theme established in the previous weeks chapter and therefore this one is entitled: Execution, Extinction 2.

We begin this chapter with Aizen in the process of executing Tia Harribel, the Espada Tres, who also happens to be the only remaining Espada.

If you’ve been following thus far, we’ve just witnessed the end of one of the most nicest bad guys we’ve had in the Manga for a while, the Primera Espada, Coyote Starrk.

This chapter opens with additional background to Starrk’s origins and how he ended up with Sōsuke Aizen. We see Aizen stumbles upon Starrk surrounded by a mountains of the remains of hollow, that we can only assume Starrk defeated which Aizen ask’s if he indeed killed them, to which Starrk replies something to the effect of, “No, they just died”. An interesting reply, which helps to further skew the picture we all have of Starrk as increasingly we find him to be troubled, disturbed and so very lonely. I for one have mixed emotions about him,  should I sympathise with him? But I can’t he’s a bad guy, right? Or maybe it’s not supposed to be so clear cut.

We’ll here it is, the review you’ve all (OK, some of you) have been waiting for. As I envisaged a while back now, this is my review of the Mushishi (蟲師?) anime TV series by Hiroshi Nagahama which is based on a manga by the same name written and illustrated by Yuki Urushibara.

By means of a little preamble, I have to confess that this was my second attempt at watching Mushishi. I originally started watching the series about 5 months ago after a recommendation from a friend and seeing the overall high reviews the series received as a whole, I thought I would give it a go.

Luffy has gathered together a temporary band of odd-balls including past foes and new friends such as Baroque Works’ Mr. 3,  Buggy, Emporio Ivankov along with two former Shichibukai, Sir Crocodile and Jinbei.

The chapter starts just before we see Luffy and his band come crashing into the fray as we see them, quite fortuitously, stuck atop a massive frozen Tsunami in their stolen Marine Battleship overlooking all the goings on below.

One week late, here is my review for the best chapter in quite a long time – loads of great content, Sasuke got punched in the face, Madara does the funky thing Kakashi’s Mangekyo does on himself and disappears into thin air.

Good times!

So the chapter starts off with the mighty Raikage and little Uchiha picking up where they left off, after it seems Raikage kills Jugo, at least in this manga people die!

Let me start by saying, ‘WOW!’ what an episode. For me, this has been one of the events that I’ve been waiting for since I began watching the show some many months ago now.

The way Bleach works is that it only slowly (in some cases very slowly!) reveals secrets; and thats secrets about people, about their abilities and about their pasts. One character in particular I continue to look forward to learning more about are the more illusive Captains of the Gotei-13 of which the anime viewers and manga reader know very little.

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Kenshin wants to leave his past behind and find redemption but his past seems determined to come back and destroy his new life of peace.

I have a few anime series that are very close to my heart and Rurouni Kenshin is one them. I remember when I first watched this series in it’s entirety I actually started to do research into the time period in history it covers and for an anime to make me do what was basically at the time “homework” was pretty impressive. But that was years ago and I recently re-watched the series from the beginning with one of my house mates so now with the ignorance of youth behind me I think it would be a good time to give Rurouni Kenshin the TV series a review.

I’ve seen this particular chapter title translated in several ways, one has translated the title as ‘ Sasuke’s Ninja Way’, while another has translated it as ‘Sasuke’s Dogma’. Which ever way you translate the title its clear that this chapter is very much concerned with understanding why Sasuke does what he is doing and has been doing since the beginning of the Part II (AKA ‘Shippuden’ in the anime) of Naruto manga.

This chapter continues with the fight going on between the Raikage and his ninjas from Kumogakure (the Hidden Village of the Land of Lightning) against Taka/Hawk, comprised of Sasuke and his band of rogues.

With Barragan out the way, the Primera Espada takes centre stage for this chapter. We see Starrk has begun his fight against former Captain, now Visored/Vizard, Love Aikawa while Rōjūrō Otoribashi (commonly referred to as Rose) watches from the sidelines, seemingly so as to not get in the way of the impressive destructive power of Love and his Zanpakutō Tengumaru.

Ah finally my first review! [Welcome to Gbemi who will be doing some of our manga reviews from time to time! - Matthew]

Over the past few weeks One piece has not let up with the action and gripping story, the chapter this week was not a disappointment.

So oars (formerly Oz – big as a country) had offspring – Oars Jnr! But alas his rampaging was put to a swift end by Shichibukai Dom Flamingo’s sword slash , who’s ‘puppeteer’ fruit powers had been revealed earlier. It is now safe to assume the Shichibukai are not one trick ponies.  Oars’ adventuring came to an end, with the tiniest bit of background thrown in to allow us to feel a bit sorry at his demise.

If you haven’t noticed, the filler is still on and we have another underwhelming episode that I will struggle to write anything positive about. Speaking to a few fans however there are mixed feelings about this filler arc. I have no doubt that it has the potential to be the best filler arc so far but it’s episodes like these that leave a lot to be desired.

This episode feels almost as if it ends where it started, we seemingly have got no further after conclusion of the episode. We are still watching the face-off between Muramasa and Ichigo (and his Hollow alter ego), while both Renji and Hisagi battle their respective Zanpakutōs.

In this chapter we begin just after the defeat of Barragan Ruizenbān, the king or god of Hueco Mondo and the Segunda (2nd) Espada at the hands of Hachigen Ushōda and Soifon.