This series has gone to hell.
I'll be honest, you're pretty bummed out about the series and I get it, but seeing you complain about it so frequently is annoying. I might be a toxic positivist but I do come here specifically to enjoy this series and forget my real world concerns, so I'd rather not have to brood over various things that it could be doing better.
The art is so mediocre now it's not even funny.
If I take the time to sit with this criticism I notice that Murata does waaaay less cross hatching and lighting variations with his backgrounds now than he did up until somewhere in the MA arc. That said, I wouldn't notice this difference if I wasn't carefully cross-referencing similar panels now to say panels from chapter 50, 70, 90. There have actually been a few moments in recent chapters where I've paused on panels to appreciate their beauty.
Certainly in older chapters, those moments were more common and the lighting really helped convey the mood of scenes. That makes a big difference in how scenes feel.
The chapters are ridiculously short and the progression is awful. It's been almost 4 years since the MA arc ended and the story literally has not progressed.
Okay, it's been 41 months/3 and a half years since the MA arc ended (August 2022), and, yeah, the Ninja redraws sucked. I agree with you fully there.
From October 2023 to January 2025 there was literally no movement because of [REDACTED], meaning Murata had to illustrate one arc three times in a row. However in terms of progression, the MA arc was literally 37 chapters in the WC and we spent five years adapting everything from the HA's assembly to the end of the Garou fight.
Outside of that giant black hole, which is very big mind you, the series is actually progressing rapidly (31 chapters of WC material since aug 2022) to the point that we'll run out of new WC content in two years or so if ONE doesn't add more manga original plot beats in the neo heroes. These biweekly half chapters don't hit as hard as monthly full chapters would, that's true. It really affects my enjoyment of the series because the excitement of a new development often gets chopped up between two or three different releases.
Re-reading the newer arcs, I've actually really enjoyed and been able to immerse myself in them, far more than I did on release.
And this is somewhat unrelated but I'm kinda tired of Murata being such a hornball. The dude is like 50, why is he still so obsessed with the breasts of women less than half his age? What purpose is there to draw Webigaza's gigantic titꜱ in that panel when she's having surgery? Sometimes I'm ashamed to be a man.
Yeah that's definitely a problem. I think mangakas don't see their families enough.
