Review: Weekly Shonen Jump #9

This week's 200+ page "mega issue" of Jump does not disappoint. We FINALLY find out the winner of the cooking championship going on in Food Wars and the chapter is both epic and touching.  It’s comprised mostly of a really thoughtful exposition of the winning competitor that will not leave you dissatisfied even if you were rooting for someone else.  This manga will be around for a long time if it keeps up this quality and continues to play with the reader's expectations in such a careful way.

Weekly-Shonen-Jump-#9-1-28-15As One Piece CONTINUES to be a mess of fights all over the place, one situation was about to turn catastrophic: the princess's healing powers were about to be used on the passed out officers of Doflamingo.  Since every fight won against those officers has been a massive pain in the ass, it would be insane if they got back up ready to go while all of the Straw Hats and revolutionaries are tied up in even more extreme fights.  Even more bothersome is the fact that Sugar, the girl with the power of turning people into toys—a power that ravaged the island for years--is among the fainted.  Her revival would be an absolute nightmare.  The issue gets resolved, at least for now, during a moment of heroism by a character who you probably like, but haven't seen do anything quite this awesome yet.  It was not a letdown of a chapter.

And, of course, there's Bleach, which has been a massively escalated Shonen clusterfuck lately.  But this week, we finally got to the peak of the escalation and shit is about to go down: the captains are going to have to storm the Soul King Palace.  The chapter ends with an omen in the form of an apology from the head of the Royal Guard, Ichibe, who lets the humans know that they cannot defeat Yhwach.  The ensuing struggle now that Yhwach is essentially the craziest thing to happen since Aizen should be fun to watch.

Toriko and School Judgment weren't slouches this week either, so this week's Shonen Jump made for a solid read.


Score: 4/5


Writers: Various Artists: Various Publisher: Viz Media Release Date: 1/26/2015 Format: Digital Anthology