Well, the break seems to have made for some nice turning points.

There we have it, all the symbolism laid out nice and unambiguous on a cover page. Kurotsuchi is the devil. Could have figured, really.

The interesting point, for me, is that Kubo has clearly set up Kurotsuchi and Apporo as connected and opposing symbols, and he's put his devil on the 'good guys' side and his Christ on the 'bad guys' side. Neither character is particularly associated with either figure in personality; they're both utter bastards. But it's one more nudge to the readers that 'good' and 'bad' are not as simple as they may appear at first glance, in this story.

I also have to wonder a bit what is going to happen to Zaraki. On the one hand, he could actually be struck down and Nnoitra finished off by, say, the restored Nell. That would have a certain symmetry of the sort Kubo likes. On the other hand, he could shrug it off. It even seems possible that this might be the fight where Zaraki finally gets in touch with his zanpaku-tou and releases it.





And while we're discussing cliffhangers, I'm really wondering what will happen to Hiruma! I mean, they still have another game to go after this, and there doesn't seem to be enough time for a broken arm to heal. And, while it's increasingly clear that Sena is being groomed as the next quarterback, is he really going to be pitched into it this soon? Or will something else entirely happen?

This is why I love Eyeshield, of course. I'm never sure what the answers will be.





As for Konomi, I dearly hope that this will turn out to be a good match. I have my doubts.

I'm also getting annoyed with Echizen's character. He's always been snarky, but at the start at least he was only a real snot to opponents who deserved it. To good opponents he was cutely cheeky. That held steady through the in-team matches, through Shinji and Yuuta, through Sanada even. But then came Nationals and the apparent reset button for all characters and he's been acting like a brat to everyone. I liked him better when he was cutely cheeky.

Of course, I have already decided to ignore the existence of Nationals and rewrite it in a way that connects better to the first two thirds of the manga, so I suppose this is just one more thing to ignore.

This is made all the more difficult, though, by having nothing but Nationals to base Yukimura's play style on. *sighs*



And as for Tsubasa... *makes disgusted hand-waving gestures* Yeah, whatever.