[James Rye]

Originally Posted by Arabesque

I've been sort of busy, and so despite the fact I had already read the end of the Invasion Arc early this week, I didn't have time to write my final impressions till today. What I had expected was that there wouldn't have been much activity in the thread, but it sees like James Rye decided to prove me wrong by posting his very through impressions on the chapters

I wish I could respond in full to a lot of what you had written James , since a lot of it was worth commenting on, but I feel I would be repeating a lot of what I want to say in general about the arc. Needless to say, good posts man!

Some things I wanted to touch on however

Glad to see I am not the only reading and talking about WT in this forum! So you saw the new chapter 82 as well? And thanks!

Originally Posted by Arabesque

There is more to what you wrote here, and I am sorry I had to cut it down to just these two sentences, but having read what you wrote I agree with you that there s little in what would pass as regular fan service/female objectification that you would find in the more popular WSJ titles. There have been minor cases where he skirted the line. Konami in particular is drawn in her Trion body as ''wilder'' than any of the other female characters, and Volume 7's cover did make me raise an eyebrow over her really ... ''interesting'' pose , but even then I never found it to be demeaning of her but rather portrayed her female fury personality well. In general, I would say that World Trigger so far had shown a very balanced portrayal of both its male and female cast.

Yeah, but I feel like Konami is an expection due her using neighbor triggers. Her body trigger could be done by a neighbor nation as well, which could explain the weird arm protection while the legs are shown.
I'm glad though that WT gives the same uniforms to both males and females. Just try to imagine how it would look like if the boys go in their usual armors but the girls are shown with clevage and free stomach and such. Would kind of destroy the whole credibility of Border.^^;

Originally Posted by Arabesque

I could make theories as to why Ashiahra decided to not go down that path (his art not being well suited for such things, feeling the story not really needing that sort of thing etc.) but I think it might just all come down to what sort of series Ashiahra had envisioned (a sports series) and ultimately became the blue prints to the current series (a sci-fi series). When you think about it in that way, every member of the cast needs to appear at the very least competent, otherwise it would compromise the entire premise and reduce the level of the threat/anticipation future events might hold. That would mean that there isn't much leeway in terms of letting any of the cast members being ''cheapened'', especially the female cast. Everybody needs to appear at the top of their game. Even the haughty Kitora when she had that minor crisis of fate just told herself to step up her game and show why she was an A-Rank agent in the first place.

I will say that even as someone who likes fanservice a good portion of the time, I really like and hope World Trigger continues to be this neutral in its portrayal. I like it.

I like fanservice as well, as long as it fits to the manga that is and I don't think WT is a manga that would profit from fanservice or doing it as excessive as some other battle mangas.
Besides the fanservice you are right about competence, in many battle mangas, where the females are not the main chara/focus, the female charas tend to be...uhm, "less competend than their male parts" for the most part. Which is obvious due most battle mangas being Shounen and thus made to appeal to boys and who boy likes to read how girl fighters whups the male main charas ass over and over again?

In WT females can be as good or even better than their male comrades. Konami is part of what we got told is the "strongest team of Border". She could probably fight people like Jin, Kazama or Tachikawa on her own as well. And she is part of Border longer than Jin which also speaks for her abilties.
Also despite Osamu and Yuuma being the main charas, osamu with the will-power and yuuma with the experience, Chika is the "power house" of them three. She can, even without a black trigger, reach S-class status if she trains correctly. We saw her shooting a hole into the wall of Border, accidently, while Ilgars failed to do the same.
She is right now a huge variable as she is still young and new to this whole battle and war stuff, but I believe that after witnessing...yeah that is spoiler stuff. XD
Don't read it if you don't want too!!!

Spoiler for Seriously don't read it if you don't have read the raw or Viz translations yet! Invasion arc spoiler ahead!:

But I believe that after witnessing Osamu nearly dieing for her, she will improve a lot to be able to not only protect herself better but also to make sure Osamu never does something like that again.^^
Same for Izuho, I have a feeling that this lazy sniper girl will improve a lot in her training from now on after this arc.

So yeah, I like that WT's girls are not there to be "eye candy" bu to hold their own weight and to be as important as the boys. And some girls can even top that.

Originally Posted by Arabesque

I doubt we will get a change soon to the core group, but maybe if the series lasts more than 2 years lol?

As for Usami, yeah, it was very strange how she appeared there. I did wonder whether there was a bigger reason for her leaving Kazama's old Squad tho. Well see if there is any bad blood between the two parties but from the looks of it things seem normal thus far.

She was cuter with shorter hair tho >.>

I hope it does last that long.
I could see Izuho joining Osamu's team though. if she trains hard enough and joins Tamakoma that is.

Also with Jin giving up on his BT and returning into the A-ranks and a new BT welder been searched for in the A-ranks we are already getting some changes. This system will put people into different positions, ranks and also introduce new people as they raise or fall.

Heh, you also like shorter hair? When I got to see Konami in short hair in her battle maiden mode, I was like "gj, Ashihara!". ;D

Originally Posted by Arabesque

Once again, I mentioned this way back, but I still love how not a single party in this war looks like they are being worfed in favor of making the other look better. Enedora is a beast, but Kazama took his loss with grace and made the right (?) call by telling his team to fall back. I still love his very blunt and direct style, and his line to his team mates was just great. ''Small but Effective'' indeed!

I'll wait for a day to post my impressions on the overall arc, just to see how caught people are by then. Needless to say, really loved the arc, but it was really risky going with it this early.

Aye, same with Ranbanein who lost to the 3 A agents and 7 B agents. He even praised them and had a good laugh at how he lost. That guy really was a sympathic one. So this does not only apply to Border but to it enemies as well, which I enjoy very much.^^

I hope I can get to read your impressions soon enough, if you gonna talk about the whole arc all at once it gonna become a big comment for sure. :3
I agree that it was risky but I guess Ashihara was told to show not only the readers but also the Jump editors that he can create a good battle arc and I think this Invasion arc was done very well. And unlike other arcs that goes on and on for YEARS this one made it nicely paced, with lots of different battles, well-thought battle plans, consistent power rankings and lots of team play which you hardly get to see nowadays in shounen battles as the usual norm is to spam magic nukes to get the win. XD

Well, chapters got updated till 65. Oh man, that's a lot to talk about...and then there's the new raw as well to talk about...

Spoiler for Spoiler Chapter 82 - don't read it if you don't want to be spoilered:

We see people trying to save some trapped family in a destroyed house.We see somebody from Border who helps the civilians in saving those people. It looks like this guy could be Karasawa, the guy who handles foreign affairs and collects money for Border, but he looks a bit different than Karasawa for me. If he didn't grew his hair a bit and stopped having a cig all the time in his mouth then this might be a new person from Border. I could be wrong ofc.

Next scene is in the hospital where we see Osamu in a bed with some machines on it (no trion medical technology, shmae~). Chika, Reiji and Torimaru as well as Yotaro are watching him via a window. The other agents are still out in the field, rounding up the last trion soldiers, helping in rescuing people and such. We might get to see a Kitora or Konami or Jun or such visits in later chapters. Or not at all.

Yuuma isn't there because he is searching for the last remains of Replica and Jin is helping him with that search. Yuuma must feel pretty down now that he has lost his last family member so to say. :c

We get a "memory" page of Osamu, which kind of makes sense to me. This was his first real war and he had experienced Chika to be almost captured and got himself almost killed when keeping her safe. His brain was on adrenaline at that time, so now when he was recovering it worked through everything that had lead up to this point, all the stuff that made him do what he did and that got him to his current position as well as gave him the determination to risk so much for somebody else.

With this memory page we enter a flashback of Osamu, which is very nicely done ONLY from Osamu's POV. A good way to get the reader to "feel" into Osamu and imagine himself how he must have looked like or what he felt in this or that situation, instead to "show" the readers how osamu looks like or what he feels at this or that situation.

It starts again with Rinj, Chika's missing(or dead?) big brother, who tells Osamu he will be send on a mission with a new trigger. Osamu tells him that he wants to join Border, Rinji is against that.

We then have a little timejump and see Osamu walking in the rain to Chika's house. Police officers and Men in black from Border stand before the door. We get to hear about Rinji gone MIA and see Chika cry, something Osamu says he had Chika never done before.
It made his resolve to become an agent stronger and so he took a test from Border to become one.

I liked that page in particular.
No text from what Osamu says or thinks. Just what he does and sees.
So we see him and others taking a test, although it seems to be three tests in total, and him marking circles on the test sheet. Then we see the approved board of those who got through those tests. And Osamu's hand holding a number card. His number was not among those on the board. And the page ends with a little panel filled with nothing but the "despair lines" as reality crashes down on Osamu's ambition.
In other words, Osamu failed to become an agent to begin with!
That sort of makes him being able to get a draw against Kazama who's ranked third in the A ranks much more admirable in this new context.

What makes this page so great is that pretty much every reader can feel into such a situation where he or she took on a test or several and then failed despite doing their best. Same with next page where Osamu speaks with a Border member about his result and got told that he is "no agent material" as his trion level is too low and that he should consider becoming an Operator.

We then get to see Osamu breaking into the restricted zone of Border during the night, intended to speak with the higher ups about him becoming an agent. He runs into a Neighbor and gets saved by Jin as seen at the beginning of the manga.
Flashback ends and Osamu wakes up.

He wakes up, realizes he is in a hospital, looks around and see a sleeping Chika who had spend the night waiting for him to wake up (sooooo cuuuteee~ <3). And not only that!
Lo' and behold the bombshell Ashihara drops on us!
Here it comes!
Chika is not alone as she leans on the shoulder of a, very pretty btw, woman who turns out to be Osamu's mom and might be there to have a talk with her son and tell him to quit being a Border agent!!!!

We finally get to see some parents of Border agent teenagers and I hope she won't be the last person! With over 30 missing teens I doubt that their parents will sit quietly around, so I also expected osamu's parents to act when they heard that their son got injured in his job as Border agent despite being told that thanks to his trion body such things should not happen.

Boy, next chapter with the talk cannot come fast enough! <3

Chapter 60-65

Gods, if I write everything down I thought about this chapters, the battles and stuff shown/told giving way to new theories about Aftokrator and what not, then this would take forever.
I gonna narrow it down:

Those chapters were awesome, 'nuff said!