Caught the fuck up. Championed through this bitch and lost a bit of sleep during the process.
So many conflicting feelings about this manga right now. But I will say this: with varying levels of success and not always being behind the author's writing (and much less art wise), Magi is quite possibly the single most ambitious shonen manga that I can think of right now. The scope is just. . .insane.
The end of the mammoth Alma Torran flashback didn't quite do it for me, but you can see the ideas thrown in there are definitely grandiose. It sometimes feels like she's always going round and round in circles, and never allows for things to settle down for real. In that aspect, it's the complete anti-One Piece. In OP, people can be moved by a speech and they all row in the same direction and countries become happy from night to day. Here, one can give a great speech, the Rukh is all around that person, everyone admires him/her, things are looking bright. . ."but, after 2 weeks, people started fighting again and killing each other and tearing each other's throats and creating aberrant magic with the intention of destroying all dimensions. But, hey, at least that person tried!". Man, it's like Ohtaka has forgotten to take her happy pills for a long while now. And, like everything that's overused, it comes at a price, in my case I grow slightly tired of so much "but it was for nothing; but it didn't work; but war still happened…", cause in the end it feels like all and any struggle in this manga is ultimately for naught.
The last chapters had some extremely heavy emotional baggage too. Aladdin using such a cruel spell against Judar as a last resort was quite fucked up, but even more fucked up is Alibaba's current situation. Is Ohtaka really ready to kill the co-protagonist of the story?
! next chapters spoilers seems to point otherwise, and even in a comical way, which is. . .super weird, I guess?
I have tons of stuff inside me. Like, suddenly, falling into depravity is no longer necessarily bad? After all this time? Ill Illah is no longer a threat, nor is Al Thamen? Woah, that feels. . .weird. What about Ill Illah, didn't Solomon kill it? What is this Ill Illah, another one? Why does Arba have a physical body if, according to Ugo, all Al Thamen members are sealed in another dimension and are only projecting their astral bodies? How did Judar wake up the third eye? The fuck was up with David's blabbering and intentions?