Weird of the Ikemoto to not draw a single panel of Hinata in the whole chapter. Maybe next month.
Hahahahahahahaha no.
Once Kishimoto stopped mindlessly imitating Otomo Katsuhiro and added something of his own, by the middle of the exam arc he had a pretty neat artstyle on his hands. Too bad that once the anime begun, Kishimoto started emulating the character designer, Nishio Tetsuya, by simplifying his line art, decreasing the amount of detail and almost completely dropping the screentones. It happened somewhere around the Sasuke-in-the-barrel arc, the root of all evils of this unfortunate manga. The rest is history.
Although an occasional colourspread of Kishimoto's looks quite okay, so he can draw when he is passionate enough about it.
The only bad thing about Pain arc is that it reminds me of anime version of it.
Are you saying that it was good for six varied opponents to be taken out by Naruto himself without the help of already underused supporting cast? That it was good for Hinata's sacrifice and confession to go ignored for the rest of the manga? That it was good for the main conflict of the arc to be resolved with a most unconvincing argument? That it was good for any and all consequences of the arc to be handwaved away based on that very same argument?
Pain arc seemed like the final nail in the coffin of this dead horse of manga back at the time it all happened.
Oda's art is no big deal too….He likes to put more details,that's all.
Oda has great panel flow which arguably might be the most important for a visual story. His sense of composition is also much stronger. The varied linework and detail oversaturation is just the superficial cherry on top which can be easily ignored based on personal preference.