On the Third Day of Christmas, My True Love Gave To Me...

Three Shounen Timeskips
Two Crazy Whores
And A Pair of Giant Matrix Boooooobiiiiiiieeeessss!

This year saw timeskips in three particular shounen series (Bleach, One Piece, and Fairy Tail) leap to the forefront of my mind - though two of them I first encountered in their respective manga at the back end of last year. In an odd sort of way the three kind of feel like some kind of arse-kicking Japanese version of the three ghosts from Dickens' A Christmas Carol - Naruto's timeskip is oooold news and just jangles around in the background like Jacob Marley.

Bleach: The Ghost of Christmas Past Interestingly enough, Bleach is the only one of the three whose timeskip I've not actually encountered this year. I read it in the manga at the end of last year and since I stalled on the anime, I've yet to see it there. In a sense that makes Bleach the most fitting to be my Ghost of Christmas Past, especially since the majority of my enjoyment of the series is well and truly in the past. Scrooge reliving the happiness and misery of his past sums up my relationship with Bleach. Everything was all fine and dandy at the end of the arc, so why, WHY did he have to do a timeskip and continue?! As much as I love Renji's smexy new hair-do, I still can't help but think, Bah Humbug, Ichigo. Bah Humbug.

One Piece: The Ghost of Christmas Present

Much like Bleach I read the timeskip in the manga last year, but I did encounter it in the anime this year. When I think of the Ghost of Christmas Present I think of a jolly, bearded man showing everyone having a warm and happy Christmas, and that's exactly how I feel about One Piece. Despite being over a year into the jump manga wise, it still feels present, like it's ongoing an not just a thing of the past. Oda has carefully held back on revealing every change all at once so that it's like we're still living the skip, still reeling from its impact and not just treating it as something that happened a while ago in the past.

Fairy Tail: The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come This year saw Fairy Tail become the latest of the big shounen series to throw in a time jump, and this series ends up as my Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I know I will have this to come in the anime soon enough and I've yet to experience that, but mainly, I look to the future with it, because I'm still unconvinced as to whether this skip is genius, or utter folly. It's an unknown quantity for me at the moment and I look to the future to see where Mashima takes this and just what I'll make of it.