>>3973511This is one of two big criticisms I have about it. The first intermission should have had an elusive warrior escape subplot running concurrently with a more fleshed out adult war plot (I believe this would have solved basically every issue the Akiie part ended up having). And Tokiyuki and Kojiro should have been gayer with one another. You change those and it becomes a 10/10 masterpiece.
>>3973522>recent arcs are the worst offendersThe most recent arcs have been the most similar to the early ones. So much so that it's made it obvious that it and the beginning were planned out from the start and that he almost certainly had to scramble to rewrite the middle under the shadow of the axe after /his/fags did what /his/fags do.
>you could always tellI'm talking about the ending. No one is sure what he's going to do with it. But even aside from that, no one knew for sure how Fubuki was going to shake out either. And we know what's going to happen to Tadayoshi, but now how. He's followed exactly close enough while still having a few deviations like Shokan to leave people guessing.
>Emperor isn't the antagonistNot in nigewaka, no. That's my point. If you look at it from a historical standpoint, Go-Daigo was the worst thing to happen to Tokiyuki. He's the one that kicked off the war in the first place. Takauji wasn't even the one that destroyed Kamakura. That was Nitta. On orders from Go-Daigo. He was a perfect candidate for a super fucked up Matsui villain that is later partially redeemed just like Asano. But portraying an emperor like that would be a big no no. Takauji would still be the main villain, of course.
>you can be critical of a story and still like it.I've explicitly mentioned areas of weakness. I've never claimed it's perfect. But I vehemently reject the notion that it's a bad manga and especially the crying about how the dreaded timeskip ruined everything forever.
>>3973530I would post a kojiwaka but we ran out of room.
