As the title states, this started off pretty damn good, one of the best shounen. Then it began to follow what I call the 'Bleach syndrome'. As the story arcs continued, they got more and more repetitive, while offering fewer and fewer hints towards the overall resolution, but still good. Finally we got to the more recent stuff (lets arbitrarily say around 150?) and it is now a bore to read.

What should be a triumphant emotional climax (because it's been building for SO LONG) is now drawn out and boring. What should've taken 2 chapters (not a fight scene lol) is now 14. Then finally, when we all thought the story was legit over, it's... still going. WTF. It's on the level of Death Note trying to salvage the story after the main 'antagonist' L (err, opponent for the protagonist?) died. Or how Bleach tried to recapture the spark after Aizen was defeated and turned to utter sh*t. There literally were a bunch of epilogue chapters showing the standard '10 years later' which is pretty easy due to the time-travel feature of the manga. But it. Keeps. On. Going.

Lord of the Rings epilogue has nothing on this, if this is truly the end. It's either the most painfully drawn out epilogue, or the worst segue into another arc in a series that should've been done already. This is as of c198. At this point the author is just milking it.

I truly loved this back in the day, but ... I just don't care anymore. The ride was great, until I suddenly realized that it hadn't been great for a long time, and had been slowly slipping a little bit at a time, unnoticeably. It needs to end before it gets any worse.