Data analysis: Aoki's lackeys; two students that hang around the gym a lot....who are the guys doing data analysis again? And who are these guys eating with Takamura?
what random characters? everybody in this chapter has been in the storyManga-ka: "I'll take a break and write some filler chapters that dont affect anything."
introduces smartphones and social media in the 90s, then adds a bunch of random characters without explaining anything.
Literally phones and laptop... I know laptops exists in 90s... but damn, it's literally modern.
In Detective Conan/Case Closed they do the same thing. Whereas in the earlier chapters you see the characters use flip-phones, landlines etc. and in the newer chapters they started using smartphones.
I don't think that is a bad thing as the technological advancements do not impact the story. I would even say it's fine in order to stay topical even though these last few chapters were pretty big misses.
It's a floating timeline now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_timelineI really like the humour in this manga and the free time the characters get between the fights. I think this is what makes this series work.
However, these last two chapters were weak to me. Suddenly bringing the series into the modern era was weird. I really want to know how it came to be. Did they forgot about the timeline and then the editor decided to just go with it and write a gag around it or what was the intention? At first I thought it's to make Itagaki leak the fight and to make Rosario see it / showing the world Ippo is atill going strong bit that wasn't the case. Well, guess I have to wait and see.