There are not a lot of fight-based manga or anime (and a lot of general adventure ones that can drift into this category as well) that I can think off that I’ve genuinely followed the entire way through; I almost always get tired of the never-ending formulaic exchanges, both plot and dialogue. I was starting to wonder if Noragami had not started to go that way, but volume 25 has save the story for me, at least for now. What looks like a major potentially final confrontation ahs been looming for several volumes, and this one could have gone one of several ways: 1) started the obvious final show-down, 2) kept the main story on hold with further backstories or side stories, 3) pulled some kind of re-start trick, or 4) started the big fight but pulled back for the hero to patch up whatever personal things he had going on before the final showdown really takes off.
At this point, things are looking bad for Yato (disaster deity who wants to stop his evil creator from destroy known everything etc.) and his companion spirit sword Yukine as evil creator dad has basically brainwashed and stolen Yukine, and the highest powers in heavens are starting to hunt down evil creator dad and his helpers, possibly including Yukine. There’s also the two teams of Yato’s allies who are hunting down motives and answers making some progress, although one member might have defected back to the evil side but maybe it’s not their fault entirely?
So, plot progress is happening, but so too is some badly needed motive showing backstory for the villain. It’s not terribly sympathetic which I think is actually helpful; the situations the young eventual villain goes through are sad and unfortunate but not so bad that he didn’t have some control over how he reacted; we’ve got a villain who maybe has been through bad things but who also isn’t made out to be a total tragedy since he definitely is going to deserve any bad things that happen next. The start of what could have been the major confrontation but pulling it back for Yato and Yukine to hopefully work their issues out is the right kind of cliff-hanger too; can they repair what went wrong between them, can they avoid the heavenly warriors likely to come after them as well as wrathful evil dad, and when/how is Hiyori et al. going to be able to get back together as the original team since they’ve been separated for I’ve lost track of how many volumes now. Even though there’s been a pause in the final battle set up, I want to see what’s next.