Good enough!
merged: 03-25-2010 ~ 05:24am
Well you did your best.
So i guess its fine
Bleach tv Review
The series begins in the human world, with the sudden entry of a stranger into Ichigo's bedroom. This stranger is Rukia Kuchiki, a Soul Reaper (in the Japanese version, a shinigami, literally God of Death). After an ensuing conversation, Ichigo and Rukia are forced into combat against a hollow (evil spirit). Rukia is disabled, and forced to transfer her power into Ichigo, transforming him into a Soul Reaver. As it turns out, Ichigo is very powerful, and even has a semi-unique zanpukat�? (sword that is his primary weapon, it is much larger than most). Ichigo makes quick work of the hollow, and Rukia leaves.
The next day, she shows up in his classroom, apparently a normal human student. It turns out that Ichigo has completely absorbed her abilities, and she must recover them by using a temporary human form, Gigai. It is later revealed that the Gigai she entered was specially designed by Urahara and given to her. In the mean-time, Ichigo must take over her job, cleansing the hollows in the region.
As Ichigo get involved in a closer friendship level to Rukia, Ichigo got more to know about Shinigami life and its issues.
Credits: niomea
Story & Characters
The anime series is a faithfuly adaptation of the manga by the same name, with the obvious exception of the Bount filler arc. The story progressed from the drama/thriller stage of Ichigo's early years and his attempt to train his "stolen" shinigami powers to the standard shounen battles in the soul society arc(train, beat some powerful guys, a more powerful guy shows up, main character is about to lose when he is saved by a plot device, main character goes on to fight even more powerful opponent but wins DUE TO THE POWER OF LOVE, etc).
At start, soul society is an enigmatic place, shinigami and their powers are even more enigmatic, all we know are that they have zanpakutos that can purify hollow souls and can use "magic spells" called "Kidou", that can be used to heal, attack or immobilise a target. As Ichigo juggles shinigami and schoolwork with sometimes comedic results, Rukia attempts to regain her Shinigami powers. All the drama and thriller aspects are completely gone by the soul society arc however, where it just becomes standard, albeit above average, shounen fare. Its questionable whether that was a good move storyline wise.
As of this review, the anime series has recently finished the bount filler arc. All the way up till then, the storyline has been quite decent, because it was simply an adaptation of the manga series with very minor differences, and the manga series had a storyline written by someone competent. All this goes completely out of the window in the filler arc however, as filler arcs are almost always written by the anime company, and they always seem to be written by someone with simply passable writing skills, at best. I will be focusing on the bount arc in this review.
The bount arc can be broadly described as divided into 2 portions, the "drama/thriller" portion as Ichigo and friends scramble to figure out what the Bounts are up to, and how to deal with them, and the "shounen" portion as the Bounts enter soul society and everything becomes clear cut fighting between matched pairs of opponents.
The first portion is just horrible. All the character development in the previous episodes were just thrown out of the window. All the good characters behave in a non-sensical manner for much of the first portion, its like watching a horror movie where someone says "Hey lets all split up in this seemingly deserted house and explore!" and you cant help but scream "What the HELL? Are you stupid?".
All the fight scences in the first half of the filler arc have two common points : Ichigo and friends have no clue what they are doing, and the numerous plot devices make it impossible to measure any character's power properly. In one instance we have Yoshino completely trashing Ichigo and being seemingly invincible...yet in another fight scence we have Yoshino completley unable to do anything. Renji mysteriously refuses to use bankai until the very end of the first half, and this nearly causes the entire group to die multiple times over, and we have a fantastic plot device where Ichigo cannot use bankai in the real world supposedly because he doesnt have enough "resolve". This was done to prevent Ichigo instantly wiping out every Bount except Kariya instantly.
Plot holes are simply abudant throughout the entire filler arc. For example, it is generally accepted that Sereitei, where the shinigami lived, was only constructed after the shinigami academy was established by General Yamamoto and the Gotei 13 was formed, as there would be no one living there otherwise. Yet we are clearly shown that the 46 chambers, some form of the Gotei 13 were fully active during the time when the Bounts were created and a full sized Sereitei was already built, implying that an army of Shinigami already existed before the creation of the academy and Yamamoto's time, which then brought up the very good question of how all these Shinigami got trained, and how all the administrative and technical support sections came into being.
The reason for this plot hole is simple, much of the filler arc show time was dedicated to the characters of the show running around trying to figure out who the bount were, how they were created, so on and so forth, if Yamamoto and the other captains had been alive during that time, a significant portion of the filler arc would have been eliminated, as they could simply say "The bount are so and so and we need to do this to counter them".
It seems the filler arc was sketched out by the manga series writer, but the anime company filled in the gaps. This is very obvious when you consider the general premise of the filler arc is decent...we have the Bounts trying to take revenge on soul society for the wrongs they did in the past, and emphasised that soul society is not a bunch of angels who can do no wrong. The writer who filled in the gaps clearly did not care for story continuity and was only concerned with making material that could be broadcasted, and not its quality.
The second half of the filler arc, using the standard shounen method of matching up bad guy with corresponding good guy should be very familiar to most anime viewers. For example, we have Ichinose matched up with Zaraki, and predictably, loses. The second half is much better precisely because there is nearly no storyline to speak of, much of it is simply fight scences, usually comprising 2 episodes each, the first episode where the good guy seems to be losing, and the second episode where the good guy manages to get the upper hand and beat the bad guy. Every single fight scence in the second half uses this formulae, except the Rukia and Zaraki fights, and argubably Hitsuguya's fight. There was simply very little room for the anime company to screw up.
But they still did it anyway. Soi Fong's fight stood out because of how badly it was done, the plot device used, and that it should never have happened in the first place. A captain unable to dodge a dart thrown at her at that speed would simply be unable to stop someone using shunpo and trying to stab her with a zanpakuto, and thus would simply not have gotten anywhere near that rank in the first place. All her underlings are shown as complete weaklings, even her high ranking seated officers never even release their zanpakutos, presumably because this required the manga writer to come up with ideas of how these releases would look like, their effects, and who the officers were, so they simply used generic "special forces" shinigami that get taken out instantly. Soi Fong's fight with Mabashi was just nonsense, her idea of "ending it quickly before the poison gets me" was to use shunpo to place her zanpakuto at Mabashi's neck from behind, and instead of slitting his throat instantly, waste at least 5 seconds unleashing her zanpakuto and giving him ample time to counter.
Why she did not use her bankai to instantly take out Mabashi was simply because the manga writer had not came up with an idea for her bankai yet. Also the idea that a captain would be initially unaware that her zanpakuto could neutralise poisons is just ludicrous.
One plot device to make the Bounts stronger during the second half in the filler arc was that they could absorb spirit particles from their surroundings to heal their wounds very quickly, and also increase their power. This usually took at least 5 seconds where the Bount would be completley immobile and open to attack however. Why not a single character in the show tries to take advantage of this opening is never explained, every character that fights the Bount who uses the spirit particles to heal their wounds just stands there and politely lets them heal. This is just absurd, there is no way a viewer can suspend their disbelief for this.
I would also point out that while plot devices are used abudantly throughout the non-filler arces, they were still tolerable, because they fit in. Even the scence where Kommamura activates his bankai and is about to attack Aizen, yet mysteriously stands there for 5+ seconds to let Aizen cast the level 90 blast spell in dramatic fashion isnt anywhere as bad as what happens in the filler arc.
The final, climatic battle with Kariya and Ichigo is a serious let down, Kariya mysteriously refuses to try and blow up soul society, and seems to intentionally lose. The viewer is left scratching his head, what the hell is going on, and going "Thats IT? Thats how Kariya gets defeated?!". I would say this is one of the worst fight scences in the entire series.
The outline for the filler arc was good. The "meat" of it was just garbage however. There were an outrageous amount of plot holes and plot devices used, characters behaved non-sensically, and character development was either nil or a serious step backwards in most cases. The filler arc definately deserves a 1.
Rating:
Art
Some interesting character designs of the new Bount characters, most of whom seem european. Theres some serious stereotyping going on here, Koga is the dark skinned muscle bound with headphones, Yoshino is the sophiscated lady with good intentions, Udagawa is the slimey backstabbing snake and Kariya is the stereotypical white haired, red-eyed evil leader. The mod souls have interesting designs, but unfornately they spend way too much time of it in the really freaky looking dolls. Other than that, most of it isnt anything new, and the new stuff isnt exactly awe inspiring either.
Rating:
Sound
Nothing much can be said. Its all pretty much average. I seriously cannot think of any real good or bad points here.
Rating:
Presentation
Another classic case of "It could have been so much better!". Unfornately it wasnt. For example Mabashi was originally a good guy who refused to go along with Kariya's plans, however he "went to the dark side" way too easily, thus messing up a good storyline opportunity. The "Bitts" were completely discarded past the first half, and it seemes as if Kariya simply threw them away in the real world. Most of it has been said in the story section already. The series arent enjoyable at all for the first half, as most of it is watching Ichigo and friends act really stupid and get beaten around by the seemingly invulnerable Bounts, while the second half is only "decent" beacuse it is standard shounen fight scences.
Rating:
Final Verdict
3.0000 (poor)
Reviewed by Question, Feb 03, 2007
Comments
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Warpten29 Mar 19, 2010
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yeppunda Oct 13, 2010
i think you should clearly state that you are reviewing the bount filler arc, not the bleach anime in general. it's misleading when you give such a low rating for a filler arc, which is technically a type of fanfiction and not part of the series, and people might mistakenly view your rating as one for the anime in general. however, i must still say that for a filler arc, the bount arc was pretty well-done, compared to many other filler arcs in other animes.
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Question Mar 01, 2011
The manga has now progressed past the arrancar arc into the fullbring arc.
At this point, one has to wonder what kubo is doing, other than constantly and consistently trolling his fans.
Almost all, if not all, of the fights in the arrancar arc, which was SUPPOSED to show us Soul Society's finest against Aizen's renegade army, were won simply through deus ex machina, or "i suddenly reveal my hidden technique that you have no counter for!". The fights were all paced in the same manner, good guy vs bad guy faces off, trash talks, they exchange a few blows, then suddenly the bad guy uses a technique and the chapter ends with a cliffhanger like "Did good guy X just die?". Then the next chapter reveals the good guy survives, more trash talk, pausing for long minutes in the middle of a fight to explain in precise detail to each other how their techniques work...the usual stupidity. Then the chapter ends with ANOTHER cliffhanger, this time of "Did bad guy Y just die?". Then the next chapter reveals he survived, more trash talk, rinse and repeat till the bad guy dies because NOBODY DIES IN BLEACH. Other than bad guys who appear soley for one arc.
The hyped up vaizards jobbed hard as well, and some were simply defeated off-screen. Once again Kubo does the "Strong enemy appears! LET'S NOT FIGHT AT FULL POWER AND GET OUR ASSES KICKED INSTEAD!" as an excuse to refrain from showing everyone from using their bankais.
Part of the anticipation for the arrancar arc and the final face off was that all the captains would be expected to reveal their bankais. Of course, Kubo was too lazy to do it, so many of them simply got defeated while using their shikais. The final fight with Aizen was a complete and utter joke, especially since Shinji used a technique on Aizen, that was super-effective, UNTIL HE STOPPED FIGHTING TO EXPLAIN TO AIZEN EXACTLY HOW IT WORKED, which predictably allowed him to counter it.
The arrancar arc eventually ended with many characters defeated off-screen, and many were simply forgotten completely(e.g. Nel, Grimmjow).
Then Bleach transisted into another arc, with ANOTHER group of guys with mysterious powers(of which incidentally, at least one seems to have his character design blatantly ripped off from another series...), like oh say the Vaizards, that Kubo seems to have forgotten, more characters, more mysterious enemies, and Kubo just seems to be doing this either to troll and/or to add more and more characters to the cast, many of whom have never appeared for more than a few scenes and whom are still forgotten.
And throughout this all, the manga demonstrates AMAZING ARTISTIC QUALITY, with the usage of white backgrounds(Read : Kubo not bothering to draw backgrounds, at all), and entire double page spreaders being used for reaction faces, as well as entire pages devoted to "Nani?! He used shunpo/whatever to get behind me?!". This is a complete waste of paper. If you want to see how much content you can fit on a manga page, please look at decent series like Full Metal Alchemist. It would not be an exaggeration to say that one page of FMA has more content than one chapter of Bleach(which often has people just standing on air, against white backgrounds, and trash talking).
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back07 Apr 30, 2012
I disagree with you because i like Bleach i didn't think you will give low rate of it. I like it because the "Skill" of the Character of Bleach is good but it have repeated story line.
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YHE Jan 21, 2014
I cannot say that I agreed to this review, because I like this anime. Not my favorite though.
But in my opinion most long series anime seems to be so interesting in the eyes of the watchers that makes them want to watch it, because the more you watch it the more you got addicted (just like naruto, one piece, and other anime that has a 100+ episodes). And I have to say that some anime don't match exactly as the manga, some has changes too.
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