A Bleach-y Recap

I applaud Kubo for finally bringing an end to that horribly long and dragged out Hueco Mundo arc. Since the arc ended during my sheep wrangling back in the old country, I wasn’t available to witness the euphoria among the forums of how relieved they were that Aizen’s reign of terror has finally ended. Well. I’ve only recently just caught back up on Bleach and while I did plan on having a recap post of the things I found interesting in the buildup to the arc’s end, I was pretty much out of motivation by the time they finally locked Aizen’s ass up. Everything that I thought would happen, did happen. Ichigo would swoop into the rescue, show us some new moves while being all bad-ass-aloof-quiet-like (with *gasp* long, majestic hair), rilling Aizen up enough so that he will be mindrapped into lecturing the readers about his ascension to god status, with Urahara ending it all by neatly wrapping his ass in a tight-knit bow to be shipped away to Soul Society’s alcatraz.

Okay, maybe I didn’t get that last bit right. I did think that Urahara will have the final say in the battle, but the LAST thing I would expect them to do is show Aizen mercy long enough to not try and kill him once and for all. My memory might be a bit hazy at the moment, and there may have been the fact that he is now immortal thrown into the mix at some point, but I think it’s just dumb to keep the biggest threat in the world alive long enough to plot an escape in the future. Oh well. Better not beat the bush too much. Kubo might just bring him back if we still dare to mention Aizen’s name too much, even on the hush-hush. I’ll just put him in the backburner for now, as should the rest of the world.

Now. Here is the interesting bit. I remember reading in a forum somewhere that a “JUMP-Pillar” manga was nearing it’s end a couple months ago. With the Aizen arc finally coming to a close, I thought that Bleach would have been the one to kick the dust. In the end though, I realize that there is still a lot of loose-ends lefts in the story, even though we all know Kubo will take his time getting to the damn point in each chapter. With the whole “Soul Kingdom” issue still up in airs, I was dumb to think that Kubo would not milk this cow for as long as he can.

This leads us to this current arc. I’m guessing that beneath this guise of having Ichigo finding ways to regain his shinigami powers , we will finally be able to get a glimpse of this mysterious king. This is definitely where we finally see the upper-echelons of the Shinigami hierarchy. The arc is still too young to have any concrete theories, but I’m betting on the fact that this is where it will eventually lead to. Aizen may again return as the final boss, who knows but Ichigo fighting to regain his powers must mean that he will be back in battle to fight some lame gooney sooner or later.

And now I will shift my focus to the Vaizards of this arc, the Fullbringers. While the name is awesome (it sounds cool), the character designs again seem like a rehash of the old Vaizards, instead this time the boss is not some buckteeth-ivy-leaguer-with-a-bowl-cut. It is pretty interesting that the whole backstory to them is that they have all been affected by Hollows earlier in their lives, and their weapons and stuff is really neat, but the thing I question most is their motif. Like the Vaizards during their introduction, they are really mysterious and dark. Like the Vaizards, they reach out to Ichigo in order for him to gain some sort of new strength. Unlike the Vaizards, these guys are still essentially human. With their unique abilities from birth, I suppose they are pretty much exactly the same as Orihime and Chad, so I wasn’t really all that surprised to see Chad amongst their group in the last chapter.

What was really weird to me though is the fact that they were off attacking Ishida previously. Do they have some sort of grudge against the quincy as well? That is where the motif bit comes to mind. I don’t really see the connection between attacking Ishida, but wanting Chad’s help. It just doesn’t make sense to me. Ichigo though, seeing Chad with them, probably thought that the Fullbringers were safe and seeing that they are trying to help him regain his power, they’re most likely harmless. But given Kubo’s previous penchant for twists (although he only really had one successful one, and yes it was pretty epic), I can’t help but be a little wary about these guys. Maybe they’ll be like the Vaizards, maybe they’ll be like Aizen. It’s too early to say.

Anywho, after all that I never got to give my impressions on this current arc, other than ranting about my doubts on the Fulbringers. The whole throwback to the school setting, with the nice little humor thrown in and the old Bleach feeling was a really neat departure from the DBZ clone Bleach had become in the Aizen arc. This will probably not last, since Bleach has been going in the same old shounen process of new characters, new enemy, new training, new powerup, new win, but it was nice to be reminded of some of the cool parts of Bleach’s early promise.

As for my thoughts on the current chapter, 433, I guess I’ll skip it for now. Kubo tends to drag out his chapters so that you don’t get to the actual exposition until there is 10 wasted pages of blank empty space and this latest chapter was no different. All I saw was the Fullbringers (and Chad) convincing Ichigo to join their ranks, for better or worse. For all that talk of me having no motivation of making a recap post for Bleach, I guess this is pretty much what it ended up being. This post started as an impression post for 433, but my inner rambling turned it into something else. Meh.

To sum things up, I am glad that we are finally away from that hell hole that is hueco mundo. Even though Bleach’s rankings have been as high as ever, I can sense that the fans were starting to bore of the whole Aizen thing. This fresh reboot was something that was needed to keep things from getting stale. I just hope that Kubo really learnt from that last arc, since I can tell that this change is something that he really needed and most probably wanted as well.

/ 3 Commentsleave a comment /

• foshizzel says:

  January 17, 2011

  Haven't read much of the Bleach manga, but the anime is at a slow point with the random new years and wtf halloween episodes. Not sure when they plan on returning to Ichigo vs Aizen but I hope so soon! Do you think it's headed for end in march? I think Bleach has been around long enough lol.

  Reply
  • Bass says:

    January 17, 2011

    I'm not sure about the anime actually. I wonder if they're actually wiling to continue past the Aizen bit and into the current arc.

    Seeing how popular Bleach is they probably will though :P

    Reply
    • foshizzel says:

      January 18, 2011

      Well the anime is currently in filler mode, before that Ichigo was training with the help of his dad. Then the filler started up again.

      Right Bleach is popular I am sure they can make a new filler boss to buy some time xD

      Reply