Bleach 436 – Playing with Fire

Bleach decides to keep up with its “slow and steady” approach this week with the long-awaited release of Ichigo’s full-bring ability. Typically seen in all of his training arcs, Ichigo discovers the ability from within at the most critical of moments, this time with some help from Chad.

The point of interest for me this chapter is the sudden change of stance of Riruka, since she seemed deadest on keeping Ichigo in the dollhouse until he succeeds just last week. This week, after hearing of the breaking of the time limit, she seems so concerned of Icihigo’s well being, a complete 180 from her attitude in the last chapter. Tough love was the starting-point but now the sudden flip-flop really took me by surprise, and didn’t seem like a natural progression.

Clearly she knew this was coming, especially given that she knew about the time limit beforehand. Was 15 minutes not enough? Masking her concern through her disgust at how “gross” pork-chop became wasn’t convincing either. I just didn’t like how this attitude change came about, as she was so calm and relaxed one minute, and then hell-bent on shutting down the operation the next. If you’re a hardass, keep to it. Don’t change character just because of some minor detail.

Giriko’s fullbring ability, “Time tells no lies” is cool in theory, but a bit half-assed if you ask me. It seems like an ability thought of in the last minute by Kubo to give this training chapter an edge, this time with the threat of having everything inside the dollhouse incinerated if Ichigo doesn’t win in the designated time. While Riruka and Giriko would make an excellent tag team combo when fighting against enemies with their time trap, it doesn’t seem too hard once you’re inside the thing facing a glorified big foot.

As for pork-chop-san, it’s just the addition of more eyes, and a slightly larger physique. Nothing much change other than it’s appearance, since it’s approach to attacking Ichigo remains the same. Charging and hammering blindly around the place isn’t such a menacing threat considering how easily Ichigo is dodging everything, especially given that he even has time to reminisce about his dear friends.

It’s about time that we got somewhere in this training arc though. Ichigo finally has the key to his full-bring, using his “pride” as the trigger to release his emotions. Why his full-bring took the form of a swastika I don’t know, but I was reminded earlier on twitter that there seems to be a motif around Ichigo with the symbol, as the guard of his bankai sword also uses the same thing. There’s gotta be some hidden meaning to the use of this symbol, since I doubt that Kubo is a nazi. It must be significant in Japanese culture or something

Anyways, while it’s good to see the arc progressing, it didn’t mean that this chapter was all that great. The pacing again seemed off, the exposition was a bit too slow and long-winded, what could have been done on a page was dragged out for five, but that’s just what I’ve come to expect from Bleach lately. I guess it’s stupid for me to think that it would change anytime soon.

/ 10 Commentsleave a comment /

• Inuhanyou says:

  February 13, 2011

  Its a manji symbol :P

  Reply
• baka_girl says:

  February 13, 2011

  I'm not happy with how the story progress, it's so damn slow!

  The only thing that was good in this chapter is the fact that Rukia is still number one in Ichigo's heart :p

  Reply
  • Bass says:

    February 14, 2011

    Yea, it was good to see a new Rukia art. Wonder when we'll see her next.

    Reply
• foomafoo says:

  February 13, 2011

  I agree, the time ability was half assed. How convenient to keep Ichigo fighting that pork-chop doll. Also, why can't Riruka just simply allow Chad to join the fight?

  The first thing I thought was Nazi, but a shuriken also resembles it! haha lolz Naruto crossover here we go!

  Reply
  • Bass says:

    February 14, 2011

    They probably can't open the dollhouse up, maybe it will blow up lol. But on the bright side, only like 1 or 2 more chapters left of this particular training battle :)

    Reply
• bazerkaX says:

  February 13, 2011

  A swastika is facing the other way.

  The symbol above is a sort of buddhist symbol

  Reply
• morri says:

  February 13, 2011

  LOL. I can't believe you've been reading manga for so long (particularly Bleach) and still don't know what the manji is/means.

  As mentioned above, its a Buddhist symbol that was hijacked by the Nazis. On Japanese maps, the manji is used to indicate Buddhist temples.

  Also, the word "banki" is kanji is written as 卍解. Not sure if that is a coincidence or Kubo's trying to hint at something or what.

  This reminds me of when I was reading the English edition of Blade of the Immortal. The publishers had to put this FULL PAGE explanation in the front about how the manji symbol on Manji's kimono has nothing to do with Nazi. Kinda annoyed me to see that in the front of every volume.

  Reply
• Bass says:

  February 14, 2011

  @ Inuhanyou & bazerKax – ah, so that's what it is. To be honest I've honest really noticed it in Bleach. Can't really recall seeing it anywhere else.

  @ morri – Lol as usual, morri knows best. I really never noticed it anywhere else before. I'm just that observant :P

  Reply
• Kyokai says:

  February 16, 2011

  Tite, I am disappoint. The new characters are making me snore, would you hurry up with the power up of Ichigo already? It's like a continuous loop of deja vu with nothing new.

  Oh btw, Bass, nice Valentine-ing of the site. <3 Also, do something about the spam filter because I had to like write my comments again because it was coming from a location, identified as spam (F you WP!). ;3;

  Reply
• kluxorious says:

  February 17, 2011

  I was so happy with the IchiRuki moment I didn't give a fuck about the swastika. Now that I've seen it, I think it would be awesomely cool if his new weapon is just that. Zanpaktou is overrated

  Reply