Category: Bleach

Haha, that’s more like it! Finally we have a really enjoyable episode again. This episode really shows that our modified souls work better as antagonists. Why? Because:
– They’re weak, so they have to use other measures to win than just pure fighting.
– They’ve got some awesome powers, with which you really can perform beautiful strategies.
– They aren’t shadowed by all of the other 40 protagonists that Bleach features, so you can actually see them in action a bit.
– They’ve got internal conflicts.
– They have extremely good personalities for antagonists.

What happens in this episode: basically, the Bounto’s have disappeared into oblivion after the previous episode, leaving no trail at all. The three modified souls are assigned to Ichigo’s house, as his family members posess a lot of spirit power. Kon, of course, doesn’t like this at all, and he starts a flame war with Ririn. When Ichigo has to remove them by force, his little sister enters his room. The scene afterwards was very amusing indeed.

Then, the alarm goes off. Yes, the alarm. Remember? It’s from a loooooong while ago, when Ichigo just met Rukia. I can’t believe the creators actually remembered this. I have no idea why, but I always really liked it when a hollow appeared back in those days. I just loved this scene, as it’s a bit realistic again. We just have two persons protecting a neighbourhood from hollows, just a routine-job. Nothing special at all. (This also was the shortest fight in Bleach ever. They’re learning! ;))

The modified souls then get a crazy idea: set up traps for the bounto’s. These, of course, don’t make any sense at all, so they’re quickly laughed at. They then decide to go extreme, by disguising themselves as a couple of dolls (Bounto-dolls, that is). They expect our group to chase them, miss them, and then catch them with help of the traps they set up. What happens in reality is that they get immediately attacked by a serious Rukia, without any chance to escape.

The modified souls then realize that they can’t get our of their suit, and they can’t communicate with anyone except themselves. Whey they are cornered by both Rukia, as Ichigo, as Renji, they decide to go even more extreme, by using their powers against our protagonists. What follows is an extremely enjoyable fight. Especially the illusion-powers of Ririn work very well, changing Renji’s Zabimaru into its equivalent: a broom.

I keep hoping that the creators realize that these kind of episodes are the things that make Bleach shine. Though I think they’ll never find out, and the next episode will be filled with guys showing off their spirit power to each other again. Sigh. Still, this episode was worth the viewing.

I still haven’t figured out whether I liked this episode or not. Renji’s first encounter with the phenomena called “coffee” was awesome, though the drama included may have been a bit too much and predictable. Our female bounto Yoshino goes to challenge the unbeatable Jin. I have no idea why. In fact, why did she even think she’d be able to scratch him?

Jin also finally reveals his plans. He wants more dolls and to turn time for the bounto’s back on. The former is about the most cliché you can ever get, though the latter shows promise. If he really wants the bounto’s to age, then what are his reasons to do such a thing? Why has he been doing so much in order to achieve this goal?

Anyway, for his plans, Yoshino’s absolutely vital. Why? Because she conveniently has the power to reproduce. Why? No idea. At the same time, Ishida is not needed anymore. The reason also remains oblivious. In fact, why didn’t Jin just beat Yoshino in the first place? He could’ve just taken her power when he first met her… Though instead, he had to execute the plan of gathering followers, absorbing living souls, kidnapping Ishida and taking out our protagonists. I guess he loves to play games…

Anyway, basically, Yoshino fights Jin, she doesn’t stand a chance, she and her doll fuse together, they still don’t stand a chance, Jin kills her. She vanishes into green sparkes, which trigger a huge wave of large mosquito’s, who apparently are newly born dolls. Nothing special, though thank goodness we still have Ishida. He has fallen in love with Yoshino, of course, and seeing him get desperate was very interesting to see.

Then we turn to the incredible Ichigo and Renji. What the heck was their role supposed to be? They came to the destroyed mansion, and start fighting a couple of goons. At the end of the episode, they’re still fighting the same goons. If they can’t even beat two of the weakest members of Bounto’s, I’m beginning to wonder what kind of training they did in the first place.

Thank goodness, we finally have an enjoyable episode of Bleach again. I was beginning to worry. The problem with Bleach is that it’s too much focused on big, powerful guys which throw a couple of flashes at each other and take whole episodes in doing so. The fights that matter are so incredibly boring, I can’t believe people actually enjoy those.

The mock-fights in Bleach, however, are great. Especially when Ganju is involved. He’s the only one of the Bleach-cast who uses strategies in battle, with some great results. I just love how he totally owned Ichigo this episode. It was awesome, especially his entrance on the wild boar.

For some reason, the story also took a turn for the better. For what seems like the first time after the episode involving Ichigo’s deceased mother, we finally see some genuine dialogue, which really works. The cliffhanger actually was powerful this episode, instead of the usual annoying ones.

Blah blah blah, Ichigo fights shinigami. Blah blah. Ichigo fights shinigami blah blah. Then Kuriya decides to finish it off himself, and of course, he’s uber-powerful and Ichigo doesn’t stand a chance. I guess only a ‘certain’ bankai will be strong enough to defeat him (*wink wink* *nudge nudge*). Thank you Ururu for not making this a total waste of time after all.

Another Bleach Special. This time with a new OP and ED. I don’t really care for the OP, but how dare the creators change that awesome ED into something like that!?

Anyway, the special begins with the new Bounto who comes and uses metal marbles as a weapon. These marbles join together and form some kind of metal-marble-woman. They get kidnapped afterwards. Then we switch back to Ichigo&co, who seem to have found out the bad guy’s hideout. The three modified souls get into human-mode again (Woo!), the group arrives at the mansion, and for some strange reason, they split up. Then all of them get chased by weird spying eyeballs who grow a mouth, until they meet up with the snake-guy again, along with all the other evil Bountos. Ichigo stays behind to fight them, while Rukia and the modified souls go and find Ishida.

For some strange reason, the snake-guy prefers to fight alone. That’s the beauty of these bad guys. You can always trust them to neatly line up, so that you can fight them one by one. Who needs teamwork anyway? Anyway, fight, fight, blah, blah, Ichigo beats snake-guy by releasing a lot of spirit power. Rukia, meanwhile, encounters a shinigami who betrayed his team. Apparently, he didn’t like Zenpachi too well, so he deserted and ended up with the Bountos. Of course, he has to carefully explain this to a total stranger, so that everyone can hear again what kind of things he did, and exactly how he did it, even though everyone with a bit of sense already figured this out in the last episode. When he has almost killed Rukia, he will of course let the chance to kill her slip in order to protect his master. In this case, against the snake-guy who seems to have deserted his master and has some plans of his own. These plans last short, as the shinigami comes over and kills him in a second. Next episode will probably feature the fight between this guy and Ichigo. Exciting.

This was another one of those Bleach specials, which took up twice the amount of time a normal episode does. It’s been split into two parts. In the first part, the gigantic challenge against the blue slime blobs continues. In the second part, we get some background info about the Quincys.

The first part was pure garbage. The bad guys already have so many weaknesses, and still Ichigo & co just randomly hit the slime for numerous of times, in the hope of being being lucky and destroying them. And on top of that, the creators decided to give the bad guys even more weaknesses than they already had. And still it takes our group twenty friggin’ minutes to defeat these guys. Actually, in the end they even need the help from Hana and Ganju in order to actually win this pathetic fight. I’m seriously getting worried about the next couple of battles if this goes on.

The second part features something that Bleach should’ve tried ages ago: characters who are actually holding a conversation. It gave a nice twist for the series, and we got to see a bit more background behind the woman and the main bad guy. This was very nice to see, especially Ishida’s attempts to hit on her. I like it that he’s been the thing that the Bounto’s need, instead of someone like Inoue, Ichigo or Rukia. He makes for a very original damsel in distress. Although this part was nice to see, it did make me worried about the next couple of episodes. First of all, Ishida has some hidden powers slumbering within him. This is NOT good. Absolutely NOT good. I would have loved to see him struggle without powers for the rest of the series. It makes so much more sense, it’s very original, and it gives so much chances for some nice scenes. But I guess I got my hopes up too high. The second thing I’m worried about is the entire army that the main gad guy managed to recruit. There are like eight bad guys remaining. Each one has their own story. I’m predicting that they’ll either get two or three episodes devoted to them, so that makes for about twenty more episodes before the series gets back on tracks. I think I’ll have a horrible time trying to survive this.

Today, Ichigo&co fight off a bunch of gigantic blue slime blobs. Yes, I refuse to believe that that was actually water. The viscosity was just way too high, and not to mention very badly animated. Anyway, the way the creators introduced these blobs was very creative. After all, you don’t suspect a leaking faucet for being evil. It’s a neat trick that the creators managed to perform: start with something totally common, and then mess it up enough so it becomes totally uncommon. The contrast created by this gives a nice effect.

These fights also prove that the Bleach-cast is as dumb as a pig’s behind. After all, the cores of the dolls are clearly visible. It’s obvious that without these, the dolls would be nothing, otherwise they wouldn’t be there. What do Ichigo and the others do? Right, they try to cut the water, in an attempt to stop it. Not once, not twice, not trice, but they just keep going and going, attacking it without the slightest use of their head…

I did like Ichigo’s idea with the lighter and the tube filled with gas. Even before you see the results, you can already predict that something’s about to go horribly wrong. The creators managed to assimilate this very neatly into the story.

The bad guys themselves are just horribly boring. Nothing but two-dimensional characters, brought in for the sake of being brought in.

How the heck do those snakes keep standing? Okay, the ability to change every material into snakes is believable, although it isn’t really something you’d jump up for, but for these snakes to stand, almost straight, while they only touch the surface with 1/10th of their body? I’m going to urge the creators to spend some more research into physics…

Anyway, this episode had a bit too much plot and a bit too little dialogue. Even though the first Bleach filler was awesome, the second is just meh. The new characters aren’t very interesting. We have a big bad guy, uberpowerful, who wants even more power. He has the common number of two-dimensional subordinates (or slaves, whatever you may call it), and one among them doesn’t like what he’s doing so retaliates. *yawn* The only potentially interesting stuff is that we may be getting some more background information about Ishida.

What I do like about Bleach is that they managed to include certain tics with a few of characters, like Ishida adjusting his glasses over and over. It has a very nice effect, but then again, that’s what most tics do. They add for a little bit more realism, and you can recognize the characters more by this behavior. I wonder why there aren’t a lot of characters in general anime with certain tics.

This episode wasn’t a total waste of time either. There were a few moments which totally made my day: Kon trying to brighten up the mood, the conflict between the two captains, Rukia’s drawing and the little girl’s weapon.

This episode consisted of two parts. A part in which the Bounto featured, and a part in which they didn’t.

The former wasn’t really entertaining. The only good part is that we now know that we aren’t dealing with 2-dimensional villains (Well, at least one of them isn’t). The snake-guy also wan’t really something to be looking forward to. Okay, he’s got a power that’s completely original. But the way he uses it, it’s just as if he just learned how to deal with it.

The latter really was enjoyable to see. The character interaction was top-notch as usual and had me smirking for quite a few times. It was really refreshing to see Rukia’s normal side again, instead of her constant worries.

But there’s one thing that’s been bugging me… Rukia lost all of her powers… didn’t she?

Never did I have such hate/love relationships as with these episodes. Like I predicted, this filler arc ended at episode 68. The good thing is that the awesome bad guys get to stay a bit longer. Let’s hope they’ll get some nice airtime. The bad thing was, that the way the creators resolved this, was horribly uncreative. It doesn’t make any sense either. Why would Yoruichi have interfered with them in the previous episode? Well then, we get some boring explanations, Ichigo discovers that he can’t use his bankai anymore (seriously… not the training stuff again? *dies*). Then a sentence appeared that horrified me. "The Hougyouku that he took has another year’s worth of preparation before it can be used." I kindof feared that something like this would happen, but are the creators seriously trying to put another year into this? I so hope they find a very creative way to solve this.

Anyway, we have some talk, a new bad guy gets introduced, who appears to be the woman in the ED. I wonder when we’ll get to meet the big boss… Ah well, then we finally see what the ED has been hinting all along: the arrival of the three stuffed animals. I’m kindof disappointed with this. The three in their human-like form were extremely amusing, but right now it seems that they’ll be spending most of their time in stuffed-animal-mode. Anyway, their reaction to this was certainly amusing. It’s just too bad that Kon managed to ruin this with his whining.

The rest of episode 69 shows us a bit more info on the new bad guys. One of them lets just go of Chad and Inoue. I don’t see why he had to… apart from being convenient for the creators… The new bad guys themselves also seem like a bit of a disappointment. From the outside, they really look like two-dimensional villains. Especially if you compare them with the previous arc.

The episode ends with something that had to be inavoidable for this show. On one side, it can prove for some nice situations, but on the other side, the creators certainly could have spent a bit more time on thinking this over a bit, as it couldn’t have been done in a more cliché’d way.

Bleach shines when friendly characters annoy the hell out of each other. Bleach falls when it tries to be serious. I think that’s the best way to describe how I feel about this show.