Bleach 30
Posted: February 10, 2010 Filed under: Bleach 4 Comments »Tite Kubo – Viz – 2010 – 43+ volumes
The fight continues at Bleach, as it always does. Chad finishes his battle, Renji starts in on his, and Rukia goes all the way through a fight on her end. She’s more or less the focus of the volume, and her foe is someone she’s fought before. Much of that battle is a kind of psychological war against Rukia, though there are some clever moves she uses to eventually succeed. Kinda. I can’t really say too much else about it without spoiling it for people who haven’t read (although maybe people more perceptive than I figured things out from the cover). For the record, I had no idea who this person was since the Soul Society arc was a massive blur while I was reading it, let alone two years after I finished it. Even after the story went through the trouble of explaining exactly who this person was, I had absolutely no recollection of them.
Renji’s fight is interesting too, since his Arrancar is not a skilled figher and is masterfully out-maneuvering Renji as of this moment. He has ties to a past opponent too, and uses information he gathered to strip Renji of all but his most basic sword forms, which aren’t all that useful against even a weak Arrancar that doesn’t like to fight. Unlike the opponents I’m leaving out for spoiler reasons against Rukia and Ichigo, his Arrancar really is relatively faceless. Just fodder. I could look his name up, but it’s really not worth it, and his name is also the only thing about him that’s a little bit of a spoiler.
And… what else. Ichigo walks in on another old foe in the very last chapter. We don’t get to see even a little bit of this fight, but I’ll be happy that focus returns to Ichigo once again next time. Maybe we’ll get to see more of Ishida, too. I think he was only in one panel.
Interestingly, the characters speak of death. I highly, HIGHLY doubt that what they say will come to pass, because this is a manga, and as I’ve learned so many times over the years, nobody ever dies. I’m almost a little angry so much is being made of this, because I KNOW that this isn’t going anywhere. I hope that all this doesn’t take up too much time, because it would be a real shame if the story was all about death and resurrection, unless it’s classily written. And I sometimes wonder about Bleach when it comes to that. I mean… I’m obviously still reading, and I like the Arrancar arc a lot more than the previous one, but… I still don’t really care for this series much at all. But I’m 30 volumes in, it’s not like I’m going to stop now. I’m going to keep reading ’til the end.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
-Unlike the opponents I’m leaving out for spoiler reasons against Rukia and Ichigo, his Arrancar really is relatively faceless. Just fodder. I could look his name up, but it’s really not worth it, and his name is also the only thing about him that’s a little bit of a spoiler.-
This fight goes on for quite awhile.
Unlike the Rukia fight, which is one of the best, this is probably the least-popular fights in Bleach.
-I’m obviously still reading, and I like the Arrancar arc a lot more than the previous one, but… I still don’t really care for this series much at all. -
Bleach has enough cool moments and good parts to keep me reading too, but I don’t *love* it like I do One Piece, Fairy Tail, or, to a lesser extent, Naruto.
Yeah, I probably should’ve talked up that Rukia fight a little more, it was one of the better ones I’d seen in Bleach. There was a lot of good stuff going on, aside from the fact I could not for the life of me remember who that character was. When it finally clicked, I realized how serious everything was.
One of the reasons I still haven’t picked up Naruto is because I’m afraid it’ll turn into another Bleach, where I love the first volumes and then lose interest and get lost in the long string of battles among secondary characters. I love series that make those battles interesting (like One Piece or Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure), and I don’t mind so much if I like all the secondary characters, but that isn’t so much the case in Bleach.
I’m still have my doubts about the supposed deaths in Bleach, but reading through the last paragraph of this entry made me laugh a little after I read the new chapter of One Piece.
-One of the reasons I still haven’t picked up Naruto is because I’m afraid it’ll turn into another Bleach, where I love the first volumes and then lose interest and get lost in the long string of battles among secondary characters. I love series that make those battles interesting (like One Piece or Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure), and I don’t mind so much if I like all the secondary characters, but that isn’t so much the case in Bleach.-
A common complaint in Naruto is people want even *more* of the secondary characters, even though some of them get entire arcs :)
The battles are interesting, and they never become just about who has the largest attack (even when one has large attacks, the set-up to actually connect is often tricky).
One thing that helps is no individual story arc is as long as Soul Society or Hueco Mundo. There’s large long-running plot threads, but it’s a lot more broken up into individual stories.
Okay, that’s good, I’m glad to hear things are a little more broken up. I suppose that’s my biggest beef with Bleach. There are lots of series that do good things with long plots like that, but I think I prefer them sorter so that I know things won’t get stale. I’m also pretty happy to hear it’s got good secondary characters. There’s absolutely no reason for me to put off reading it, but I think it’ll still be a while before I start. Maybe I’ll hold out for an omnibus.