Slightly Biased Manga

I don’t know, friends.  I’m not sure how much longer I can take this.  While I’m still very happy to see that things have moved back to Hollows, I just can’t deal with the horrible plot point surrounding Isshin and the fact that members of the Soul Society keep popping in for cameo appearances in Ichigo’s school.  I also don’t like the fact that Ichigo is always down on himself in this volume and is “unable to control his inner power,” which was apparently not a problem until recently.  I suppose we can attribute this to Aizen’s meddling… but I’m not so willing to do so.

Rukia has reappeared.  I never really liked Rukia, but it’s hard to blame the story for bringing her back.  I was happy to see things once again between Orihime and Ichigo, but I don’t know that that is in the cards.

One good thing is that there are some pretty cool battles with new enemies.  Not only do we get to see Orihime, Chad, and Ichigo fight, but Urahara and Yoruichi also battle, which is always cool to see.  I hope Urahara gets more time in this story arc.

I also have to call out Bleach on its use of the name Grimmjow Jeagerjaques, which sounds totally made up.  Not as made up as Quillish Whammy, I suppose, but still.  I only read his name in the next volume preview, but I certainly didn’t want to forget it.

Just when I thought I could start finally getting back into this series after the volumes and volumes of Soul Society politics.

While I sort of like the direction it’s taking, since I like Hollows and I like the idea of a half hollow/half man army, it’s getting a bit too technical already.  It also goes back a bit to explain Rukia’s background, and I just do not understand if people in Soul Society… are alive… if they’re dead… if they die, then go to Soul Society, then die again later when something bad happens… I probably wasn’t paying attention early on when this was explained.  These things are brought out to explain away the evilness of one of the villians of the past dozen or so volumes, which is totally not cool.  No takebacks, if you’re evil for that long, that’s just the way you are.

But really, while the above massive takeback in any other situation would have just ruined the volume for me, there was something that happened which made that look like a brilliant, well thought out plot point.  One of the biggest, most nonsensical ”fuck you” moments I’ve ever been handed happens with the casual appearance of Isshin in this volume.  It was too much.  You just can’t DO that.  You can’t decide that’s how it’s going to be after so long.

I’m 21 volumes in, so on one hand, I feel like I can’t quit now, but I seriously just threw this volume in the trash for about a day after I got to the Isshin part and didn’t finish it.

Ugh.  I’m done with the Soul Society.  This one is almost entirely Soul Society politics, but thankfully it’s more or less an explanation for everything that’s been going on up to this point.  A… really backwards explanation where a character comes out of literally nowhere and owns up to (and performs) all these evil deeds, but an explanation all the same.  I don’t know how I felt about this, but I know we’ve come back to hollows, which is really what I care about.  Maybe we can jettison these 500 extra characters now.

This volume was really just a long fight scene with the evil shinigami who have been wreaking havoc.  People die and are also mortally wounded.  For the final showdown, everyone who’s still alive shows up.  It’s kind of awesome, but I’m just ready for all this to be done.  I’m looking forward to things moving back to hollows and maybe a brief touch of regular life, but I think the pace is going to slow down now since I think there’s something about one of the new storylines running in the US Jump?  I don’t know how that works.

I’ve since read more manga, so my total unwritten has risen, so I’ll write about the extras instead.  If that makes any sense, or was relevant to anyone but myself.

This volume of Bleach was much better than most of what has been going on in the Soul Society.  I suppose this is to be expected though, since it mostly wraps up here.  At the beginning, we get a bit of the fight Yoruichi was having, and although it hasn’t concluded, we get some more insight into her old position in Soul Society.  Dunno if that has any future bearing on anything, but it was good to know all the same.

Most of the fight is between Ichigo and Byakuya.  We do get to see Ichigo’s bankai, and it is sadly lame compared to, you know, monkeys and thousands of blades and stuff.  Byakuya and Ichigo still had a pretty good, if slightly boring, fight.  I think I was only bored because I was waiting for this huge payoff for all those volumes of Soul Society stuff I haven’t been interested in… and this wasn’t it.  The fighting also wasn’t quite varied enough for me, so even though we got a couple moves, it felt like it didn’t really need to be an entire volume.  Actually, it probably did.  I couldn’t imagine it any other way.  I guess that’s just how these things work.

Totally worth the price of admission though: HOLLOW ICHIGO OH MY GOD.  I can’t wait until that one’s explained.

ARGH!  What the hell?!  This entire volume was the beginnings of fight after fight with characters I have never seen before.  Well, maybe once each, but they are by no means main characters, and most have only probably been mentioned peripherally once or twice.  And not even an entire fight, just the beginnings, and the remainders of fights I maybe read about three volumes ago, or maybe fights I didn’t even see… but JESUS CHRIST I CAN’T KEEP TRACK ANYMORE.  There was a main plot point, and we finally see Ichigo again after he hasn’t been the main character for quite some time, but this takes place over the course of one or two chapters.  I’m not even entirely sure why all these fights are breaking out, other than the fact that order seems to have broken down at Soul Society.

The only fight I want to see is Ichigo and Byakuya, and we don’t see it even though it starts at the beginning of the damn book.  The only other fight I care about is whatever Yoruichi is doing, and that’s only because I like Yoruichi, because I’m pissed that whoever she’s fighting has had zero appearances in the story so far (an exaggeration, but… seriously).  There are way too many characters at this point, and I think the story finally snapped and broke down.  What about Orihime, Chad, and the Quincy?  Remember the good old days when the story was about them and not the 500 Captains/Vice Captains/Shinigami that you’ve never met before?

Bah.  I know it’ll pull itself out of the fire and endear it to me again, but I felt like this volume was just… disgraceful.  Please, Bleach.

The problem of no focus on the main characters remains.  Ichigo gets about 4 pages this time around, and Orihime and the Quincy get about one panel.  Rukia gets a bit of story time, since it is her execution and they are prepared to drop the blade on the last page, but for the most part this volume consists of Byakuya v. Renji and Zaraki v. blind guy.  There were parts of another battle with Zaraki and someone else who was only mentioned briefly once or twice before, then another battle with two characters who also have only been mentioned sparsely before.  These things are driving me insane because the plot has come to a screeching halt.  I think approximately ten minutes passed, enough time for Rukia to walk from her cell to the execution grounds.  And it’s just these battles with minor characters for 200 pages.  ARGH.

I actually have grown to care about Renji somewhat at this point.  His battle was pretty engrossing, especially since the second degree swordcraft was used.  It was actually pretty intense, and I didn’t mind watching this one so much.  Renji has some vested interest in the characters, and since Rukia’s brother and Renji were the first two Shinigami introduced, it’s easier for me to like them.

The battle with Zaraki… while I do like him, and I think he puts on a pretty awesome fight since he doesn’t engage in the same high-handed battle strategies as the others, the problem was that he was fighting a rather useless character.  While said useless character was kind of cool since he was a blind swordsman with a sensory deprivation second-degree sword skill, backstory couldn’t save this guy from oblivion.  The guy who stepped up after him was similarly faceless (a rather ironic comment considering… well, his face), but since he called the equivalent of Menos Grande to fight Zaraki, I suppose I could put up with it a bit more.

Even with the problems, the volume was still pretty cool.  But I am getting fed up with all these characters and squabbles and whatnot.  GET TO THE POINT.  I’m serious.  More Ichigo, more Rukia saving, do whatever you’re going to do, just do it.  I’m sick of this stuff.

In an effort to keep up on my to-read stack before letting too many series get out of hand again, I read this volume within a month of its release.  Hooray!

Unfortunately, I was kind of disappointed.  After the non-stop action of the past couple volumes, I was sad to see a ton of exposition here.  There was some promise of fighting, and some light fighting, and some training, but mostly people and dates moved around.  There was an explanation and some fighting in a flashback, and that was pretty satisfying, but there were no fights between any of the current characters.  Boo.

Also, please, let’s conclude Ichigo’s training next volume.  Please.

With that said, I have every confidence this exposition was necessarily and will pay off big in the next volume.  Bring on the execution!

I was SO wrong about this volume. Several pages in, I realized that Uryu’s battle was what I wanted to be reading about. Shame it was over so soon, but he wound up kicking a lot more ass than I ever would have imagined. I wanna see Orihime fight like that at some point. I was a little put off because his opponent was of the variety where anything was possible, so he could pull any move he wanted out of nowhere and just trump Uryu without any explanation necessary, but Uryu beat him rather badly before that happened. The way that particular captain copped out at the end was a little disappointing too.

Something tells me that Uryu’s power situation at the end is not a permanent thing, too. That would just not be in with the spirit of Shounen Jump. Not at all.

Right after that particularly awesome fight, we get more focus on Ichigo’s training. Yoruichi tells us pretty much what we already know, that Ichigo is some sort of Soul Society prodigy, and then he proceeds to fight with Zangetsu. I probably could really get into that even though what was shown was probably all there was to it, but I’m really looking forward to what the second form of his sword is.

Soul Society politics are the only thing dragging the series down at this point. The only thing I really care about is the fact that the 4th company member who was helping Ichigo et al find Rukia is now being sentenced. But everything is still going back and forth about the assassination, and it’s falling back on these character relationships that we know very little about but are necessary to understanding fully what’s going on in these parts… yes. The Soul Society politics are terrible. I’m still not entirely clear about how the organization works, but I’ve at least got my head wrapped around some or all of the captains at this point.

I think it’s hit a slow point again, and I know I said last volume I’d have to wait for things to pick up again, but that may be the case with the next volume. I’m not expecting a lot of action. And now I’ll have to wait, because I am officially caught up. Hooray!

I promise I’ll cram a volume of Oh My Goddess in before I go. Maybe even something else.

But for now, more Bleach. Holy crap was this volume good. After the rather surprise ending last time, I was completely shocked at how good the series got after that. I thought everything was going to pull into some kind of conclusion, and it even looked that way for quite awhile. Bad things happened to good people, Ichigo showed up to fight Captain Kuchiki, and Yoruchi (or is it Yoruichi?) revealed its true form, which was awesome and will probably show up as a Kubo cover before too long. I didn’t give too much thought to that kitty before this volume, really.

Of course, after a heavy dose of everything I could possibly want right away, everything shifts over to Orihime and the Quincy. I love Orihime to death, and I think the Quincy is also a good character… but the stuff that goes on implies a pairing, and I do not like that pair. Well, the Rukia/Ichigo pair was also implied at the beginning of the volume, so it was a bad time for me romantically all around, but I still hate Orihime and Ishida hanging out. He is quite a sensitive guy though, and talks rather candidly about Orihime, and she does know how to tease him, which is very cute.

The Captain that they have to fight is quite terrifying. I found him to be more intimidating than any of the other Soul Society captains so far. I realize the story is going to keep building on itself, but the fact that they fought him and not Ichigo is kind of surprising. It’ll be nice to see what kind of ass-kicking Ishida can get up to, though. And with that, it’s revenge time all around.

I spoiled myself and flipped rather thoroughly through the next volume and did not find what I was looking for. Boo. I’ll have to wait through a couple more volumes at least, it looks like, before the story gets back to where I want it.

Since I’m in Ohio for Thanksgiving, I could only take as much manga as I could cram into my carry-on, which was really only four volumes of Bleach.  If you don’t like Bleach, there may also be some Oh My Goddess old stuff since I’ve got all of it here.  Really, most of my collection is here, but you know how it goes… I don’t feel like reading it.

My interest was somewhat piqued again after reading this volume.  The fight between Ichigo and Kenny was quite good, and Kenny was somewhat more fleshed out than the other Captains/members of Soul Society.  He had flashbacks that were sad and everything.  I realize that this was just a clever trick to make you feel bad for him at the end, but I liked it all the same.  I also liked his techniques a lot, the eyepatch, bells in his hair (I didn’t realize they were in his hair until I was reading the extra stuff at the end), and his massive spiritual pressure.  All good things.  I also liked his relationship with Yachiru, but I didn’t quite understand if it was Yachiru’s power or Kenny’s power that wiped out that messenger.  Maybe both.

I am still slightly weary of the usual Shounen Jump fare of Ichigo getting stronger, working with his sword, blah blah blah, but at least it wasn’t too far over the top here.  I also liked that he stopped the fight when he thought something had happened to Chad.  I still like the relationship the two of them had.

And let me tell you, I was NOT expecting the ending of this volume.  Not so much that it was shocking in content (the “family killer” thing wasn’t all that unexpected), but it happened SO SOON.  Doesn’t that stuff usually take ten more volumes?  What’s going on with the rest of the series after this?