Bleach 27

I was pretty optimistic about this volume.  The recent storyline has been pretty satisfying as far as developing characters that have been around awhile, rather than introducing a bunch of new ones.  I was a little disappointed with the first couple chapters, which wrap up the fight scenes from last volume with some pretty standard fare.  But even in that, we get to see Urahara fight, which is new and awesome (I mean, he would have to be pretty handy in a fight after keeping him under wraps for this long), and the situation with Ulquiorra kidnapping Orihime is kind of terrifying.

The last volume hinted at this, but there was a lot of focus on Orihime this time.  Orihime’s my favorite character, so I was pretty partial to all of it, myself.  One chapter absolutely broke my heart, because she got to say goodbye to one person and you just know where that’s going to go.  There’s even a little bit of a romantic tease while this is going on.  Curse you, Tite Kubo.

Unfortunately, the nicest chapter also reeks a bit of plot convenience.  Rather than just taking Orihime, Ulquiorra gives her a bracelet that makes her invisible and lets her back into Karakura so she can get her affairs in order and say goodbye to only one person.  But only if that one person doesn’t know she’s there.  I mean… I’m pretty sure these guys don’t exactly have benevolent intentions.  I’m not sure why they wouldn’t just take her.

More heartbreaking is the terrible situation that Orihime finds herself in afterwards.  Her powers are fully explained, and apparently she has one of the more unique abilities in the series.  Knowing Bleach, it will turn out she is descended from a group of people who all have these skills, then the characters will go and train with them in order to fight bad guys.

Anyway.  I shouldn’t say things like that since this volume was so kind about Orihime’s involvement with the plot.  The end featured the team of Chad, Ichigo, and Ishida taking on the alternate world, and I have to say I’m pretty interested in seeing how far they get.

A small part of me is a bit disappointed that we are getting yet another story about Ichigo going into an alternate world to save a girl, even though that girl is Orihime.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.

Bleach 26

This is either the best volume I’ve seen in awhile or the story is getting much more awesome here.  The fighting is mostly training stuff, with some arrancars popping in towards the end to spar with the characters as a distraction.  There are peeks at the training Chad and Uryuu are doing, and some fooling around with Kisuke Urahara, but a large chunk of the volume is for showing off Ichigo’s progress as a Visored and for Orihime.

Come to think of it, I probably really liked this volume because I really like Orihime.  She’s really fun and has pretty much stayed consistently entertaining without being annoying for the entirety of the series, despite the fact she’s appeared so infrequently since the first few volumes.  For some reason, she’s not allowed to fight the hollows and arrancars, and several characters count her out of the fights.  This actually broke my heart a little because it made Orihime so sad, and she’s just… so loyal.

Orihime is also the first person to track down Ichigo.  There’s a short scene between her and Ichigo which was really anticlimactic.  Of course, Ichigo’s just not a romantic dude, and Orihime’s feelings probably weren’t first in his mind.

Bizarrely, Orihime runs to Rukia for support.  I didn’t really think the two of them would get along, but they seem to be the only friend the other girl has.  It’s actually kind of nice.

And at the end of the volume, I’m actually looking forward to the arrancar fights quite a bit.  They seem to be coming out on top, and there are one or two really annoying new arrancars, so I want to see how that goes.  The girl featured on the front of this volume is the one I want to see bite the dust.  And in case anyone was wondering, I think Bleach has stolen the crown for ridiculous names from any other series that may wish to possess it.  Each and every new character’s name is like a separate gift from the author lately.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.

Bleach 25

Hm.  Well, I have to say I enjoyed this volume much more than the past couple, even though not much went on except a fight between Ichigo, the Visoreds (or Vizards?), and his… inner hollow, ikasoruK ogihcI.

That I liked the fight better than the story probably says something about the plot at this point.  Hollow Ichigo has been something I’ve wished for ever since his fight with Urahara, and that there are more hollow characters is kind of a bonus.  I am a little disappointed that fighting as a hollow entails little more than a hollow mask, but I’ll take what I can get.

Hauling out one’s inner hollow requires a fight with the self similar to the one that Ichigo underwent when he got his Bankai.  Except instead of the Zanpaku-to man, there’s a negative version of Ichigo.  While he’s fighting that inside himself, the Visoreds are fighting him in the real world behind some massive shields, apparently unbeknownst to Ichigo.

The fight is actually pretty good… probably one of the better fights in the series so far, and far better than the fight between Ichigo and Byakuya.  While this is going on, everyone is looking for Ichigo, and also the true purpose behind what Aizen is doing is revealed to Orihime and a few of the other Soul Reapers.  There was no surprise behind what was revealed, and his true purpose is actually kind of… well, generic.

But I’ll keep reading.  It gave me what I wanted, so I guess I owe it a few more volumes, at least.  The outlook from this point isn’t so hot though, since it looks like we’ll just get more fights with the Arrancars, and I haven’t been a big fan of them as of yet.

Bleach 24

I’ve been a bit over-zealous with writing my reviews lately and they’ve been way too long, which is amazing to me since I generally sit down and have nothing to say at first.  I’m going to throttle back a bit.  I already tried with Cipher, which is a relatively short first volume review, but not very short period.  It shouldn’t be hard not to talk about Bleach though, because it’s all just fights.

I wasn’t too sure of what was happening through the first part of this volume.  The action jumps from fight to fight, and sometimes we see people get beaten up, and sometimes they’re just laying there, and more than once you’re not entirely sure if an opponent or ally has been beaten.  There’s a lot of style to it, and it wasn’t nearly as boring as the last volume.  When things look their darkest, a very shonen manga-y plot device kicks in, which is fine, because that’s what Bleach is.  After that, there’s a bit of aftermath to the fights, but otherwise that’s the entire volume.

We learn a bit more about the Arrancars, and one of the Soul Reaper opponents reveals that the strongest Arrancars are ranked with numbers on their body.  This system is easier for me to remember than the ranks of the companies in Soul Society, so me and this story arc may get along yet.  It would also help if they all had ridiculous names like Grimmjow Jaegerjaques, too.

Ichigo decides to work on the dark side a bit at the end of the volume, and I have to admit I’m looking forward to that, so things aren’t so bad for Bleach right now.

Bleach 23

It’s not a good sign when you’re reading a series and it makes you want to trash the volume every time you read it.  Rangiku.  RANGIKU.  The first part of the book is filled with jokes about her breasts.  Not even the kind you can just roll your eyes at and ignore.  There are entire scenes involving Rangiku’s breasts.  And Orihime.  The scene that made me most angry had Orihime pouring her heart out about being jealous of Rukia, and then Rangiku popped naked out of the shower and harassed her a bit before saying the right thing and harassing her again.  It was too much fanservice.  Too much.  I like Orihime a lot, so I may have just been angrier because a scene I had been anticipating for a long time was ruined with fanservice.

The one thing I can say in Bleach’s favor at this point is that there are some awesome weapon designs.  I feel like the series has become a long line of battles where the characters top each other in battle after battle with better and more flashy sword techniques.  The sword designs don’t even make that much sense anymore, but they are cool-looking.  We see Rukia fight for the first time.  I forgot she even could.  I would say that’s a bit of a spoiler, but I was even a bit surprised when all the characters made a big deal about her coming back as a fighter since I just assumed she would, seeing as how the series goes on for so much longer.  I was surprised again, though, when I realized we hadn’t seen her fight in about 20 volumes.  It just feels right.

After the preliminary joking around and more of making a big deal about the characters from Soul Society appearing in the real world, we get another round of pseudo-hollow battles that looks like it’s just getting started.  That’s fine, because it seems like the pseudo-hollow characters are mostly expendable, and if we stick with the core Soul Society people here with few or no new introductions, I won’t have problems remembering minor characters like I did during the Soul Society arc.  I still don’t really know some of the Soul Society characters that are here (like the bald guy who was the focus of the latter half of the volume, for instance), but if they stick around, I’ll get to know them and it won’t be a problem.

One of the pseudo-hollows was Grimmjow Jeagerjaques.  It’d be fine if he stuck around, because I’m not likely to forget his name anytime soon.

Bleach 22

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.

Bleach 21

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.

Bleach 20

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.

Bleach 19

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.

Bleach 18

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.