What kind of job would Ichigo have if he wasn’t a Soul Reaper?
What They Say:
Ichigo and Uryu deal with delinquents from another school that come looking for trouble. Following the incident, Ichigo’s boss Unagiya shows up and drags Ichigo back to the office, where he meets a man called Kugo Ginjo.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With the time leap having moved us forward a year and we’ve gotten to see how Ichigo is living, it ended kind of cutely last week by going back to a standard kind of punk gag with the thugs who were looking for Ichigo after he roughed up one of their members. In a way, you can imagine Ichigo wanting to get into that fight since it lets him stay on top of things but it goes awry here as Ishida gets involved with the fight at the school and numerous others start to show up. Amusingly enough, some of the thugs he’s dealt with over the years are calling back on him here, not that he remembers many of them. Or any of them, in fact. What throws it all into complete disarray though is when Unagiya arrives on the scene, smacks everyone aorund and dashes off with him so she can put Ichigo back to work.
Having Ichigo working for an odd jobs company, a one woman company at that, is kind of poetic since it does have him doing all sorts of things that invariably help people on different levels. Unagiya is kind of over the top comical with her personality an abrasiveness, but it’s a good pairing with Ichigo and his own nature at this stage. The place serves as a good way of getting Ichigo going on the next arc of the series as a man named Kugo arrives there wanting to hire them for a job which involves finding someone, someone that Ichigo definitely knows. Being asked to do a background check on his own father is comical to be sure and it being a “coincidence” just makes it all the more humorous, even as Ichigo says he’ll answer any question about him.
The episode has a fairly laid back pace to it as shows the various aspects of how everyone is getting on at this point. There’s some really nicely done small moments with Ichigo’s sister and Urahara as she points out that Ichigo has always been fighting for people and doesn’t need his Soul Reaper powers in order to do it. Having Urahara still watching him after all this time is an interesting nod as well since it makes it clear that they still expect something to change somehow, something that hasn’t been talked about yet. And Inoue is still inserting herself into Ichigo’s life in very cute ways. I’m still not exactly a fan of them as a couple, since I never felt it was really pushed all that much (if at all, really) in the episodes that I’ve seen on DVD at this point, but there is definitely an appeal to it if Rukia is firmly out of the picture and it does make a certain sense.
In Summary:
Similar to the previous episode, Bleach is all about building the foundation of the next storyline here and unlike the Kagezora storyline, it doesn’t feel awkward or poorly done in doing so. It has a more natural and warmer feel about it as we see Ichigo going through his days, seeing the way he’s being observed and watched as well as getting the first slivers of where things will go from here. It’s building up the mystery well, in small ways, without going completely in our face with it. And there’s a whole lot of appeal to that since we’ve been beaten over the head repeatedly in the previous arc. While this isn’t a standout episode, it’s a solid piece that feels like the characters are all operating as they should and would as it moves towards what will come.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
