Almost a Monty Python skit.
Creative Staff:
Story/Art: Tite Kubo
What They Say:
Ichigo Kurosaki never asked for the ability to see ghosts – he was born with the gift. When his family is attacked by a Hollow- a malevolent lost soul – Ichigo becomes a Soul Reaper, dedicating his life to protecting the innocent and helping tortured spirits themselves find peace.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The question at the end of this chapter is a familiar one as the Soul Reapers here are asked, “Isn’t it frightening to be powerless?” It’s a familiar refrain because we’ve seen these characters at different stages of the series facing that problem against overwhelming odds. Even though they have power and ability, the opponents tend to be of larger and more menacing scale in order to juice up what the good guys have to do in order to win. It’s a standard enough shounen cliche and one that still largely works well because there’s always an audience for it that’s experiencing it for the first time. After over 650 chapters of Bleach, I’ll admit that I continue to hope that Kubo will grow up with his audience a bit, but that still doesn’t seem to be the case.
After finishing off the Nanao and Shunsui storyline in the last chapter, essentially putting them on the bench to heal until needed, this one shifted to Rukia, Kikuchi and others that are dealing with their own opponent. While the last time around we had a good single panel shot of Aizen to get things pumped up ever so briefly, we don’t get that here. Instead, we get the push by this group’s current opponent of Gerard Valkyrie making his play to show them that he and his godlike powers essentially make them powerless. I didn’t read the serialized chapter where this had kicked off before, having only come in about ten or so chapters ago I think, so I’m a bit out of the loop at the moment. What we do get is essentially the latest giant to stride across the landscape and using it as weapons to deal with “puny Soul Reapers” that are down there. Similar to Lille Barre, Gerard knows he’s full of godly power and intends to use it.
Similar to the previous chapter, this one is an exceedingly fast read because there’s so little here. In addition to the two-page spread of the oversized Yammy, I mean Gerard, we get a lot of surprised looks, things flying all over the place and a lot of speed lines. Again, traditional shounen material and I completely get that, but I keep expecting more from this series after all this time. There are some nice moments, such as Gerard’s grabbing of the tower and using it as a weapon, and I actually liked the angle used for seeing him in his giant form at first, but the series continues to be so very weak with backgrounds to really set the location and up the mood and power of it all that it weakens the story as a whole.
In Summary:
Bleach moves through the motions here and it certainly does it competently enough, but it still feels like things we’ve seen before a few times in different forms. For me, I’m still trying to adjust to each of the re-introductions we get here as I’m coming in mid-arc overall and trying to catch up on each subplot, often realizing that they’re just the usual drawn out pieces. Kubo’s work continues to be competent but at the same time, it feels exactly like it has for far too long, without any minor growth in storytelling or artwork to showcase things better. It’s enjoyable enough on the base nostalgia level, but it’s also spending so much time on subplots that it’s hard to really dig into in general without what you would consider the main cast.
Grade: C
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Viz Media via Weekly Shonen Jump’s ComiXology Release
Release Date: December 14th, 2015
MSRP: $0.99
