Kenpachi’s got not time for talking!
Creative Staff:
Story/Art: Tite Kubo
What They Say:
Ichigo Kurosaki never asked for the ability to see ghost – 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):
As this Bleach arc continues on we’re getting some decent action sequences that certainly capture some attention. With there being several at play spread across the area and across the chapters, it can take a bit for things to cycle around and at times it doesn’t feel like some of the fights connect well. There’s a little whiplash effect sa Kubo moves from one to the other and sometimes adds a page or two from a different one without following up on it just yet. With a big cast to work with there’s definitely the problem of servicing all the storylines, but as longtime Bleach fans know this is just how the book works – as frustrating as it can be from time to time.
This installment gives us a pretty straightforward fight element to it where we get a minor bit of recovery from Kenpachi with the healing he got, all off-panel of course, before returning to his arrival at the end of the last chapter. Pairing him up against Gerard certainly isn’t a bad idea and the arc for a while has had a decent balance of pairings where they’re well matched and not perfect counters to each other, something that a lot of shounen material tends to do poorly. The problem that the Soul Reapers run into here is that Gerard is certainly a problematic type because of his ability to regenerate at a bigger and stronger level as it means they can do only so much before he just gets to be too much for them. He’s already pretty sizable and there’s a real fear that if they take him down in the wrong way he’ll fall right down to Seireitei and crush far too much of it.
Not that Kenpachi wants to listen to all of this, no matter how much Hitsugaya tries to get him to understand it. Kenpachi is Kenpachi and Kenpachi wants to get things done in taking down this opponent that he sees as a really fun challenge. There are some really nice action moments to this that Kubo sets up in terms of layouts and camera placement, though we do still get the usual problem of minimal backgrounds. When the book shifts to some of the larger layouts where we see the scale of where they’re fighting it helps to reinforce what they’re dealing with, but these kinds of moments are few and far between. They add a lot for me though and are definitely appealing after a lot of close-up shots of character faces or just blurs of action.
In Summary:
While not hugely exciting as there’s little in the way of story material here – story material has been weak in this arc for a while, so it’s not a surprise – it is fun just to have Kenpachi back and his own particular kind of style and fun. He’s ready to rumble and just wants to get into it without the details or any other concerns, which fits him perfectly even with the level and ranking he’s at. Seeing the others trying to balance that and what’s at stake works well and it has a brisk level of simple fun about it. It’s certainly not a memorable chapter in the run but it gets the job done of moving this particular fight with Gerard forward a bit more.
Grade: B-
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Viz Media via Weekly Shonen Jump’s ComiXology Release
Release Date: March 21st, 2016
MSRP: $0.99
