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):
The nature of Bleach is one that can be frustrating for the casual fan that really wants some impact and meaning to things but it can be even more frustrating for the longtime diehard fan. When there are these buildups to characters that in essence create overpowered villains you end up in a place where it’s just damn impossible to solve it without going all loopy. It really does feel like Kubo’s done that several times over the series run and you got that sense of it a couple of times within this current arc, though thankfully most of them had the rug pulled out from under them.
Will that same happen with Gerard? I certainly hope so because we’ve now got a really solid pair going the distance with powers and bankai to take him down and it just keeps revealing himself to be so overpowering that you roll your eyes at it. Yeah, I get it, not every bad guy wants to rule the world or do things that would put him in a position of power. But considering the stages that we’ve seen Gerard go through previously and then his latest transformation here, you’re left wondering where the hell this guy was all along and why he isn’t in a far more powerful position elsewhere for a good length of time. The reason is that there is no strong backstory to him for us to engage with as everything is focused on just providing fodder for the heroes to take on and overcome, though the how of that always feels slippery.
This issue also throws us in a couple of other directions along the way and that’s definitely not Kubo’s strong suit. When he buckles down and focuses on a few chapters to tell a tale he tends to work a lot better as there’s a sense of continuity and strength to it. A brief page or two showing us what Uryu is up to is alright at best, though it’s amusing to see that he looks like he’s about to fall over. Again, I can’t see Kubo truly killing any of his characters at this point who have been around this long. When we shift to Ichigo and Orihime, there’s that nod to her where she’s going to step up and do the fighting against Ywach in conjunction with Ichigo. Now, it does seem like she hasn’t done any combat training that I can see mentioned in checking out fan threads, but damn if she doesn’t leave me hopeful that she finally gets to step up in a big way. Kubo really needs to change the parameters of his storytelling with the female characters and has for far too long.
In Summary:
While we’ve had a decent mix of chapters recently that have been focused on individual fights, the hodgepodge chapters like this just feel weak and over even quicker than usual. There’s little that goes on here beyond a bit of mild stage dressing to put things in proper positions and that leaves you feeling emptier than usual while reading Bleach. Mostly this is a forgettable chapter with the usual Kubo artistic weaknesses but it does have me hopeful that we might see a mild redemption for Orihime soon. Heaven knows she needs it.
Grade: C
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Viz Media via Weekly Shonen Jump’s ComiXology Release
Release Date: May 9th, 2016
MSRP: $0.99