Lots of flash, but very little substance
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Tite Kubo
Translation: Joe Yamazaki
What They Say
The battle for the royal palace heats up as Squad Zero and the Quincy invaders continue their standoff. Squad Zero appears to have the upper hand so far but that could all change when the Quincy king joins the fight. Do the Soul Reapers have an ace up their sleeve as well?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Since this is modern Bleach, there are only about 2.5 events of any note in this volume, and the first one is the fight between Askin Nakk Le Vaar (thank god his name was in the preview summary for the volume, otherwise there’s no way I would’ve been able to pull that up) and Nimaiya of Squad Zero. It turns out that the Quincy’s power involves freely adjusting the lethal dose of anything he wants, and he in turn uses that ability to make his opponent’s blood incredibly deadly. Nimaiya lets out some of his own blood to counteract that, but it turns out if he lets out enough for it to not reach the lethal dose, he’d die of blood loss anyway. Oh, but then he pulls out the overly specific power of those hot springs to constantly refresh blood, so he’s able to win. Which feels like a really stupid win of “oh, I happened to have the exact counter to the way you are using your vast powers at this specific time”, but whatever. Guess Askin should’ve chosen to make air lethal or something, because then our (incredibly underdeveloped) hero-affiliated character wouldn’t have been able to use that insanely specific move to stop him.
Carrying on, we get an incredibly brief bit (accounting for my .5 in terms of events of the book) where Yhwach takes the remaining powers/lives of the low level mooks on the ground and redistributes them to the ones who followed him to the palace. And honestly, it feels like a sudden rushed movement to pick up the pace, abruptly killing off a lot of the less important characters in this massive battle in order to just get to the “big” fights. It’s a hell of a messy and dumb plot point, but for now it’s probably for the best that Kubo just focuses on the stuff that at least somewhat matters, so I suppose it’s a net gain overall. It certainly isn’t particularly good writing though. Oh, and that sniper Quincy uses his gun with the ability to “pierce anything between his gun and target” to just ignore Squad Zero’s defenses and put a hole in Nimaiya’s body. Which once more feels pretty damn anticlimactic and out of nowhere, but whatever.
And then the rest of the book comes down to a big battle between Yhwach and Ichibe Hyosube, leader of Squad Zero. This shouldn’t really come as a surprise, but this once more comes down to a hell of a lot of flash and vaguely cool things with very little substance. In theory Ichibe’s powers come down to ink and power over names, but in essence it comes down to him saying “I take away your powers and now you’re weak and I win,” while Yhwach has the ability to say “nuh-uh, I know all the powers and nothing can hurt me and I can do whatever I want.” By making the powers so vast they instead become incredibly limited and simple, and there’s no room left for interesting usage or application, so instead it’s all down to the visuals. In other words, in the end it comes down to Yhwach’s BS instant win power beating Ichibe’s BS instant win power primarily because the book doesn’t want him to lose there. On the visual front I’ll at least give Kubo credit, in that he pulls off an unusual sort of cool by making a large-bodied older fellow look straight up intimidating, and the theme of ink being used to create striking blacks and whites is quite impressive. Ichibe represents a type of imagery that certainly isn’t common in shonen battle manga, and that’s very much commendable. But that just makes it all the more of a shame that the battle is so incredibly shallow, with no substance to back up all that style.
In Summary
Perhaps even more than most volumes in the series, this one brilliantly represents what has gone wrong with Bleach. First off, it’s barren in terms of actual things occurring, with so few events here that you could count the things that happen here on one hand with room to spare. Then we get the first battle, which introduces an overpowered but possibly interesting power… and then pulls up an insanely specific counter to the exact specific way that power is being used in order to end the fight. It doesn’t feel clever, and instead feels like something slapped in to just bring the battle to a close since Kubo got bored with it. Speaking of which, Kubo also uses a plot point here to hastily sweep away the smaller battles in progress and characters left on the field of play with little fanfare, which is both appreciated because we didn’t need to see them really, but also terrible story-telling in general. And then we finally come to the huge fight of the volume, which is full of some grand stylish visuals that really feel unique… and then doesn’t have any true substance to it whatsoever. They just yell their invincible uber-powers at one another, and then it’s decided that one wins because the plot calls for it, rather than any truly substantial or logical reason. I suppose the winner simply called infinity+2 to the loser’s infinity+1, and that was that. Perhaps if cool and unique imagery is enough to carry a book for you on its own, you may find some enjoyment here, but you’ll otherwise likely find it more than a little hollow.
Content Grade: C+
Art Grade: A-
Packaging Grade: B+
Text/Translation Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Viz Media
Release Date: July 5th, 2016
MSRP: $9.99
