The Awakening

Let's pretend I'm actually good at tracking dates and say that two full weeks have passed since I started watching Bleach. To be honest, it's not that good. It's long-winded, has a tendency to underplay emotions, and to paraphrase Mary, "half of the series is spent with Ichigo trying to learn bankai." At least it was up to the point where she dropped the show altogether and gave it up as a bad job. Then again, Mary and I usually don't see eye to eye when it comes to these things. She loved Clannad, which I gave up on after Episode3. But, well.

Point is, Bleach is interesting. For all its unnecessary (in my opinion) emphasis on battle scenes - which are mostly predictable, given this is Kurosaki *freakin'* Ichigo we're talking about - Bleach keeps me hooked because of its characters. Fine. I admit to having a soft spot for handsome men (ehem, boys) with troubled pasts and stormy eyes, but even if Byakuya and Toshirou weren't there, I'd probably still watch the series. Probably. The zanpakuto are interesting in their diversity, and the enemies are swell, too.

My beef with this series (the main one) is that it gives very little thought to death. Of course, you could argue that the story deals with people who see death as a natural, inevitable end (the shinagami being what they are) but still, I watched this series after Gundam SEED, where Kira was all "What have I done? How do I atone? Can I atone? No, I can't!" I suppose it's somewhat wrong to judge one series based on another one's criteria, but still. I think Bleach slaughters too many people.

Joyce, who introduced me to the world of Bleach, once complained that the series puts too much emphasis on Toshirou. And having seen a considerable part of the show, I say, Hell yeah. But given I was a Toshirou fan even before I started watching the show, I don't mind much. Not really, no. Although I wish they'd feature Byakuya more often, too.

Love this series for its music, its characters. I also like Kubo Tite's way of creating "romance", where he doesn't explicitly say if his characters love each other or not - it's up to the audience to make sense of the "It's complicated" relationship. I hate it for a lot of things, including its length. And Ichigo being all-powerful, invincible. And the fact that a lot of things keep popping up halfway through the series - the King's Key, for example, which is apparently what Aizen's really after - just to make the plot more complicated that it originally was. Gah. A Meitantei Conan in the making. Only with hotter guys in kick-ass uniforms. Roy Mustang would drool if he saw Matsumoto in her battle gear.

PS Ep146 is in wmp min mode right now. Photo courtesy of the unsuspecting KalvinK, deviantartist extraordinaire.