...oh hey

Spoiler

They finally beat Aizen.

So I guess Bleach is over.

 

lolololoololololololololololololololololololololololo!!!!!!!!!!

I wish....

 

HaHAAAaaaa. No. Just... no. It's kinda cute how you thought so.

 

Oh, it's over. They might make more, but it's done. He was the last reason anyone ought to read it.

 

When we you in the impression that it had ended?

I wish it was, though.

 

When were you under the impression that they defeated Aizen? He's upon us in a new form.

Spoiler

 

I'm still watching. They left a lot open to continue on. I don't blame people who want to end it here, particularly because of how that battle ended, but they definitely showed that they didn't plan to end it there. Maybe they were prepared to if the series didn't take off, but it is hardly over.

Defeated doesn't mean dead. He definitely isn't dead.

 

Yeah, you just can't leave it like that

Spoiler

Ichigo's never going to see Rukia again? Not gonna happen

 

...wtf am I looking at

No series has any business going on that long. There's so many things wrong with that notion in itself, not to mention with series that typically do keep going at that point. Only particularly long manga I've ever really enjoyed was D.Gray-Man, and even that's got to run out of material at some point. I mean how many times can you repeat the "Guy gets stronger than other guy" template without significant variation? Not to mention that with every iteration the writing gets sloppier, the cast gets less interesting, the settings deteriorate, and in general everything loses its luster. If that damn thing goes on any longer it's liable to look like the manga equivalent of a zombie.

I'll grant that the whole Spirit King shtick might make for an interesting few volumes, but anything else is just so much fluff on a pile of already-mostly-fluff that needs to be trashed. I mean, it's not like I'm asking Kubo to stop writing. Can't he at least work on something else? Who wants to be "The Bleach Guy" all their life?

tl;dr Aizen ain't dead but he sho's hell killed Bleach.

 

Now once the anime catches up, I can finally start watching.

 

At this point it doesn't matter how it ends, because in a media culture that so heavily lauds routine and recyclables, everything is going to have a sequel hook. Including a lot of things that just need to bloody die. Loose ends are allowed, people. It's called good story-telling. You don't always have to end with the girl in the guy's arms. You don't need to fill in every blank space. What's the point? What if the story's not about that at all? Why does it need to be addressed by the writer when it could be left to the readers/viewers?

Revisiting a story over and over again leaves no room for resonance. People interpret things; it's a fun pastime and some people even make a living off of it. When you keep trudging through a fictional space until you've charted every centimeter of it, you encourage the intellectuals to step out and the mindless consumer hordes to feast on what remains of the gristle-laden spectacle. It's sloppy and amateurish, and I only wish enough people recognized or cared about it to discourage the practice. But shit sells regardless. So I'll just have my bark and then go settle back down in the doghouse.

Y'all are right, I was fool enough to think for a second that I might've actually seen the end of this mess. Ever the dreamer, I suppose.

 

Didn't they beat Aizen ages ago and now Ichigo is running around with a bunch of discarded Yu Yu Hakusho characters while trying to be Kamen Rider Skiny Jeans?

 

I have no clue, I get all of my news at least three weeks late. It's a curse.

 

This. So deep. This is basically how I felt.

Ichigo, get you normal human bum @$$ up, marry Orihime, have a kid, kid can see ghosts. The End.

You want these "Fullbringers"? Fine, put them in a new manga/Anime Kubo. This is why I no longer buy the manga at the book stores.

 

Well there is the Spirit King, there is squad 0, there are all the captains that it took Aizein doing all of that for them just to get serious with their Shikai, the Quincy are still rather enegmatic, Ichigo's and Uryu's dads obviously have some history that hasn't been shared. There are characters like Karin and Tatsuki that show signs that they can develop spiritually (Like Orihime and Chad).

For all the ground they've covered they've laid the ground work for a lot more. This isn't something where they are making stuff up as they go.

 

Oh god these posts are getting longer and longer

Well maybe this will help demonstrate my point in an ironic way

If you honestly believe that, I feel sorry for you. There is no way for me to make an effective counter-argument unless you recognize that it is not possible that Kubo has had this all planned from the beginning. There is just no way. And it would be worse if it was true, because taking that into account, we have to hold him up to a much higher standard which he is light years from meeting.

The world of Bleach is not very interesting, not very well fleshed-out for a full fictional universe, and at times elements of it downright clash with each other. The characters aren't fleshed-out well enough; they're all archetypal and simplistic. I could almost tell you what any one of them would do in response to any stimulus. Admittedly, Kubo has tried and succeeded to spice this up, but not on the level of personality: only in regards to plot twists, which cannot feed a starving series by their lonesome.

The setting itself has only base stylistic appeal and is non-committal even in that regard: The colors are all over the place, there's no reasonable explanation for why some characters look or act how they do, and in general some things are just rather over-done. Instead of Mayuri's absurd headdresses, I would've liked to see a character with clearly defined, unique facial features, like a strange part in his hair or a particularly sinister smile. I like Kubo's faces. I'd like to see him do more of them, in more eclectic styles. Those little details matter, and often they stick more than the grand, sweeping ones. What do you remember about your sixth birthday: how many people showed up, or which of your friends' aunts had a nasty mole on her chin?

All in all, the Bleach universe is a stage prop, meant to get blown up and knocked over when Ichigo tears through; it's not something that was built to last, and the mindset to make it more compelling is ostensibly absent. But let me just stop and set the record straight. I don't think Bleach is outright bad. That's just too harsh. It depends what rubric you use to judge it. In the beginning, it was just a shounen: a fast-paced action series that was meant to be thrilling, not particularly engaging. It wasn't out to challenge how people think, or anything of the sort. A series like that doesn't need a whole lot to hit the nail on the head. But shounens tend to keep taking on more than they can handle, and they bloat and develop tumors and turn into an awful mess the longer they go on. The thrill is lost to those who invest enough, and to the rest, well... they are settling for sub-par work, and that's a sin as grave as killin' a man.

I don't want to know about Squad 0; it sounds silly. Side characters' Shikai do not matter at all, and either way having everyone reach the same level of skill de-values the effort required to reach it. The Quincy spiel was a throw-away plot from the beginning and all previous efforts to integrate them have come off as stilted and isolated from the central narrative. No one's parents need to get involved, because the story just isn't about them; such things are better left ambiguous, allowed to generate resonance, like I said.

And last but not least: I am only marginally interested in the Spirit King, because he has had zero involvement in the story thus far, hence any introduction of his will be hollow and unimpressive, whether it's a hard reveal that carries no weight barring an insubstantial off-hand comment about him being "stronger than so-and-so and his uncle combined," or a ret-con that simultaneously makes him the center of attention and belittles everyone else's involvement in the series canon. Very few are the authors that can pull that off, and given the precedent Kubo has set, I don't trust him to match their artistry. The only reason I'd care to see him is to see if his costume design is nice. Yeah. So you could show me an inevitable full-panel portrait of the guy and I'd be thereabouts satisfied.

Again, I don't expect Kubo to stop writing, or even to abandon these ideas. But it's possible to make them as fresh and alive as those first few volumes of Bleach, and the fact that he's not taking the opportunity--that lots of writers have not taken that opportunity--disappoints me. More disappointing is that people still buy, because routine is precious to them. It would be acceptable if it was at least refreshed every now and then, improved in the slightest, but it just goes on and on. It's like a mindless release, something that has to be done every now and then to relieve built-up tension. Art is a fart to these people.

I've got no problem with a story that's built to be long and pulls it off, nor with a low-brow hack-&-slash romp that's meant to satisfy on a far shallower level and succeeds, but Bleach wants to be both. It can't be both.

 

You've obviously never watched Case Closed. 900 episodes and counting.

 

Looks like the Case...



*Sunglasses*



...isn't Closed.