Fanclub Owl’s Fiction Evaluation Club.

[Dragomir]

@Dragomir @Chrono @RayanOO so I just finished kurapika vs uvogin:

Spoiler

There is something missing in HxH for me. I’m really not sure what it is, but...there is something fundamentally missing in this story that is creeping in the back of my mind.

Maybe it’s the complete lack of an ultimate story structure? So far the goal seems to be for Gon to find his dad, but that almost seems like a side plot at this point.

Maybe it’s that the conflicts in the manga don’t feel meaningful? We started at the Hunter Exam where our MCs never really struggle much. Sure the Hunter Exam is hard for 99% of people, but not for the protagonist(s). The only real struggle I feel like we went through in that arc was Hanzo vs Gon, where all Gon really did was just not give up and Hanzo surrendered out of admiration. Leoreo got bodied in Rock Paper Scissors but...not exactly a fun conflict. Other than this, there didn’t feel like there was any real struggle or triumph for the entire arc.

Zoldyck Estate arc...literally there was no conflict. At first I thought they’d have to, somehow, save Killua from his family (Which seemed impossible), but then they just let him go without any struggle.

Heaven’s Tower: Gon and Killua mercilessly and laughably easily shitstomp all competition in a Tower that is supposed to be full of world famous competition, and then get involved in a series of fights where their opponents forfeit before the fights even begin, and then Gon finally fights Hisoka and loses. Gon loses a fight against the top guy then beats him 3 episodes later. They learned Nen which was cool but everything else felt random and hollow.

Then we get to the auction, and it appears like kurapika finally gets a conflict against uvogin and the phantom troupe, but once again kurapika wins without much trouble. The fights between Uvogin and the Blood Shadows weren’t that interesting or well animated either for me.

So the lack of what feels like any real overarching conflict is a real problem for me.

But that aside, back to figuring out what’s missing for me, maybe it’s the lack of a theme? Naruto is a manga about ninjas, and everything in the manga goes to tell a story about ninjas. One Piece is about pirates, and same thing. It feels like an adventure story about pirates, just in a more fantastical way. MHA is about heroes and...you get the point.

These series have deeper themes that match their aesthetics. OP is a series about freedom using a pirate template to explore that idea. Naruto is a story about ending cycles of violence and hatred using a series about shinobis (people raised to commit impartial acts of violence) as its template. MHA is a story about societal mental health, using heroes who want to protect society and villains who want to destroy it as an aesthetic.

HxH feels like it has no theme and it’s tough for me to really get into it for that reason. Gon is a kid who grew up fishing, but he has the power of a demigod for some unknown reason. Sure his dad is supposed to be really strong, but Gon is neg diffing world famous fighters by pushing them really hard with one hand. And he’s not even 15 and has never had any combat training. So I really don’t understand what Gon is, or why he is who he is, or what his character is supposed to stand for.

Killua is better..he’s an assassin raised to kill, and everything about his character and story emphasize that. Kurapika is...some guy with a clan vendetta, and leoreo wants to be a med student. So it’s like...we have a wild hermit running around with a deadly assassin, some guy with red eyes and a clan vendetta, and an aspiring doctor, none of whom’s plotlines or arcs have much to do with one another, running around in a world that feels like its being made up episode by episode with a bunch of random concepts and ideas thrown into a blender, to tell a story about...a kid trying to find his dad while a gang robs a bunch of mafia families?

Like I don’t understand what the story is supposed to be about on a deeper level. Sure it’s a damn children’s anime, but so are OP, Naruto, and MHA that all have deeper themes at work in them.

If these weren’t distracting enough, I still have absolutely no idea who Hisoka is or where he comes from or what his motivations are. He’s the most interesting character in the show, but I’m starting to lose patience with him as I pretty much know exactly as much about him in episode 49 that I knew back in episode 12. And he hasn’t had much screen time anyway.

I think I’ll keep watching because...why not, I do enjoy Nen and seeing all the characters and variety of abilities are fun and all that but..so far I’m really not catching on tbh. It’s not bad, but...I feel like I’ve seen this style of story done much better.

Spoiler

I understand what you're saying. The deeper stuff with conflict and a meaningful story doesn't come until much later in the show. All that appears in the Chimera Ant arc and this is where HxH takes a dark turn. It completely stops being a kids' show.

How do you like the Troupe so far?

 

[Lee Ba Shou]

How do you like the Troupe so far?

Spoiler

They’re okay I guess. Quite powerful it seems, but I don’t know much about any of them really lol.

 

[Owl Ki]

I can't believe you actually read it after hating it so much.

I like to think that by reviewing it, that I am saving some poor innocent soul from delving into a world of contrived mediocrity.

A part of you must love it

I love objectively shitting on it which is why I am planning on a final review on Bleach that looks at the series as a whole. :smithnie:

So, are you going to be excited about the new anime with us now??????

Spoiler

Firstly, I do not have the phone credit for anime. Secondly, I refuse to watch an anime that is over 50% filler.

Urahara vs Askin (and Yoruichi ^^)

Oh yeah. That reminds me of how Kubo introduces Yoruichi’s crybaby, effeminate, clone brother in the last portion of the arc just so he could have a few gag scenes with him.

Post automatically merged: Aug 4, 2020

Urahara vs Askin (and Yoruichi ^^)

Hold up, I have just realised that we never see what happens to Urahara, Grimmjow, Yoruichi or Yushiro. Kubo, you utter sassenach.

 

[RayanOO]

Hold up, I have just realised that we never see what happens to Urahara, Grimmjow, Yoruichi or Yushiro. Kubo, you utter sassenach.

To know that you have to read the book haha

And you just thought it was the end

 

[Owl Ki]

To know that you have to read the book haha

And you just thought it was the end

Book? Book? Are you kidding? Is there more than one?

For clarification, I have no intention of reading any Bleach book, I just want to know how many there are. Lol.

As far as I am concerned, if any form of media, be it book/film/comic/television series/manga/whatever, has to rely on additional material outside of it’s main story to fill up the gaps and plot holes then that form of media has failed.

I should not have to read a book to understand what is happening in a manga.

 

[Chrono]

@Dragomir @Chrono @RayanOO so I just finished kurapika vs uvogin:

Spoiler

There is something missing in HxH for me. I’m really not sure what it is, but...there is something fundamentally missing in this story that is creeping in the back of my mind.

Maybe it’s the complete lack of an ultimate story structure? So far the goal seems to be for Gon to find his dad, but that almost seems like a side plot at this point.

Maybe it’s that the conflicts in the manga don’t feel meaningful? We started at the Hunter Exam where our MCs never really struggle much. Sure the Hunter Exam is hard for 99% of people, but not for the protagonist(s). The only real struggle I feel like we went through in that arc was Hanzo vs Gon, where all Gon really did was just not give up and Hanzo surrendered out of admiration. Leoreo got bodied in Rock Paper Scissors but...not exactly a fun conflict. Other than this, there didn’t feel like there was any real struggle or triumph for the entire arc.

Zoldyck Estate arc...literally there was no conflict. At first I thought they’d have to, somehow, save Killua from his family (Which seemed impossible), but then they just let him go without any struggle.

Heaven’s Tower: Gon and Killua mercilessly and laughably easily shitstomp all competition in a Tower that is supposed to be full of world famous competition, and then get involved in a series of fights where their opponents forfeit before the fights even begin, and then Gon finally fights Hisoka and loses. Gon loses a fight against the top guy then beats him 3 episodes later. They learned Nen which was cool but everything else felt random and hollow.

Then we get to the auction, and it appears like kurapika finally gets a conflict against uvogin and the phantom troupe, but once again kurapika wins without much trouble. The fights between Uvogin and the Blood Shadows weren’t that interesting or well animated either for me.

So the lack of what feels like any real overarching conflict is a real problem for me.

But that aside, back to figuring out what’s missing for me, maybe it’s the lack of a theme? Naruto is a manga about ninjas, and everything in the manga goes to tell a story about ninjas. One Piece is about pirates, and same thing. It feels like an adventure story about pirates, just in a more fantastical way. MHA is about heroes and...you get the point.

These series have deeper themes that match their aesthetics. OP is a series about freedom using a pirate template to explore that idea. Naruto is a story about ending cycles of violence and hatred using a series about shinobis (people raised to commit impartial acts of violence) as its template. MHA is a story about societal mental health, using heroes who want to protect society and villains who want to destroy it as an aesthetic.

HxH feels like it has no theme and it’s tough for me to really get into it for that reason. Gon is a kid who grew up fishing, but he has the power of a demigod for some unknown reason. Sure his dad is supposed to be really strong, but Gon is neg diffing world famous fighters by pushing them really hard with one hand. And he’s not even 15 and has never had any combat training. So I really don’t understand what Gon is, or why he is who he is, or what his character is supposed to stand for.

Killua is better..he’s an assassin raised to kill, and everything about his character and story emphasize that. Kurapika is...some guy with a clan vendetta, and leoreo wants to be a med student. So it’s like...we have a wild hermit running around with a deadly assassin, some guy with red eyes and a clan vendetta, and an aspiring doctor, none of whom’s plotlines or arcs have much to do with one another, running around in a world that feels like its being made up episode by episode with a bunch of random concepts and ideas thrown into a blender, to tell a story about...a kid trying to find his dad while a gang robs a bunch of mafia families?

Like I don’t understand what the story is supposed to be about on a deeper level. Sure it’s a damn children’s anime, but so are OP, Naruto, and MHA that all have deeper themes at work in them.

If these weren’t distracting enough, I still have absolutely no idea who Hisoka is or where he comes from or what his motivations are. He’s the most interesting character in the show, but I’m starting to lose patience with him as I pretty much know exactly as much about him in episode 49 that I knew back in episode 12. And he hasn’t had much screen time anyway.

I think I’ll keep watching because...why not, I do enjoy Nen and seeing all the characters and variety of abilities are fun and all that but..so far I’m really not catching on tbh. It’s not bad, but...I feel like I’ve seen this style of story done much better.

Spoiler

Nah dude. Finish the arc. You gon get some real conflict real soon.....

You'll see how helpless Gon and even Killua are lmao.

Post automatically merged: Aug 4, 2020

@Dragomir @Chrono @RayanOO so I just finished kurapika vs uvogin:

Spoiler

There is something missing in HxH for me. I’m really not sure what it is, but...there is something fundamentally missing in this story that is creeping in the back of my mind.

Maybe it’s the complete lack of an ultimate story structure? So far the goal seems to be for Gon to find his dad, but that almost seems like a side plot at this point.

Maybe it’s that the conflicts in the manga don’t feel meaningful? We started at the Hunter Exam where our MCs never really struggle much. Sure the Hunter Exam is hard for 99% of people, but not for the protagonist(s). The only real struggle I feel like we went through in that arc was Hanzo vs Gon, where all Gon really did was just not give up and Hanzo surrendered out of admiration. Leoreo got bodied in Rock Paper Scissors but...not exactly a fun conflict. Other than this, there didn’t feel like there was any real struggle or triumph for the entire arc.

Zoldyck Estate arc...literally there was no conflict. At first I thought they’d have to, somehow, save Killua from his family (Which seemed impossible), but then they just let him go without any struggle.

Heaven’s Tower: Gon and Killua mercilessly and laughably easily shitstomp all competition in a Tower that is supposed to be full of world famous competition, and then get involved in a series of fights where their opponents forfeit before the fights even begin, and then Gon finally fights Hisoka and loses. Gon loses a fight against the top guy then beats him 3 episodes later. They learned Nen which was cool but everything else felt random and hollow.

Then we get to the auction, and it appears like kurapika finally gets a conflict against uvogin and the phantom troupe, but once again kurapika wins without much trouble. The fights between Uvogin and the Blood Shadows weren’t that interesting or well animated either for me.

So the lack of what feels like any real overarching conflict is a real problem for me.

But that aside, back to figuring out what’s missing for me, maybe it’s the lack of a theme? Naruto is a manga about ninjas, and everything in the manga goes to tell a story about ninjas. One Piece is about pirates, and same thing. It feels like an adventure story about pirates, just in a more fantastical way. MHA is about heroes and...you get the point.

These series have deeper themes that match their aesthetics. OP is a series about freedom using a pirate template to explore that idea. Naruto is a story about ending cycles of violence and hatred using a series about shinobis (people raised to commit impartial acts of violence) as its template. MHA is a story about societal mental health, using heroes who want to protect society and villains who want to destroy it as an aesthetic.

HxH feels like it has no theme and it’s tough for me to really get into it for that reason. Gon is a kid who grew up fishing, but he has the power of a demigod for some unknown reason. Sure his dad is supposed to be really strong, but Gon is neg diffing world famous fighters by pushing them really hard with one hand. And he’s not even 15 and has never had any combat training. So I really don’t understand what Gon is, or why he is who he is, or what his character is supposed to stand for.

Killua is better..he’s an assassin raised to kill, and everything about his character and story emphasize that. Kurapika is...some guy with a clan vendetta, and leoreo wants to be a med student. So it’s like...we have a wild hermit running around with a deadly assassin, some guy with red eyes and a clan vendetta, and an aspiring doctor, none of whom’s plotlines or arcs have much to do with one another, running around in a world that feels like its being made up episode by episode with a bunch of random concepts and ideas thrown into a blender, to tell a story about...a kid trying to find his dad while a gang robs a bunch of mafia families?

Like I don’t understand what the story is supposed to be about on a deeper level. Sure it’s a damn children’s anime, but so are OP, Naruto, and MHA that all have deeper themes at work in them.

If these weren’t distracting enough, I still have absolutely no idea who Hisoka is or where he comes from or what his motivations are. He’s the most interesting character in the show, but I’m starting to lose patience with him as I pretty much know exactly as much about him in episode 49 that I knew back in episode 12. And he hasn’t had much screen time anyway.

I think I’ll keep watching because...why not, I do enjoy Nen and seeing all the characters and variety of abilities are fun and all that but..so far I’m really not catching on tbh. It’s not bad, but...I feel like I’ve seen this style of story done much better.

Spoiler

As for what the story itself. Well HxH is applauded to go against usual Shonen troupes. It doesnt really have overarching end point plot. The story starts off simple and gets more and more complex as it goes on.

You also have to understand that this world can move on without its protagonists. The reason their isnt an end goal is that its mostly the World of Hxh driving the story and not Gon himself. You'll realise that later....hope it makes sense

As for the main themes:- As of now its just

Friendship
Exploration
Hunting ( as in Gon's dad)
Vengence (In Kurapika's case)

However the themes will increase as the story goes on. As you'll soon realise.


As for Hisoka....well by now you should know. But yh his motivation's is sexual pleasure from fighting strong opponents.

Post automatically merged: Aug 4, 2020

@Admiral Lee Hung Just keep watching till the end of this arc. Lets see if anything changes in your opinions then.

 

[Jiihad]

Today, I have finally finished Bleach’s final arc, the Thousand Year Blood War Arc (it seriously needs a shorter name). Strap in tight folks cause this arc is a long haul, Yhwacky arse acid trip that left me looking like this.

Spoiler

So, credit where credit is due, this is the one arc in Bleach that does not have a slow start. Events kick off quickly and we get to big arse fights in practically next to no time.

End of any and all credit.

Spoiler: Major plot spoilers.

So anyway, the story kicks off when two newly appointed low ranking Shinigami (whose names I have already forgotten and who will now be named Dice Head and Lily Pad based on their designs) are sent to Karakura Town because I guess Ichigo (who can beat most Captains by this point) is not enough to handle the local Hollow population in his own damn town.

Well anyway, Dice Head and Lily get cobbled due to some background character releasing Hollow bait, a Quincy technology. Ichigo and co. save Dice and Lily from a gruesome demise and take them to Ichigo’s house. Ichigo then fights the bloke that released the aforementioned Hollow bait.

Back in the Soul Society, sadistic scientist extraordinaire Kurotsuchi, notices that the Hollow population across the globe is disappearing entirely, souls included and concludes that only the age old enemy of the Shinigami could do this i.e. the Quincies.

Meanwhile, a bunch of masked blokes infiltrate Captain General Yamamoto’s quarters and ruin his tea break. They exchange smack talk with each and leave when Yamamoto’s Assistant Captain, Chōjirō, unintentionally interrupts the exchange due to his impalement on a particularly nasty looking Quincy spirit spear.

Masked blokes give a warning that the “Vandenreich” will invade the Seireitei and feck off. Chōjirō informs Yamamoto that the intruders can steal Bankai (a special Zanpakuto ability) and promptly dies. A funeral is held for Chōjirō, who’s death and subsequent burial might have been more a tad more impactful if the character had more than 5-10 sentences of dialogue before his demise.

We then go to where the Quincies slunk off to and see Yhwach. Spoiler alert, Yhwach is a dick and the Quincies are basically Nazis in white that are somehow even more abominable than the literal soul consuming Hollows that the Quincies hate.

Back in the world of the living, Ichigo gets hug tackled by Nel in child form, who informs him that Hueco Mundo has been invaded by the Quincies and asks for his help in liberating the place.

With Ichigo and co. in Hueco Mundo, Yhwach decides to invade the Seireitei while Ichigo is away. Shit goes down faster than Taco Bel through a digestive system, ultimately leading to a confrontation between Yhwach and Yamamoto, the latter of which declares that he will finish what he started 1000 years ago.

What is the relationship between these two? What is their grudge? How did Yamamoto originally defeat Yhwach? Why did Yamamoto originally spare Yhwach’s life? Why did they fight? How did Yamamoto grow old and decrepit over the past 1000 years while all Yhwach grew was a moustache? Were they originally friends or were they always bitter enemies?

If, dear reader, you thought the above questions were all interesting then too bad. Kubo answers none of them. In fact, Yamamoto was not even fighting Yhwach but somebody impersonating Yhwach. What an absolute con but hey, Yamamoto’s Bankai was cool I guess.

Anyway, the real Yhwach comes back, reveals that he had a chat with Aizen that went nowhere, says “ok boomer” and one shots Yamamoto.

Feck off Yhwach.

Surprisingly, he does exactly that but not before Ichigo has a quick tussle with him and subconsciously uses some inherent Quincy abilities which causes Yhwach to reveal that Ichigo’s mother was a Quincy thus making Ichigo related to Yhwach by blood cause all Quincies are descended from Yhwach. He then breaks Ichigo’s Bankai sword and bogs off.

On a side note, Ichigo never uses any of these incredibly useful Quincy abilities again. Hmm, ok then Kubo.

Well the aftermath occurs, Shunsui becomes Captain General and we learn that Bankai apparently cannot be fixed after they are broken bar one completely unimportant exception.

The Royal Guard (consisting of Urouge, Space Dandy, Mrs. Mills, an Afro Samurai reject and a Japanese gender bent Doctor Octopus) come down and take Ichigo and some friends for special training at the Soul King’s Palace aka Reiokyu

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention earlier that the Soul Society has a Royal Family headed by a dude called “Soul King” or “Reio” who is apparently God.

Anyway, after some training, some soul searching and a exposition dump regarding his mother as told by his father (these were honestly the most enjoyable chapters to be honest), Ichigo goes down to help the Soul Society from a second Quincy invasion in fashionably late timing ala Goku style.

Except coming down the way somehow let’s Yhwach go up and absolutely no one in either Reiokyu or the Seireitei realised this. Well whatever.

So Yhwach and co. defeat the Royal Guard with the power of bullshit hax and kill Reiou. This is a problem because the universe collapses for some reason if Reio dies. Also, Yhwach is Reio’s son and whatever questions you may have regarding this will never be answered. Thanks Kubo.

Elsewhere, Captain Ukitake whips out some nonsense about being a vessel for Reiou’s right hand and sacrifices himself to fix the problem.... at least until Yhwach then absorbs that hand and becomes God making Ukitake’s sacrifice meaningless and actually making the situation worse cause Yhwach is now the one and only Soul King, Brook be mad.

Shunsui also partially releases Aizen to enlist his help in defeating Yhwach since the big bad A also has a bullshit ability that involves messing with people’s perceptions if they see his Zanpakuto in it’s Shikai state. Yhwach has never seen that Shikai but it still somehow works on him because plot.

Eventually after a bunch of chapters, Ichigo vs Yhwach happens and it is bullshit. Yhwach can simultaneously see every single possible future available and then change any single one of those futures to his advantage. For example, if he breaks your sword in the future, it becomes broken in the present which is what happens to Ichigo.

So Yhwach sods off to blow up the Soul Society, Tsukishima somehow repairs Ichigo’s blade by making it so that Yhwach never broke it (I thought that Tsukishima’s ability was memory manipulation to create a false past and not directly controlling the past but I have honestly given up by this point and no longer give a shit) and Uryū’s father gives Uryū a magical plot device arrow that can disable Yhwach’s bullshit powers if it hits him... even though the problem is getting anything to hit Yhwach in the first place so it should logically not solve anything (spoiler, it does).

A showdown occurs at the Seireitei, Yhwach gets hit by the bullshit magical Chekhov’s arrow (somehow Yhwach never saw that one coming) and Ichigo chops him in half.

Considering that Yhwach is now essentially the Soul King, should killing him not cause the universe to collapse just like when Reiou died?

If that sounded like a good question that needed answering then Titty Kubo disagrees with you dear reader and instead immediately launches into a confusing ten years later epilogue in the next chapter that raises way more questions than it answers and ends Bleach on an utterly mind boggling note.

A bunch of other bullshit fights happen at various points throughout this arc. Highlights include;

Spoiler: Minor plot spoilers.

I) Komamura vs Bambietta.

In order to avenge Yamamoto, Captain Komamura gains strength by ripping out his heart in order to learn some secret jujutsu from his werewolf great grandpappa that temporarily turns him into a human and makes his Bankai invincible for about one fight before his Bankai disappears altogether and he turns him into a powerless dog that does not even get to see Yhwach at all, let alone get revenge against him. Also, Komamura disappears completely from the manga at this point.

Not only is this an absolute insult to his character considering he insightful words regarding the subject of revenge to Tōsen (another character that lost their humanity for the sake of revenge) but the opponent he is up against does not even feckin die for good. Komamura is the Tien of Bleach. Lel.

II) Kenpachi vs Gremmy.

Gremmy is a straight up reality warper that does not belong in Bleach whatsoever. Whatever he imagines becomes reality. If he imagines that you are dead then you are dead.

He somehow loses to the most straightforward, bull headed meat head in the manga because “his imagination came up short”.... whatever.

Yachiru also inexplicably disappears from the manga at this point and is never seen again. Kind of.

III) Kurotsuchi vs Zombie Hoe.

Kurotsuchi invents a drug that can manipulate time. I do not even care anymore.

IV) Shunsui and Ise Nanao vs Liille Barro.

If the fight had just ended when Shunsui cut down Barro then I would not have even mentioned this one.

Instead, Barro somehow magically transforms into an eight butterfly winged, Transylvanian naked necked chicken, equine chimera centaur hybrid abomination made out of pure spirit energy.

I am far too sober to deal with this shit.

Anyway, the reader is then subjected to a boring family history lesson regarding the Ise clan and some mind boggling bullshit explanation involving Shunsui’s Zanpakuto sword spirit somehow giving birth to another Zanpakuto sword spirit (that likes to play hide and seek) in order to hide yet another (but supposedly cursed) Zanpakuto sword.

Urgghhhh, my head hurts from all the bullshit I just typed.

This is hands down the most unintentionally weird manga arc that I have ever read thus far.

Between plot lines that serve no purpose whatsoever (e.g. the Ise family curse involving the bullshit mirror sword), plot lines that go nowhere (e.g. Komamura’s entire form switching deal and the Quincy turncoats), a lack of explanation for quite a few important things (e.g. how does Yamamoto know Yhwach? What is the relationship between Reiou and Yhwach? What the feck happened to Yachiru?), opponents that just never feckin die (Barro, Gerard, Bambietta etc.) and absolutely nonsensical powers (Gremmy’s ability to make anything he imagines become reality and Yhwach’s bullshit eyes), this arc quickly becomes a mess.

The amount of nonstop nonsense that consistently occurs in this arc, eventually caused me to simply give up even attempting to comprehend what was even going. I just switched my brain off and accepted that whatever inevitable bullshit that happens, happens.

This entire arc was just not worth making and added absolutely nothing to Bleach. Honestly, as much as I detest the Arrancar Arc, it’s ending actually felt final, as if it was truly the end of a story in a fictional world with nothing more to offer. The ending of this arc is just a confusing mess that leaves everything too open.

Well at least I can now say that my favourite part of Bleach is the ending. Not the actual ending itself, just the fact that it ended.

Lmfao!! Sounds like you enjoyed Bleach then my boi lol. Yea tha last arc is PURE ASS I won’t even front lmao, at a certain point I was reading jus to see everyone’s Bankai

 

[Owl Ki]

So, after finishing the final arc of Bleach, I have collected all my thoughts together in order to give a final verdict on the Bleach manga as a whole.

I already had a fair idea of what was fundamentally going wrong with Bleach by the end of the Arrancar Arc and another 250+ chapters did nothing to change my opinion.

Without further ado, let us get started. :smithnie:

Spoiler: The protagonist.

I might as well start off by going for the proverbial jugular here and go for the main character first.

Ichigo is one of the functionally weakest main characters that I have ever come across.

That is not to say that he is an irritating or awful character. He is fairly bland but certainly not detestable.

So why is he such a weak character? Well that is simple.

Ichigo does not have a single proactive bone in his entire fictional body.

Ichigo has no goals, no aspirations, no desires, nothing that drives him to want to do anything of his own accordto change the world around him

Sure, he always wants to protect his friends and that is technically a motivation but protecting those we care about is simply a basic instinct of most humans, it is not a life goal.

Besides, he never does anything with this specific motivation anyway, like for example he never trains in order to have the strength to protect his friends or works towards creating a safer world so that his friends will not need protecting from anything to begin with.

The plot treats Ichigo like he is a dog on a leash. It forcibly leads him to wherever it needs him to go and it is never moved forward by Ichigo himself.

If Byakuya and Renji had not come to capture Rukia then Ichigo would have been content to flex on low level Hollows within Karakura Town for the rest of his life. Compare that to Luffy, who no matter what will always aim to be the Pirate King or Naruto, who will always strive to be the Hokage, Ichigo simply has nothing to move him forward.

Outside of his desire to protect friends/family and his code of always repaying debts, Ichigo also has a lack of ideology which in turn makes his fights with villains boring because they never have anything to fundamentally clash over other than the fact that the villain is being a nuisance.

Spoiler: The villains.

Well if the protagonist is narratively impotent then perhaps the villains of this manga can save it?

Unfortunately, they do not.

Bleach only really has two major series antagonists in Aizen and Yhwach, both of whom share quite a few problems.

I) Aizen.

Aizen is a megalomaniac, plain and simple. He desires to become the ultimate being in existence and take the Soul King’s place as God.

Why does Aizen desire to become a deity? Why does he hold such disdain for the Shinigami? Why is he so hell bent on transcending all other life forms? How did he become the obsessive megalomaniac that he is today? Why does he the concept of trust? What does he plan on even doing after becoming God?

Well I do not know cause Kubo never answered any of those questions. We never get to learn who Aizen really is or what motivates him. He is just the bad guy that is ruining everyone’s day and needs beating up for it.

A complete lack of character motivation aside, Aizen is a pretentious, arrogant, narcissist with a few good quotes regarding the subject of deities and that is it. Other than that, by the end of the Arrancar Arc, he goes from a calm, collected mastermind to a carbon copy of Perfect Cell from DBZ and rants about how he cannot possibly be surpassed by SSJ3 Ichigohan.

Aizen also becomes utterly irritating when no matter what happens in the story, he somehow “already knew” despite it making no sense for him to have outright known in the first place. His knowledge of any and all events practically borders on omnipotence.

Admittedly, there are a handful of glimpses into Aizen’s character through Ichigo’s observations regarding how Aizen’s zanpakuto sword projected “loneliness” (zanpakuto are connected to a wielder’s soul) and how Aizen might have willingly parted from the Hogyoku (which just seems straight up nonsense given everything that just happened) along with a few of Aizen’s words regarding certain topics (such as the concepts of loyalty, trust and adoration) but there is never anything solid enough for the reader to actually know Aizen as a person.

II) Yhwach.

Imagine all the problems with the above character, add a nonsensical ability involving actual omnipotence along with an inconsistent personality and you have Yhwach.

While Aizen is at the very least consistent in his shallow megalomania, Yhwach is not.

Yhwach goes from wanting to kill the Soul King and destroy all of existence, to wanting to rule over all of existence as the Soul King, to wanting to merge the realms of the living and dead in the very last chapter. There are quite a few leaps of logic here.

Just like with Aizen, we never get to learn anything about Yhwach’s character or personality. The reader gets some snippets about his past such as his animosity with Yamamoto and his relationship with the Soul King but these snippets are never explored and they simply raise far more questions than they answer.

Spoiler: Side characters.

These folk are about the only thing that prevent Bleach from being a complete bore and even then, they are of varying quality with some characters/groups (e.g. Tōsen, the Espada, the Shinigami Captains, Yamamoto, certain Assistant Captains, Big Daddy Hachi, Rukia etc.) being much better than others (e.g. the Royal Guard, Gin the worst assassin ever, the Sternritters (or Sternshitters), Chad, Orihime, Uryū, Omaeda etc.).

Obviously I cannot cover all the characters in a 686+ Chapter manga, so I will be moving on. Lol.

Spoiler: Fights.

The fights of Bleach are a mixed bag. Anything involving the main protagonist or main antagonist is generally bad and the fights of side characters vary between decent (Kenpachi vs Tōsen), good (Hachi and Soi Fon vs Barragan, the Karakura Pillar defense fights), bad (Omaeda vs Nirgge Parduoc) and bullshit/weird (nearly every single Thousand Year Blood War fight).

Ichigo’s fights generally rely on power up arse pulls and devolve into a discount Dragon Ball brawl.

Aizen’s fights are generally not that entertaining since Kubo made him ridiculously powerful to the point that he can easily take on nearly every single Shinigami Captain simultaneously. His fights are simply curb stomps that always go his way until Ichigo vs Aizen final round, where it is Aizen that gets curb stomped.

Yhwach’s fights are just straight up bullshit because of Yhwach’s power, The Almighty.

First of all, Yhwach can see every single possible distant future and the outcomes of said multiple futures before any of those futures can even happen. Secondly, any attack that Yhwach can see coming will not hurt him even if it does hit him because he has already seen it. This even acts retroactively against Ichibe’s ink, somehow.

What an absolutely nonsensical ability. On top of that bullshit, Yhwach is also amongst the most powerful fighters in the manga because why not, I guess Kubo has to make his defeat as unbelievable as possible.

Spoiler: The setting and world building.

Bleach is set in a world with multiple realms. We have;

I) The world of the living which is exactly like our world in every single way bar the presence of Hollows, which are basically ghost zombies. They consume other ghosts, turn them into Hollows and move on with their day.

II) The Soul Society, which is the afterlife that every single soul to have ever existed goes through. Despite this it somehow is a feudal Japanese shanty town that is also exactly like the real world and feels like every single other mortal realm in fiction.

Most folk here already know what my problems are with the Soul Society itself are, so I will just quote myself and put it behind a spoiler tag for anyone that does want to read it.

Spoiler: Old Soul Society criticism.

I was originally going to share my thoughts on this with my Tyrant brethren on Discord but I thought “Screw it, this is worthy of a post”.

Well, I am now on Chapter 184 of Bleach and I have finished the Soul Society Arc (aka Bleach’s supposed best arc) in it’s entirety.

Honestly, Bleach has to be one of the most boring mangas that I have ever read and one of the greatest contributors to that problem is it’s setting.

Besides the High School shenanigans with Japanese teenagers in a world exactly like ours (bar the presence of supernatural abominations and superhumans), Bleach is set in the Soul Society, the base of operations from which the Soul Reapers operate from.

The Soul Society is split between the Rukongai, where the souls of deceased mortals stay for an undetermined amount of time (one soul confirmed that he had been there for over two centuries) and the Seireitei, where the Soul Reapers themselves reside.

In short, it is the afterlife. The only afterlife. Every single soul that ever existed passes through the Soul Society.

Now one would think that the afterlife would be a fairly exciting setting. A holy place of reverence that should bring those who behold such a wondrous supernatural spectacle to their knees in awe of it’s beauty and wonder, right?

Wrong.

Bleach’s afterlife is exactly and I mean exactly like Earth in every single way imaginable.

Poverty? Check. Nobles? Check. Conflict over resources? Check. Folk living in buildings? Check. Death (yes, you can die in the fecking afterlife)? Check. The need to eat (but apparently only for those who possess spirit energy)? Check. Illness (yes, the afterlife has that too... somehow)? Check. Animals (I guess they have souls)? Check.

The afterlife even has Cabbage White Butterflies. That is right, major agricultural crop pests that haunt the average farmer, inhabit the God damn afterlife. As a horticulturist, that reveal personally insulted me.

The thing is, even if one decided to work within these limitations that the afterlife must resemble our world, there was still potential to make this setting interesting.

After all, this is a place where all souls come through from all of human history.

Imagine the potential for cultural combinations? This is a place where Romans can meet Vikings, Aztecs can meet Mongols, Visigoths can meet Ancient Egyptians, Huns can meets Spartans etc. etc. One could see Egyptian pyramids next to Gothic cathedrals, oriental palaces next to Roman colosseums, modern buildings next to ancient architecture or even attempts to combine cultures. After all, there should be a lot of architects with literally all of eternity to spend on projects.

Imagine the potential for historical figures? Aristotle can have a chat with Karl Marx, Einstein can share his findings with Galileo, Gandhi can converse with Martin Luther King etc.

Or even how ordinary folk react? After all, atheists will be most surprised at the fact that an afterlife even exists while those of faith might be confused and even potentially disappointed over their situation that their faith that they dedicated their entire life to was a bit off the mark.

Well curb your imagination my dear reader cause according to the whims of Titty Kubo, all of the afterlife is one giant, feudal Japanese shanty town with a nice white wall palace in the middle and everyone in existence is Japanese.

This is not even getting into the inconsistent nature of the place.

Spoiler: Nagging inconsistencies.

Soul Reapers have to maintain an equal number of souls between the Soul Society and the Living World. If the balance is upset, the universe collapses.

Even an imbalance as small as a single bloke killing a couple dozen ghosts can threaten the entire universe.

Despite this, souls can kill each other as they please in the Rukongai without the Soul Reapers batting an eyelid.

Bleach has it’s own equivalent of Hell, where the Hollow by the name of Shrieker went to.

The Rukongai is divided into four sections (North, East, South and West) which in turn are divided into eighty sections where District 1 is safest and District 80 is a poverty stricken war zone where evil sods fight and kill each other regularly.... Despite the fact that there is a literal Hell to dump evil fecks into.

In short, Bleach is cripplingly disappointing in it’s setting and it makes it that much harder to read this damn series. Especially when it takes about 50 Chapters for the plot to even start and another 20 Chapters after that to get to the utterly boring Bleach afterlife.

This is not the only issue I have with this manga but damn is it the one that makes this series a damn slog to get through.

III) Hueco Mundo, the land of the soul consuming Hollows. It is a completely barren desert filled with quartz trees and not much else.

In Grimmjow’s flashback, Hollows eat other Hollows in order to get ripped like Schwarzenegger and force other Hollows to follow them. In Nnoitra’s flashback, Hollows can build settlements and when we meet Nel, she just plays tag all day with her two brothers.

In short, I have no idea whether Hollows are generally savages that kill/conquer each other all day or if they can actually build civilisations on their own accord and form friendly relationships. Who knows. Lel.

IV) Hell, where evil souls are supposed to go. We only ever see the entrance to it once, it never even gets mentioned ever again, let alone explored and it’s mere presence contradicts everything that is going on with the Rukongai and it’s districts back in the Soul Society.

V) The Royal Palace, where God and his five homie guards chill out directly high above the Soul Society. Each Royal Guard has their own floating city that surrounds Reio’s phallic palace. I assume that this is a heaven within heaven deal (i.e. far cosier than the Rukongai and even the Seireitei) but we never get to see what life in these floating dish cities is like so who knows.

The deal with Bleach is that it is supposed to be the afterlife but it really does not feel like it. It just looks like any other bog standard mortal realm in fiction. People go grocery shopping, lose weight, are born, grow old (sometimes), die (I still find that one hilarious for the afterlife), live in houses, have petty conflicts over food, water and resources etc. etc.

I am still amazed at how an author can choose the afterlife, a setting with unlimited potential and make it so mind numbingly mundane.

The other amazing thing in this manga is that no character gives a shit that there is an afterlife. When Chad and Orihime learn of the afterlife, they just do not care. Neither do any other of Ichigo’s friends when they learn of it.

Literally no one cares about the confirmed existence of life after death in a manga partially set in the afterlife. Let that sink in. Lol.

All in all, Bleach’s world building is amongst the worst in big name shonen. It is lazily built, contradictory, poorly fleshed out and not a single character even cares.

Spoiler: Consistency.

Another area where Bleach fails miserably.

There are quite a few moments in this manga that just do not make sense with what was already previously established. Highlights include;

I) The Rukongai being filled with evil degenerates causing problems even though Hell exists.

II) Gin (a supposedly intelligent and cunning individual) and his dumb arse plot to kill Aizen by waiting until Aizen is at the very peak of his power. What the hell was his thought process?

Spoiler: Gin’s totally immaculate 100% foolproof plan.

“I am going to kill Aizen.

How should I do that? Should I wait for over a century and not inform or warn any other Captain or the Captain General about it in all that time despite the fact that they could assist me?

Should I attack him in his sleep or whenever it is just the two of us?

Should I do it when he is completely surrounded by the entire Soul Society?

Should I do it when he is fighting a 1 vs 12 fight against the Captains/Vizards?

Should I assist Captain General Yamamoto by joining him against Aizen or by killing Wonderweiss thus allowing Yamamoto to kill Aizen?

Should I assist Urahara, Isshin and Yoruichi against Aizen before he fully transforms into his god state?

Fuck all those ideas man, I am just going to do it after he is already essentially a god that can easily one shot me. Brilliant plan man. What could possibly go wrong?”

III) The emphasised importance of the Pillars during the Battle of Karakura that had high ranking Shinigami protecting them against Barragan’s strongest subordinates..... and then both sides just forget that they exist.

The Shinigami inexplicably abandon them, no Arrancar attacks them despite the fact that they are completely unguarded and even after Aizen bests everyone, he still opts to travel to the Soul Society rather than bring Karakura Town to him by destroying the Pillars thus giving Ichigo 2000 hours to train so he can get stronger (Aizen of course claims that he already knew Ichigo would do that because Aizen somehow knows everything in this manga).

IV) Characters possessing the ability to sense spirit energy yet whenever Ichigo breaks into an enemy stronghold, nobody ever seems to immediately locate him and then dog pile on his arse.

V) Ichigo trains for 2000 hours in what amounts to an impromptu Hyberbolic Time Chamber in order to train to defeat Aizen’s deity form. He does this without any food or water..... How exactly is he alive? Pure Shinigami still need to eat/drink and Ichigo is half human. He should be dead.

VI) Yhwach gets hit by Uryū’s Chekhov arrow despite his power to see any and all futures.

VII) Ageing makes no sense in this manga. One Rukongai resident states that they have been dead for two centuries. He is still a child.

Meanwhile, Renji and Rukia grow up to be full fledged adults in a fraction of that time.

Over 1000 years, Yamamoto goes from a middle aged man to an old age pensioner. In the exact same timeframe, Yhwach grows a moustache.

Then there is the question of why do souls even physically age to begin with?

VIII) Rukia gets defeated by a weak arse Hollow at the beginning of the series and loses her powers by giving them to Ichigo in order to save themselves. When she regains her powers to the exact same level they were at before she lost them, she neg diffs an Arrancar hundreds of times stronger than the Hollow that defeated her.

IX) Aizen can use his perception manipulation abilities on Yhwach despite the fact that Yhwach has never seen Aizen’s shikai, which is necessary for the manipulation to work to begin with.

The above examples are a mere sample of the level of inconsistency in Bleach. Lel.

Spoiler: Pacing.

Bleach has got the most atrociously tedious pacing of any manga that I have come across.

686+ chapters split across only five arcs, two of which are only 50 chapters long. The Arrancar Arc alone is 260+ chapters for a single arc.

Have you ever heard of the saying that the only thing worse than a bad joke is a bad joke that never ends? Well this is exactly the problem with Bleach.

Bleach is poorly written but it drags itself out over far more chapters than it should be thus exacerbating it’s flaws because it gives the reader oodles of time to dwell on them.

Spoiler: The story.

Or to be more precise, the lack of.

I say this because as far as I can see, Bleach is a collection of loosely tied events that are connected by the involvement of it’s main cast characters rather than an actual story.

Let me put it into perspective.

One Piece is a story about the journey of a lad who ultimately becomes the Pirate King and his search for freedom in a world of totalitarian justice.

Trigun is a story about a bloke and his struggle to cling onto his moral, hope and optimism in a harsh, inhospitable world filled with degeneracy because those are the only things he has left in his life.

Bleach is about... er.... a lad who gets spiritual superpowers and beats up whatever sassenach of the week that is causing an inconvenience, I guess.

Seriously, there is no journey, no story, there is nothing that actually connects anything in Bleach together apart from the fact that Ichigo is involved.

There are no solid themes either. One would think that a story set in the afterlife would naturally lend itself to themes such as belief, faith, spiritualism and life/death but Bleach just quickly devolves into DBZ with swords.

Even then, DBZ at least had themes such as the importance of hard work, training and the rewards of a strong work ethic. Ichigo is just handed a power up whenever the plot needs him to win against an opponent he should not feasibly defeat.

The plot goes out of it’s way to hand things to Ichigo that he never sought to begin with. He becomes the strongest without having ever desired to be and he brings supposed changes that he never sought to a society that he does not even live in.

As I said before, Ichigo is not proactive and he never drives the plot forward, it is always up to the villains to be active and for Ichigo to react to their activity. Unfortunately, we never learn why said villains are even active to begin with.

So we have a protagonist that never does anything, backed up by villains that never explain why they are doing the things that they do and side characters that never contribute to the main plot, in a story that is not really about anything, in a world that is supposed to be the afterlife but sure as hell does not feel like it.

This is it. This is all that Bleach is. What an utter disappointment.

The thing is, there are pretty obvious ways that Bleach’s story could have been improved. For example;

Scenario I) Have Ichigo die in the world of the living and get sent to the Soul Society by Rukia. That way both Ichigo and the reader can fully explore the Soul Society in detail without getting bogged down with the utterly mundane world of the living and high school teenager shenanigans.

In this scenario, Ichigo’s end goal could be to enrol at the Shinigami Academy and become a Shinigami so that he can be assigned to Karakura Town. Officially, he hunts Hollows and guides souls to the Soul Society but unofficially, Ichigo watches over the family he left behind and continues to protect them in death, as he did in life.

Scenario II) After meeting Yuichi (haunted parakeet boy), Ichigo aims to become a Captain/Captain General so that he can change the rules of the Soul Society so that families are not forced apart by Shinigami bureaucracy.

Scenario III) Ichigo starts wearing a straw hat and shouts about how he is going to be the next Soul King.

See how easy it is to give Ichigo an actual goal to strive towards instead of having him get forcibly bullied into a direction by the plot.

Ultimately, Bleach is simply a bad manga. I would even say that fails to be enjoyable on a fundamental level. Between it’s tedious pacing, inconsistent quality of fights, repetitive plot and it’s pretentious villains, Bleach is not even superficially fun. It has interesting initial concepts (e.g. Shinigami and the Soul Society) but it never does anything with these concepts, it never explores them in any meaningful way.

If I had to say something positive about Bleach, well it has nice designs and the art is pretty good. Unfortunately, eye candy can only take a manga so far, by which I mean not far at all.

Ironically, for a manga series about souls and hollows, Bleach is all hollow and no soul.

 

[RayanOO]

Ultimately, Bleach is simply a bad manga. I would even say that fails to be enjoyable on a fundamental level. Between it’s tedious pacing, inconsistent quality of fights, repetitive plot and it’s pretentious villains, Bleach is not even superficially fun. It has interesting initial concepts (e.g. Shinigami and the Soul Society) but it never does anything with these concepts, it never explores them in any meaningful way.

If I had to say something positive about Bleach, well it has nice designs and the art is pretty good. Unfortunately, eye candy can only take a manga so far, by which I mean not far at all.

Bleach is good if you watch it with a 13/15 years old heart. If you read that as an adult it just gives you headhache

What will be your next manga to review ?

 

[Natalija]

Bleach is good if you watch it with a 13/15 years old heart. If you read that as an adult it just gives you headhache

What will be your next manga to review ?

I rewatched Bleach a few years ago, and was still enjoying it

 

[RayanOO]

I rewatched Bleach a few years ago, and was still enjoying it

it means you have to grow up fast

Haha but truly it is because you have already seen it when you were younger so the nostalgia part and the old feelings are still there. I still like bleach and can totally see/read some parts again.

But when you are a first timer at 25 I think you don't really enjoy Bleach

 

[Lee Ba Shou]

First of all, Yhwach can see every single possible distant future and the outcomes of said multiple futures before any of those futures can even happen.

The fuck? How do you even beat this guy?

Let me guess-Ichigo receives a powerup that Yhwach claims is “impossible” and then gets his shit kicked in lol.

 

[Jiihad]

The fuck? How do you even beat this guy?

Let me guess-Ichigo receives a powerup that Yhwach claims is “impossible” and then gets his shit kicked in lol.

LMFAO! Why you think I call him tha GodKing? Bitch wasn’t ever supposed to lose. It’s only one person that I know of that can beat em lol

 

[Lee Ba Shou]

LMFAO! Why you think I call him tha GodKing? Bitch wasn’t ever supposed to lose. It’s only one person that I know of that can beat em lol

Shit, Ichigo sounds like a bigger gimmick than Saitama from the way you and @Owl Ki make him sound lol.

Saitama’s gimmick is that he’s so strong that he’s always going to end every fight in one punch, Ichigo’s gimmick would be that he just explicably or inexplicably power ups to whatever level the plot requires him to even if it defies all logic within the manga.

 

[Owl Ki]

The fuck? How do you even beat this guy?

Let me guess-Ichigo receives a powerup that Yhwach claims is “impossible” and then gets his shit kicked in lol.

Surprisingly not. Uryū gets a bullshit magical silver arrow from his father that can momentarily disable Yhwach’s ability to see into the future...... even though the entire problem is getting anything to hit Yhwach in the first place thus he should see it coming from a mile away. It still somehow hits though and Ichigo then one shots Yhwach, completely bisecting him.

Yhwach’s Almighty ability is straight up nonsensical.

He can see into the distant future of any and all possible futures simultaneously, he can directly affect a future so that it affects the present (e.g. he broke Ichigo’s sword in the future, so it breaks in the present) and any enemy attack that he has seen in the future with his eyes cannot harm him merely because he has seen it, even long term debilitating abilities such as Ichibe’s are retroactively made redundant by Yhwach’s bullshit Almighty eyes.

A big problem for Kubo is making his antagonists idiotically overpowered and then struggling to find a way for Ichigo to defeat them (usually through plot and a nonsensical power up.).

Another ridiculous fight was Gremmy the Visionary vs Kenpachi.

Gremmy is a legitimate reality warper who can make any scenario, object or organism become reality because he “imagines it”.

If he imagines you being dead then you die. If he imagines that you have no internal organs then you have no internal organs. If he imagines, yeah you get the picture.

So what does Kenpachi have against a feck mothering reality warper?

Big muscles and a long sword.

Gremmy inexplicably loses because his “imagination came up short”.......

Shit, Ichigo sounds like a bigger gimmick than Saitama from the way you and @Owl Ki make him sound lol.

Saitama’s gimmick is that he’s so strong that he’s always going to end every fight in one punch, Ichigo’s gimmick would be that he just explicably or inexplicably power ups to whatever level the plot requires him to even if it defies all logic within the manga.

LMFAO. Sounds about right.

Ichigo goes through more power ups in a single arc than Luffy does in the entirety of One Pice.

 

[Lee Ba Shou]

He can see into the distant future of any and all possible futures simultaneously, he can directly affect a future so that it affects the present (e.g. he broke Ichigo’s sword in the future, so it breaks in the present) and any enemy attack that he has seen in the future with his eyes cannot harm him merely because he has seen it, even long term debilitating abilities such as Ichibe’s are retroactively made redundant by Yhwach’s bullshit Almighty eyes.

Kubo pls.

Gremmy is a legitimate reality warper who can make any scenario, object or organism become reality because he “imagines it”.

If he imagines you being dead then you die. If he imagines that you have no internal organs then you have no internal organs. If he imagines, yeah you get the picture.

So what does Kenpachi have against a feck mothering reality warper?

Big muscles and a long sword.

When your muscles are so big that they defy the laws of reality

 

[Haoshoku]

The fuck? How do you even beat this guy?

Let me guess-Ichigo receives a powerup that Yhwach claims is “impossible” and then gets his shit kicked in lol.

Only the author can beat him via a dumb deus ex machina, which was exactly what happened lol. Other than that Yhwach could quite literaly solo the Bleachverse on his own without even trying.

 

[Owl Ki]

Bleach is good if you watch it with a 13/15 years old heart. If you read that as an adult it just gives you headache.

If I had tried watching Bleach when I was a fifteen year old, I probably would have just gone “Man this is nowhere near as good as One Piece” and dropped it fairly early on.

What will be your next manga to review ?

Now that I have finished Bleach, I am planning on either a reread of Trigun or to finish off Battle Angel Alita. Both are old school sci-fi mangas. As far as I know, Battle Angel Alita was never that well known and Trigun is unfortunately remembered for a poor anime adaptation. Lol.

 

[Lee Ba Shou]

Now that I have finished Bleach, I am planning on either a reread of Trigun or to finish off Battle Angel Alita.

Clears throat

 

[Owl Ki]

Clears throat

Trigun is like Berserk (not really) but with guns, so close enough.