Is Bleach Better than Kingdom?


  • Total voters
    176
WZI did not need to be 147 chapters long, and I've believe it did cause burnout.

For comparison, Coalition War was 100 chapters, Bayou was ~66, Sanyou around Koku You were around ~55, and WFD was 23 chapters.

WZI was great, but Hara could've shaved off 1/3 of it and still kept all the important story beats.
It also felt so climactic, partly i guess due to the houken/shin storyline, but the next three zhao battles feel kind of whatever Even with Riboku's last W's it felt like he was fully defeated as an antagonist in WZI.

Obviously, history knowers and kingdom fanatics wouldn't fall for that, but at the time it seemed that was the equivalent of final boss fight.
 

TheKnightOfTheSea

𝕷𝖔𝖗𝖉 𝖔𝖋 𝕸𝖔𝖔𝖓'𝖘 𝕾𝖕𝖆𝖜𝖓
I'm right now at 0 hype for Raku'A Kan and am counting on third parties to make this conflict more interesting. Within no time flat, Hara pretty much ended the mystique of this dude and now it feels inevitable he'll get rolled over relatively easy without assistance.
i'm so disappointed in him. I was hoping Han would have a very strong defensive general who even the old Qin 6 and Zhao 3 couldn't defeat. Instead he seems to be below people like Man'U and Kyou'En in ability, which is disappointing for Han

no interest in his as a character. The Han Prime Minister seems more interesting. The Han King also is disappointing because of his lack of presence.

I've reread WZI so many times I've genuinely lost count, and I still keep finding new things to admire about it. I think the Hou Ken fight shouldn't have happened at all, and I think the arc was too long, but all in all, it's a thoroughly satisfying arc. It's so good that I can forgive otherwise egregious flaws like the Hou Ken fight (wtf did it have to happen then and there at all?) and plot devices that could've been written in more gracefully (Shin's apparent resurrection). All in all, Gyou is still, at least, a 9/10 arc to me
I love Western Zhao but that goddamn Heki subplot always makes me lose interest in rereading it. It's not even bad, it's just less interesting than the rest of the arc. I tend to skip the resurrection chapters and I think I did in my previous rereads. It has a number of interesting scenes and hype moments, I still get goosebumps over the locust and Ousen's river trick.

Agreed. I find these "downtime" scenes are what make the battles meaningful, and this plot in particular is indeed a nice payoff for the HSU being so different for many years that they've actually garnered a reputation for being honourable with civilians.

It was cool that Kan Pi Shi knew about it also, and it was a payoff in itself that he seemed to leave his decision to go to Kanyou in Shin's hands because of it, but of course it was his job to know.
yeah I felt like it was kind of a "telling but not showing" tell this moment. It was cool that Kanpishi knew it. I wish we got more scenes showing how powerful Han's intelligence agency is.

Agreed. Give me fewer, but better, more meaningful battles.

I want a return to Hara actually setting the table before it's time to feast, like he did with Sanyou, the Coalition and even WZI.

The breakneck pacing of the manga since WZI has been only to its detriment, imo
yeah the battles are just... missing something. Idk what but they seem lacking.
 
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