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R2 DVD Reviews
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Monday, 13 December 2010 00:00 |
 I think the Shounen Jump shows are out to get me at the moment, as between Bleach and Naruto Shippuden I seem to be stuck in some sort of Eternal Battle Hell. Ichigo's battle with the Bounts kicked off in episode 69 - the four discs in this release take us up to episode 109, where we finally see the end of the arc. With the battle having moved to Sereitei, though, at least the scenery has changed...
The arrival of the Bounts in Seireitei has been detected, and is being treated by the Soul Society as any other ryoka incursion would be - the squads have been placed on alert, and Captain Hitsugaya has been tasked with rounding them up. Or killing them, whichever is easier. You can't help but think, though, that the Soul Society is underestimating their new visitors somewhat - as the first group of shinigami to encounter them soon finds out. Help is on the way, though, and Ichigo and his friends are in hot pursuit. Rather than rush into confrontation, the gang take the time to check the lie of the land, as it were, and gather their allies before fighting back. Aware that there are occasions where you just can't beat the weight of numbers, Kariya is also working amongst the spirit world's more disaffected residents to build support for his fight against the Soul Society. What neither side expects, though, is the intervention of the creator of the Bounts, disgraced Soul Reaper Rantao...
As usual when a show of Bleach's ilk gets so heavily into a fighting arc as this, there's not a huge amount of story to work with. The main plotlines initially are Kurotuschi realising that the Bounts have played him for a fool and doing his best to cover that up from the other Soul Reaper captains (remember, it was him giving Ishida the Quincy artefact that gave Kariya and his group their gateway to the spirit world); and the appearance on the scene of Rantao, creator of the Bounts. She's been spoken of before, always in terms of how outrageous and immoral her experiments were, but it seems that she's been on the receiving end of a large helping of bad press, as the truth doesn't appear to be quite how the Soul Society have presented it. As time goes on, it really does seem that the Soul Society's internal politics have been making it the sort of organisation that's leaning more towards the dark side than the light - but if that's ever going to be explored further, this isn't the time for it.
Which is a shame, as when Bleach concentrates on story or humour it's actually quite very good. The fighting, though, doesn't have the same appeal, and that's overwhelmingly what we get with this release. There are a couple of decent clashes, but there are two 'main events': Soul Reaper-turned-bad guy Ichinose versus his former friend Kenpachi, and a three-way battle between Kariya, Byakuya and Ichigo.
Ichinose's main gripe with the Soul Society seems to be a bad case of jealousy, in that others were promoted to Squad Captain over his head, and his battle gives him the chance to prove that he does have the strength and ability needed for the job by taking on one of the Captains directly. I've never had much sympathy for Ichinose, as his motivations are too self-centred for my liking, but his confrontation with Kenpachi provides both a half-decent battle and a chance for him to claim some sort of redemption - if he chose to do so. It's also fairly short as Bleach battles go, which always earns bonus points from me.
The Ichigo / Kariya / Byakuya battle is less successful, though - not least because, faced with a major threat to the Soul Society, Byakuya still can't see beyond his prejudices and refuses to treat Ichigo as an ally, instead turning the battle into an all-against-the-rest affair. That maybe wouldn't have been so bad if the three participants had just gotten down to business, but once again we're left having to listen to a stream of expository speeches, mostly from Kariya, which really don't add anything at this stage in the story.
The other Bounts also get a look in from time to time, but to be honest I find them almost inconsequential - I can't even remember their names, most of the time - as you know that, whatever they may do it's really only Kariya's actions that matter. He's the one in charge, making the decisions, and making and breaking alliances as suits him - the other three can do what they like, but in reality they're just running diversion duty for Kariya and, without anything in the way of personality that they can call their own, there's no other reason to pay any attention to them.
As the set moves towards the end of the arc, it takes on a Bount-of-the-Week approach to dealing with Kariya's underlings, with each facing one of the Soul Society before predictably meeting their doom. So much for their highly-vaunted fighting skills. None of these encounters are particularly exciting or entertaining - they're just run-of-the-mill battles of the sort that we've seen Bleach do many times before. The one issue here that could have been used to good effect - the likely terminal failure of Ishida's power-boosting artefact - sadly gets neatly worked around to leave it a non-issue, robbing his battle of any real sense of drama. So much for that, then.
Fortunately, Kariya's final battle has a bit more to like. He's aiming large with what he's trying to do, using the past research of the Soul Society against it in rather dramatic style. If he gets his way, he won't just defeat the Soul Society - payback for the experiments they conducted to create the Bounts in the first place - he'll wipe them out of existence, using their own power against them. This isn't what he'd told his followers he was planning to do though, so there's a small undercurrent of dissent (sadly not really developed as much as it could have been) to what he's planning to do. The main focus of the second half of the set, though, is on finding Kariya and putting a stop to his plans, as Seireitei's inhabitants understandably aren't keen on being blown into oblivion.
The battle is led by Rantao, Ichigo and Ishida, although there are plenty of other appearances as well by other familiar faces, and a good amount of background story is delivered along the way to fill in just how Kariya turned from a cute & harmless young boy (hard to believe, i know) to the man bent on mass slaughter that we have by the end of the arc. It's interesting, up to a point - but the problem I found was that, but the time we got to Kariya's final battle, we'd been through so much inconsequential filler along the way that I'd simply given up caring. The whole Bount arc has been little more than padding, with a bunch of villains who never became 'real' enough for me to even remember who they all were (with the exception of Kariya). Add in that the close of the arc simply took us back to running around Seireitei for a series of set battle again - and remember, we just did all this not that long ago for Rukia's rescue arc - and it all just feels like the same thing, done all over again with a few new faces. Frankly, there are better things to be doing than wasting time watching that, even taking the occasional good point into account.
So, a few good plot points does not a good volume make when the vast majority of what's here has been seen before, just with a few different faces. Bleach seemed to be something different and enjoyable when it first got underway, but now it's as hackneyed as hell, and the Bount arc that this volume concludes was a real chore to watch. The best thing that can be said at this point is: than the maker that's over. Moving quickly onwards...
For full episode summaries and screenshots, check our reviews of the individual released:
» Volume 1
» Volume 2
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