|
R2 DVD Reviews
|
|
Tuesday, 26 July 2011 00:00 |
|
Page 1 of 3
 The Arrancar and the Visored continue to dominate events, as this volume takes a little detour into what I'm told is filler territory - the scourge of Bleach fans everywhere - to keep an eye on Hitsugaya and his team, which Ichigo's busy training...
With their power limits lifted, Hitsugaya, Rangiku, and Renji easily dispatch their opponents. Meanwhile, Ichigo is overpowered by Grimmjow, who is able to fight against Ichigo barehanded. Ichigo uses his getsuga tensho, which slightly damages Grimmjow and awakens his inner hollow. Before Grimmjow can release his zanpakuto, Kaname Tosen arrives. Tosen takes Grimmjow back to Hueco Mundo, claiming that he violated Aizen's orders by attacking the real world. Later, Ichigo approaches the Visored, hoping to use them to find a way to suppress his inner Hollow (although his encounter with them doesn't go entirely to plan), Orihime has to deal with being told she's just not strong enough to continue fighting with the others, and Hitsugaya and his team investigate the case of two loose souls and the Arrancar who wants to devour them...
A couple of differing tracks, then - mostly focussing on the Arrancar, as you'd expect, but there are a few other things going on here. Most of the Arrancar material this volume is pretty much disposable - we get Aizen being a bastard (but then we knew that anyway), and a completely filler story with Hitsugaya and lost souls Shota and Yui - which isn't terrible, but there's a problem with this sort of side story in that you know it's not really ultimately going anywhere (filler stories can't affect the main 'canon' stories, after all), and while shows like Naruto compensate for this by ramping up the humour, Bleach tends to try and keep things serious. Unless Don Kanonji's making an appearance, which he sadly hasn't in a while.
So the main event of these episodes, almost by default, becomes Ichigo and his encounter with the Visored. I have to say, I'm a little confused about the Visored, and whether they're meant to be counted amongst the good guys or the bad guys - the way the were originally introduced suggested the latter, but the more I saw of them on this volume, the more I was leaning towards them being 'good'. Or at the very least Chaotic Neutral, if I were to go back to my Dungeons and Dragons-playing days. That makes them interesting to watch, as you never really know what they're going to do next or what they're aiming to achieve by getting Ichigo to embrace his inner Hollow, and if we'd had two discs of that, I would've been a happy bunny.
The sidestory dealing with Orihime's also decent enough. After the apparent destruction of Tsubaki, her attack spirit, Urahara has decided that she shouldn't take part in the group's battle anymore - not only is she just not strong enough to be useful, but having to protect her would endanger the others. So could she please quietly wander off. Now, Orihime being Orihime I was almost expecting her to just take it and go - and for a while it looked like she was going to do just that. But the girl has a little backbone, it seems, and after encountering the Visored herself finds what may be a solution to her problem. Now, I suppose I could complain about the little bit of reset-button shenanigans that's going on here - just once it would be nice for a setback to be permanent (and that applies equally to Ishida), but the way it's handled is good, and provides a few quieter moments to counter all the fighting that's going on elsewhere. All fight and no plot makes me a grumpy reviewer.
A bit of a mixed bag, then - there's some good stuff here, with Orihime and the Visored getting some decent development work and the Visored in particular becoming far more interesting thanks to their uncertain intentions; but the inclusion of a filler story in the arc makes for a sizeable chunk of unsatifying story, too. End result: decidedly average, as the good neatly cancels out the bad to leave 11 episodes of "meh....". And please, don't remind me of how many more episodes of the Arrancar arcs are still to come...
<< Start < Prev 1 2 3 Next > End >>
|
Reviews Archive 
