I think the Shounen Jump shows are out to get me at the moment, as between Bleach and Naruto I seem to be stuck in some sort of Eternal Battle Hell. Ichigo's battle with the Bounts kicked off in episode 69 - the two discs in this release take us up to episode 99, and there's still no end in sight. With the battle having moved to Sereitei, though, at least the scenery has changed...
What They Say
The Bounts arrive in the Soul Society and find themselves battling two Soul Reaper lieutenants, but the abundance of reishi in the Soul Society gives the Bounts a ready source of power, rendering them formidable opponents. Meanwhile, it is discovered that Maki Ichinose, the banished Soul Reaper helping the Bounts, has infiltrated the Seireitei and has been secretly manipulating their data. What strategies will play out, and how can Ichigo and his allies stop them?
The Review!
Audio:
Audio is presented in English and Japanese 2.0 stereo. I've been trying to widen my linguistic boundaries lately, so I listed to this release in both English and Japanese. Both tracks are fairly standard stereo mixes, with some effort having been made to properly place dialogue and effects on the soundstage but nothing particularly spectacular past that. There were no obvious dropouts or other problems. As for the English track - I've been becoming more accepting of dubbed anime lately, and Bleach is another series where the quality of the English voice-acting has quite impressed me.
Video:
Video's hard to quantify in one way - this is a recent show, so in general the animation is clean and colourful, while the transfer is free of any obvious encoding issues. Where it's strange is that there are scenes dotted throughout the show where the animation has noticeably more detail (both in terms of shading representing lighting, which adds a lot of depth to the animation, and in the amount of work that's gone into portraying the characters) than for the rest of the disc. These scenes really do look good, but they're different enough from the show's usual level of animation that they do jar a bit. I can't really criticise for the extra effort having been made, though.
Packaging:
No packaging was provided with our review copy.
Menu:
The menu is a static screen, with an image of one of the Soul Society characters off to one side (Ichigo on disc one, Byakuya on disc two). Options are provided for Play All, direct access to each episode, language setup and extras, with Renji and Ishida featuring on the submenus for all three discs. There are no transition animations, so it's all quick & easy to use.
Extras:
Each disc of the set has a gallery of production sketches, and another creditless closing sequence.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review will contain spoilers)
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 here 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.
In summary:
So, there's a fair amount of potentially interesting material being bandied about here, but at the moment it's being drowned beneath the sheer weight of battle scenes. I genuinely do want to enjoy Bleach - it got off to a great start and quickly became probably my favourite Shounen Jump series, and when it puts its mind to it it can be a really good show - but when it gets bogged down like this, as it did last time the gang headed to Seireitei, it just seems like a string of wasted opportunities.
Features
Japanese Language 2.0, English Language 2.0, English Subtitles, Productions Artwork, Textless Closing
Review Equipment
Toshiba 37X3030DB 37" widescreen HDTV; Sony PS3 Blu-ray player (via HDMI, upscaled to 1080p); Acoustic Solutions DS-222 5.1 speaker system.
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