People may complain about Narutos arts bland scribbliness, but the overwhelming samyness of Bleach is much much worse to me. I mean not only do we have NotAizen3, good god, look a Yumichika! He's never been the most stunning of designs, but now I just have to remove those ugly accesories to see dozens of cast members stare back at me.
Also, New Bespectacled Shinigami is Kenpachi without his scar.
Boy did I laugh at the "declaration of war". Not quite done with their designs, eh Kubo? And again, it's just so unimpressive, lacking any kind of oomph. From the spoiler pics I thought it'd be just a cutoff from a half-page panel at most, and then it takes up an entire page. It litterally looks like he just zoomed in on a much smaller drawing.
And Kubo would it kill you to draw some characters who are NOT mostly comprised of identical uniforms -and pretty damn boring uniforms at that- and actually put some damn effort into character designs?
Wait, what am I saying, it propably would.
The usual suspect of shitty pacing is also back this week; After the Attacks from Behind, Redundant Restatements is one of Kubos favourite tropes. How many times does this make where the first page is two characters repeating the last lines from the prior chapter, while trying to out-snark each other? Add to that the "Arrancar? Me an Arrancar? I'm not an arrancar…" time stalling combined with those goddamn mouth panels, and Bleach is as frustrating as ever to read.
On the narrative side, I would have given Ichigo plus points for kicking Ivan out the window and dragging him away from his family- if that didn't make me wonder what kept him from doing the exact same fucking thing when Tsukishima came to visit. Really, his character is pretty much butchered beyond recognition.
People are vanishing from Rukongai? Well, maybe if you didn't keep them segregated from you by with a giant wall, you could have had some shinigami on the fucking scene, and not arrive by the time an entire village has dissapeared!
Prediction: the villains will be hollows who removed their masks to gain the powers of quincies; or propably the other way around. Because that makes sense.