@Daz:
To sum up the last two arcs:
The fullbring arc is a complete baffling clusterfuck. In many ways it’s a microcosm of every major problem of the series;
- Crap pacing and overall lazy, minimalistic presentation (Look up the "beautiful sunset")
- Ichigos friends getting shafted, in favor of Soul Society wanking
- Loose plot-threads galore
- Characters being vague and mysterious for the sake of it
- Extremely poorly defined new powers, of which Ichigo can partake by virtue of his extreme ManBearPiggedness
- A parade of new, minimally-explored transformations of little significance
- Theres a late-arc twist concerning the villain that doesn’t hold up to the most minimal of scrutiny
- As a result, Ichigo is manipulated all according to plan!!! for almost the entire arc
- Extreme anticlimax
The whole thing feels simultaneously rushed and inert, but its more dense with” Bleach-ness” than anything else in the series. On top of that, the arc veers into Psychological Thriller for a solid few chapters, where Ichigo has a complete meltdown to greatly comedic effect. People who remember the “Apologize, Ichigo!!!” moment know what I’m talking about.
In short, its a case study of a manga spiraling completely out of control.
The Quincy arc has all of the above points, but across 200 chapters. Theres’ the occasional fun fight, but it is an unbearable slog; Bleach is known for recycling ideas across arcs, but the Quincy arc ups the ante by repeating within itself. Throughout the arc Ichigo rushes to defend Soul Society, fails, goes to the royal realm wherefrom he rushes to defend soul society, fails, then immediately needs to return to the Royal Realm, where he reaches the Royal Palace, gets kicked out, and needs to reach the palace again. The quincy invade Soul Society three damn times. Ichigos sword breaks twice. Its completely shameless.
How many repeated motifs can you find??
It also has the weakest manga-ending in recent memory – and when your contemporaries include Toriko, Naruto and Fairy Tail, that’s saying something.
Oh wow. And here I dropped Tokyo Ghoul after the fourth consecutive exchange of;
"a-ha I have you now my dastardly enemy!"
"or so you think tragically flawed hero(TM), but it turns out I, dastardly enemy, have some unforeseen power/ability/allies arriving just in time to save me!"
"A-HA! you may think you've turned the tables dastardly enemy, but it turns out I, tragically flawed hero(TM)'s ally, tragically flawed hero(TM), have arrived just in time to stop you!"
"OR SO YOU THINK tragically flawed hero(TM)…" and so on.
I've no idea how any of you managed to keep going after third "save soul society Ichigo!!1!" mini-arc :/
To think of all the fun and colour the series had at its beginning and Kubo just Bleached it all out. Fantastic. Also lol at Ichigo the Manbearpig, I love that freakin name.
But all of this has got me to wondering; regardless of why he changed the direction and tone of the series so much (and it was always kinda pretentious, he did always have those poems he wrote for each volume after all), whether he wanted to play it safer at the start by trying to keep the tone more shounen, or he wanted to hew closer to what had come before to give the series a better grounding, the difference between what Bleach was and what it ended up is pretty damn stark. So I can't help but wander how the early stages of the manga would look if present day Kubo had written them, while trying to stick to the same broad story beats. Obviously some of the later nonsense he made up would probably be foreshadowed better, but trying to imagine his pretentious, self-serious dourness transposed onto the episodic, high school days world of early Bleach...
Maybe he'd have had Aizen appear even earlier, making his "manipulation" of Ichigo's path to becoming...someone who could fight him as an equal? or something? start even earlier in the actual text. Or maybe he'd just construct some behind-the-scenes, chess grandmaster to be the overarching villain of the early plot. Maybe Don Kanoji could've fit the bill :ninja:
On the other hand, it sounds like the series ended in a "rush" (rush in quotations because it sounds like it wouldn't have been as rushed if Kubo wasn't so terrible at pacing and repeating himself), so I kinda wonder just how much stupider and up-its-on-ass the series would've gotten if it hadn't been canned.
Maybe Kubo, as the literal god and absolute determiner of everything in the Bleach-universe would've written himself in as the final villain, just for the ultimate face palm, "it was actually me planning and controlling your journey all along" monologue.
Or maybe Ichigo would've travelled to a parallel universe and met the Kubo, the great god of the realm, who would grant him the arbitrary power and authority of the manga author, as the ultimate counter to a villain written with too stupidly broken a power to be feasibly defeatable. Then Ichigo could kick...Hitler's (the main villain of the Nazi arc is Hitler right?) ass with a literal pen. Hell he might even use this all-powerful pen to break Hitler's sword.
Get it?
Cause the pen is mightier than the...
"If it rusts,
it can never be trusted
If its owner fails to control it,
it will cut him
Yes, pride is
Like a blade"
Yeah you tell 'em Kubo!
…
Wait, you wrote that???
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