Bleach Discussion █: Soul Society, but not!

MetaMario

@zeltrax225 said in Bleach Discussion █: Soul Society, but not!:

for the lazy:

Q278:
This is something that I've been thinking about ever since I read Volume 12, but has there ever been any kind of physical relationship between Aizen and Hinamori? If you ask me, I feel like Aizen not engaging in this kind of thing with her is more in-character for him so I personally believe nothing of the sort happened.
A278:
I think it would be more fun to leave this question unanswered.

personally i think its fun but not in the way you think it is but in the thousand of hitsugaya fangirls scream as their favorite character got cucked kind of funny.

I think (for me) this is one of those things that a fan's whose thoughts are wandering could go, it's another knife twisted in the emotional saga of Momo Hinamori, so it's as tragically interesting as it is just....tragic.

Me personally I wouldn't go that far, but I could see why it was asked. Not only did she adore him as a Captain, the betrayal is the most damaging on her psyche (compared to Hisagi and Kira)

There was never any solid closure to the whole thing which is a bummer. Hinamori is long knocked out when everyone takes on Aizen. Not even a scene of her going "Why...?" and him either not answering or giving some non-answer, but a maliciously polite acknowledgment all the same. He goes out of his way to make sure Hitsugaya and the others maul her and her specifically, which is another layer of cruel.

And Shinji becoming her Captain was the best thing for her but I also wished they had more scenes together. Both of them understand intimately the damages of an Aizen betrayal.

Xanegoh

So, I decided to read through those translated Q&A, and dear God why are there so many inane questions asked? 'Who has the biggest boobs?' 'Does grown up ichigo have chest hair like his daddy?' 'How tall is toshiro?'

Yes, these are the pressing issues that need attention.

Looking at the answers kubo gives to a lot of these, it's apparent he's terrible at world building and planning out the story.

Cockycent

Sounds like SBS

Razh

@zeltrax225 probably, but sometimes he just drops stuff he wanted to put in. Like that Giselle stuff he never elaborated on. It's not like I feel Bleach is poorer for it.

Maybe we got off lucky with his style over substance motto.

King Cannon

Yeah, in a way, this is just like a SBS in tone. Some answers Kubo tries, others he shrugs and in a few he just jokes around. Oda also doesn't really answer about every single confusing thing he introduces in the story.

Be glad no one asked about Komamura's dick.

King Cannon

Seems like Kubo did redesign several characters besides the ones from the hell chapter a year ago. I actually love some of those designs. Fashion is like Kubo's one strong point.

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Hachi is legit great. And even the Fullbringers look more tolerable.

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Remember Tsukishima's punk crony with the jackpot powers? I legit couldn't recognize him.

JulieYBM

Oh God, oh fuck, Moe looks amazingly hot.

Shiebs

Where can I find all of those drawings?

King Cannon

@Shiebs said in Bleach Discussion █: Soul Society, but not!:

Where can I find all of those drawings?

It's from a calendar Kubo drew.

https://imgur.com/gallery/sNAoGPq

Jackie (boots fullbringer) is another particular favorite of mine. I suppose that plot point of the Fullbringers becoming a business institution is consistent.

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Even Don Kanonji got one too:

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JulieYBM

Jackie is so gender, holy shit.

Shiebs

@King-Cannon thank you!

Does anyone actually care about the fullbringers?

JulieYBM

@Shiebs said in Bleach Discussion █: Soul Society, but not!:

@King-Cannon thank you!

Does anyone actually care about the fullbringers?

Yes. I think they all had interesting personalities and the story arc was a lot of fun.

Shiebs

@JulieYBM said in Bleach Discussion █: Soul Society, but not!:

@Shiebs said in Bleach Discussion █: Soul Society, but not!:

@King-Cannon thank you!

Does anyone actually care about the fullbringers?

Yes. I think they all had interesting personalities and the story arc was a lot of fun.

Oh lol, my bad

I personally hated the fullbring arc and all its characters, the only real enjoyment I got out of it was discussing it with everyone here, this thread and the Naruto thread were a blast back in the day, one of Arlong Park’s best threads of all time

Man those days were fun

JulieYBM

I only remember those threads being baaad lol. NARUTO and BLEACH discussion was never very great on the internet.

MetaMario

At one point the threads were fused in a two-way "they're both bad" attitude.....granted I knew a lot more about Bleach and was keeping up weekly, not the case for Naruto. Lots of forum in-jokes and gags. Feels like ages ago.

Uh as for the Fullbringers I wasn't really on board with them, and I've said before their arc had interesting ideas on paper, but all together it just didn't land. Still, cool art above.

Johnny B. Decent

What was the Fullbringer's deal again? They were humans who got powers from....something.

King Cannon

@MetaMario said in Bleach Discussion █: Soul Society, but not!:

Uh as for the Fullbringers I wasn't really on board with them, and I've said before their arc had interesting ideas on paper, but all together it just didn't land. Still, cool art above.

Re-reading the arc, I legit think Tsukishima is an awesome villain. I have a blast every time I see Ichigo losing his shit at his family going "you're the crazy one!" because of Shuu-chan. It's an actual personal conflict Aizen couldn't hope to have.

The rest are definitely lame however. Giriko (clock guy) has a cool power though, but like many things in Bleach, it's wasted potential.

Marcotty

To me, the only thing that makes the Fullbringers flop is the fact the old go-to Soul Reapers came back and completely wrecked them all easily. There's nothing fun about watching Kenpachi just down a character in one-hit, Toshiro completely counter everything with ice, or see Ikkaku (and I'm an Ikkaku enjoyer) just tank the supposed wildcard boy and make you question why he was even added.

But that's just the Bleach disconnect I always have. Those darn captains always coming in to rob the good characters of good fights.

JulieYBM

@MetaMario said in Bleach Discussion █: Soul Society, but not!:

At one point the threads were fused in a two-way "they're both bad" attitude.....granted I knew a lot more about Bleach and was keeping up weekly, not the case for Naruto. Lots of forum in-jokes and gags. Feels like ages ago.

Yeah, that shit was misery.

Something I really liked about the Fullbringers were how Ichigo's experience got to be brought up as a strength in his training with Jackie. I thought that that was a really neat exchange.

I also loved the horror/thriller/slasher vibes of the arc.

Shiebs

It wasn’t misery it was hilarious and fun

Xanegoh

@Johnny-B-Decent one of their parents was attacked by a hollow, then had a kid, passing on the hollow energy. Not sure why that gives them weird ass powers, but whatever.

As stated previously by virtually everyone here, the fullbringer arc happened way too late in the series to have any real impact. Plus, ichigo hijacking it from Chad just so he could be the special anime boy. If it happened right after the soul society arc, it would have been much better. Low stakes and fleshing out characters and the world. Probably could have given the rest of ichigo's school friends fullbring powers so they have some relevance and don't just fade into the background.

Razh

@Shiebs it was more fun than reading the actual chapters. You know, sharing your pain with others, but humorously!

zeltrax225

the memes were top notch though and that was back then before memes were as widespread as today
I'll never forget the heart

Shiebs

@Razh indeed, it was a blast, and somehow despite being sarcastic we managed to guess a lot of the things that would happen in both series

FatDogForMidTerms

oh man the old naruto and bleach threads are some of the best stuff on this site. people forget how terrible those series were while they were still going, roasting them together was cathartic and fun.

Razh

Merging the threads was a stroke of genius.

MetaMario

@King-Cannon said in Bleach Discussion █: Soul Society, but not!

Re-reading the arc, I legit think Tsukishima is an awesome villain. I have a blast every time I see Ichigo losing his shit at his family going "you're the crazy one!" because of Shuu-chan. It's an actual personal conflict Aizen couldn't hope to have.

The rest are definitely lame however. Giriko (clock guy) has a cool power though, but like many things in Bleach, it's wasted potential.

I remember appreciating the horror "Ichigo's family and friends are brainwashed" element, it was at least an interesting angle?

Giriko lmao, I thought by the sound of his powers he'd trap Kenpachi like Tousen did. The problem with the fights is really i think they can't all just one-shot their opponents, so some don't, but then the rest kinda just....drag.

If you took them away and had Ichigo/Chad/Orihime/Uryu team up to beat them, I think it would've ended the arc on a high note for me.

Cockycent

3 months left til the return of greatness.

Will the anime cut out the Sternritter argument and interactions over Uryu for Renji and Ichigo's friends? It can go either way because the friends were irrelevant outside the 3 immediate ones. Plus, who became successor wasn't that much of an ongoing issue either.

.access timeco.

I will never not be angry by how completely mistreated the Visoreds were. Seeing the redesigns makes me wonder if Kubo didn't create them just to have fun fashion-wise.

At least Hacchi got his chance to shine and he was the best of them all...

@Shiebs said in Bleach Discussion █: Soul Society, but not!:

Does anyone actually care about the fullbringers?

I definitely don't, but Jackie's design was always killer and this one goes beyond.

Xanegoh

@access-timeco I never did. Most were unrepentant assholes with stupid backstories. Jackie was the only sympathetic one, and we literally knew nothing about the lucky guy. Pretty sure that the rest should be in hell for being awful people.

ea77

@Xanegoh um but what about that girl whose boyfriend rejected her for having powers (because she kidnapped him and kept him in a house), or that guy who was abandoned by his parents (before he disgraced them and made them sewer side)? Feel bad!

Xanegoh

@ea77 don't forget time guy who wanted to test his powers by killing his own wife. Then got cold feet, tried to reneg, but lost both her and an eye. Yeah, I feel real bad for these schmucks.

Xanegoh

It still honestly boggles my mind that kubo decided to make ichigo related to the shibas and then did nothing with it. It could be something interesting but ultimately it's just a tiny footnote in all of it.

Not to mention WHY WERE THE SHIBAS STRIPPED OF NOBILITY IN THE FIRST PLACE????!!!!

Razh

@Xanegoh I'm surprised there's no third party light novel covering it.

Apparently, some of the youngsters nowadays feel like Bleach writing isn't so bad, since some of its issues were addressed, what with interviews and novels. I was told my opinion on how the writing deteriorated while the art evolved is "obsolete". I know they're idiots, but it's concerning none the less.

zeltrax225

It happens when a fanbase gets large enough. Believe it or not, the franchise is still growing with the mobile game seeing huge numbers. That and the recent animation really brought a lot of attention back to the series so you have more people from the newer generation coming in. And while I won't say they are exactly stupid or that they are smarter than the previous generation, they are, however, young. So when you are young, bad writing/edgy one liners or twists can come off as having more depth and cooler than they are (or they exist because of poor writing and planning). And Bleach carters to that shallow mindset of older children/young adult still discovering themselves so there is this over-dependency on what's cool and deep instead of actively trying to educate themselves on writing 101.

Basically, it's easy to relate to.
The ones that are a real pain in the ass are those late 20s and 30s who puts the series on the pedestal and still hang around the communities echoing the thoughts of newcomers. Now, that is weird.

I'll say this once again and that without the mobile game Kubo would actually have to find more work and you know, create. It helped him a whole lot more financially than people think. I'm not saying its undeserved and that the volume sales aren't a thing but he's also pretty lucky all things considered.

King Cannon

@Xanegoh He can always address all those things if he even get arsed to write a new arc.

He can also always invent new, unnecessary plotlines from nowhere too, like Rukia having special parents like he hinted in a recent interview. Maybe she's part Satan, who knows.

JulieYBM

BLEACH isn't perfect but Kubo doesn't exactly care and if you have a readership that understands that then it doesn't really matter. Not everything is for everyone and that's okay. I think BLEACH is really entertaining as this platform for Kubo to take two characters with wildly conflicting personalities and have them clash for ten chapters at a time. I would definitely like to see other types of scenes—like IchiHime scenes, of course—but seeing his characters fight and chew scenery is also fun, too.

I've always described BLEACH and Kubo as "Toriyama if Toriyama liked drawing comics" because in a way Kubo just doesn't care about fulfilling other peoples' expectations for his story. While I'd certainly hold him to a standard for his depiction of queer people and women it's also become increasingly clear in the final arc that Kubo was creating a porn comic better off being published in a magazine aimed at the R18 crowd and I wish Shueisha had moved it instead of keeping it restricted to Weekly JUMP.

ea77

@Xanegoh Shibas were Uchiha'd -- i.e marginizalized for being too nice, basically. Then Isshin and Kaien's defections/disappearences/deaths happened in swift succession and basically that was a wrap.

Xanegoh

@ea77 I think the Shibas still had their noble status when isshin was captain. Then again, who knows? That shit could've happened twenty years ago, or two hundred years ago. There's no way to tell. Also, there are still two other noble houses we literally know nothing about.

ea77

@Xanegoh Yeah, they had it while he was captain. But Isshin leaving was the last straw, so to speak. They had two lives left. Kaien took one. Isshin took another.

Kinda makes Byakuya's actions look different, doesn't it? Kuchiki's could've been next.

Xanegoh

@ea77 I think the isshin stuff happened first, then kaien was killed. Again, the timeline in bleach is so wonky.

Also, who knows what would happen with the kuchiki's? The decision making in soul society is so random.

ea77

@Xanegoh Well, the order didn't really matter as much as the fact that it happened and was the last straw.

Re Kuchikis, bYakuya already broke the law by marrying Hisana, so he was already on thin ice.

Xanegoh

I can't remember if we talked about this, but why did the quincy not just eradicate every arrancar they encountered? They were eager to disrupt the soul balance and (outside of the first one at the start) we never see the arrancar fight for the quincy. So, why would they ever bother keeping them around, especially since quincy are deathly allergic to hollows?

Shiebs

https://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2023/05/07-1/tite-kubo-to-reveal-new-bleach-information-on-may-28

Please dear god a new hell arc

JulieYBM

I hope Kubo has found the time to just draw as many chapters as he has felt like for a new Hell arc. I don't think he could survive a weekly schedule again—and I certainly would not ask him to—but I do think it would be cool if he was allowed to just draw a bunch at once and then have it released weekly from there. NARUTO was eight chapters ahead of schedule when it was first published thanks to a goof in the approval process for the first chapter.

MetaMario

I echo my sentiments - I think it's been too long that any continuation might feel tacked on and a hassle, but a part of me is interested in exploring some new ground at the least. And the anime is still on people's radar, so now is the perfect time to drum up interest in more Bleach stuff.

ApostlesBane

And to add to all that, we need to see Zaraki cement his status of the most powerful shinigami ever with a fully mastered Bankai. Shit be scary when that happens.

JulieYBM

@MetaMario said in Bleach Discussion █: Soul Society, but not!:

I echo my sentiments - I think it's been too long that any continuation might feel tacked on and a hassle, but a part of me is interested in exploring some new ground at the least. And the anime is still on people's radar, so now is the perfect time to drum up interest in more Bleach stuff.

Nobody will notice the length between publication in the long run.

Shiebs

I was never super interested in a the full bringer or Quincy arcs, doesn’t help that they weren’t executed well (especially since we’d been told constantly that Ishida was the last Quincy)

But I’ve been interested in a hell arc since we saw the gates open for the first time well before soul society

And then after going to soul society and Hueco Mundo I assumed that was the next obvious destination

I just hope if they do a new arc we get to see Ishida, Chad and Orihime be of use and get good fights

zeltrax225

I low key just want Kubo to write something new that is not Soul Society related.
He does well in short bursts where he has everything planned.