Whitens clothes and teeth, also is full of shounen tards: Karakura 'arc' in review
So ... aside from mainlining all Chuck ever, I've been reading Bleach as well, slowly but surely I managed to make my way through the Karakura 'stuff'. I also got to the very start of the Soul Society arc, but I will not be discussing that here!
First thoughts: The art is nice and easy to follow, having just come off Trigun as the last thing I read this is incredibly important. The action is well conveyed and the fights are pretty dynamic yet interesting to follow. I am a big fan of Ichigo, Rukia and Karin for the most part and less interested in everyone else.
Specifics:
Um ... Ichigo is a massive Gary Stu. I like him though, even though his power-wang is over 9000 he's intelligent, caring and such. The Grand Fisher fight and all of the surrounding backstory kept me from finding him completely a snooze-fest. He's interesting and although I never had a brother I find him very compelling in that role.
The rest of his family: Dad and Yuzu I found rather -- meh. They were just interesting enough to manage not to bore me as background characters but they really haven't given me enough to work with to really get excited about them. Karin, however, I love her, she's cute as a button and I'm very sad to learn she doesn't get to join in the shounen-raindeer games. Watching Ichigo try to be a big brother while his sister got all sorts of sword or magic wang powers would be really awesome. That's the sort of story I really sink my teeth into.
Rukia: Love her. I love this type of character, strong and confident, smart, doesn't give up, she's a peach. Even though she's mostly just serving as a introduction to Soul Society stuff, she's very interesting to me and I am really looking forward to seeing her develop more.
Chad: He's cool. I know pikabot loves him a lot but I wasn't super impressed with his powers. His bird-chapters thing was pretty neat though. I liked that he was awesome and pulled out a phone pole to fight something he couldn't see to protect a bird ... it just made him so weird and human all at once.
Orihime: Not the sort of girl character I tend to enjoy, mostly because as of right now she is basically 'ditzy T&A' and ... yeah I don't like those characters. She's still got a chance to wow me in later arcs, but right now I just don't care two bits about her.
Tatsuki: Is awesome. Period. She reminds me of -- a lot of other characters I like, and honestly she's my favorite part of Orihime. Some of the same stuff that I recognize as 'me likey' in Rukia can also be found here.
Kon: DIAF ... seriously don't like him, the chapters where he was introduced is lame and he seems to mostly just be a dopey plot device at the moment. He brought up some interesting moral stuff about the Soul Society in general but every time he shows up I'm just 'bleeeh'
Uryuu: ... pffft. No one was kidding when they said he was holding the Idiot Ball this arc. It's just ... he's so dumb. I'm not sure how he's supposed to recover to become a useful character that I would empathize with.
Everyone else: Made insufficient impression on me to earn a separate character section.
The Plot: So I mean it's hard to judge this sort of thing fairly. I basically just finished the starting game tutorial, it's long before we get into the 'press X-X-O-triangle to turn your sword into a bigger sword' powers, but we definitely got into 'press B to block' level of detail about what's going on with powers/cosmology and it was all presented without being teal or boring. My favorite little story was The Grand Fisher one, it really swept every other story aside and took my heart as being the best. Honorable mentions include Canary story basically, everything else was a long distant third.
Of special note would be Quincy Archer Hates You, which ... meh. It was hard to get particularly into it because Uryuu had to be the stupidest SOB I'd seen so far in the manga. Getting introduced to the Quincy stuff was interesting but mostly just seemed to serve as a tutorial in 'why Soul Society is right'.
Semi-honorable mention goes out to the Kon stuff, which ... I didn't like but thought it brought up enough moral ambiguity to keep me believing there might be some interesting shit up besides: boy meets sword, gets massive sword-rection, cuts hollow in face.
(ETA: Oh, yeah, almost completely forgot: The fake/TV psychic chapters made me want to chew glass.)
I will continue to read at whatever pace it presents itself. Special mention goes to confoundingness who's been trying to get me to read Bleach for ages, even going so far as to try to unload some of the anime on me a year or so back which I rebuffed but am vaguely regretting now. Other mention goes to theskytides in general, and pikabot in particular for actually making me care enough about a few characters to pick up the manga.
First thoughts: The art is nice and easy to follow, having just come off Trigun as the last thing I read this is incredibly important. The action is well conveyed and the fights are pretty dynamic yet interesting to follow. I am a big fan of Ichigo, Rukia and Karin for the most part and less interested in everyone else.
Specifics:
Um ... Ichigo is a massive Gary Stu. I like him though, even though his power-wang is over 9000 he's intelligent, caring and such. The Grand Fisher fight and all of the surrounding backstory kept me from finding him completely a snooze-fest. He's interesting and although I never had a brother I find him very compelling in that role.
The rest of his family: Dad and Yuzu I found rather -- meh. They were just interesting enough to manage not to bore me as background characters but they really haven't given me enough to work with to really get excited about them. Karin, however, I love her, she's cute as a button and I'm very sad to learn she doesn't get to join in the shounen-raindeer games. Watching Ichigo try to be a big brother while his sister got all sorts of sword or magic wang powers would be really awesome. That's the sort of story I really sink my teeth into.
Rukia: Love her. I love this type of character, strong and confident, smart, doesn't give up, she's a peach. Even though she's mostly just serving as a introduction to Soul Society stuff, she's very interesting to me and I am really looking forward to seeing her develop more.
Chad: He's cool. I know pikabot loves him a lot but I wasn't super impressed with his powers. His bird-chapters thing was pretty neat though. I liked that he was awesome and pulled out a phone pole to fight something he couldn't see to protect a bird ... it just made him so weird and human all at once.
Orihime: Not the sort of girl character I tend to enjoy, mostly because as of right now she is basically 'ditzy T&A' and ... yeah I don't like those characters. She's still got a chance to wow me in later arcs, but right now I just don't care two bits about her.
Tatsuki: Is awesome. Period. She reminds me of -- a lot of other characters I like, and honestly she's my favorite part of Orihime. Some of the same stuff that I recognize as 'me likey' in Rukia can also be found here.
Kon: DIAF ... seriously don't like him, the chapters where he was introduced is lame and he seems to mostly just be a dopey plot device at the moment. He brought up some interesting moral stuff about the Soul Society in general but every time he shows up I'm just 'bleeeh'
Uryuu: ... pffft. No one was kidding when they said he was holding the Idiot Ball this arc. It's just ... he's so dumb. I'm not sure how he's supposed to recover to become a useful character that I would empathize with.
Everyone else: Made insufficient impression on me to earn a separate character section.
The Plot: So I mean it's hard to judge this sort of thing fairly. I basically just finished the starting game tutorial, it's long before we get into the 'press X-X-O-triangle to turn your sword into a bigger sword' powers, but we definitely got into 'press B to block' level of detail about what's going on with powers/cosmology and it was all presented without being teal or boring. My favorite little story was The Grand Fisher one, it really swept every other story aside and took my heart as being the best. Honorable mentions include Canary story basically, everything else was a long distant third.
Of special note would be Quincy Archer Hates You, which ... meh. It was hard to get particularly into it because Uryuu had to be the stupidest SOB I'd seen so far in the manga. Getting introduced to the Quincy stuff was interesting but mostly just seemed to serve as a tutorial in 'why Soul Society is right'.
Semi-honorable mention goes out to the Kon stuff, which ... I didn't like but thought it brought up enough moral ambiguity to keep me believing there might be some interesting shit up besides: boy meets sword, gets massive sword-rection, cuts hollow in face.
(ETA: Oh, yeah, almost completely forgot: The fake/TV psychic chapters made me want to chew glass.)
I will continue to read at whatever pace it presents itself. Special mention goes to confoundingness who's been trying to get me to read Bleach for ages, even going so far as to try to unload some of the anime on me a year or so back which I rebuffed but am vaguely regretting now. Other mention goes to theskytides in general, and pikabot in particular for actually making me care enough about a few characters to pick up the manga.