Bleach: Soul Society Arc
So, I totally kept reading and I just finished the Soul Society Arc ... yeah. On the whole it was better than the pre-arc but the introduction of too many new characters and ideas, rules and macguffins left me unsatisfied with it on the whole.
Pre Soul-Society Soul Society Arc:
Nice to really see Ichigo's protecting people and generally just being strong and protective. Rukia was sort of passive here in a way I didn't really appreciate. It was nice to finally meet the people who can kick Ichigo's ass now that he's been established as amazing-character it's good to see where he fits on the totem pole in the actual Soul Society instead of just kicking everything's ass.
I generally don't much care for training montages, so I wasn't inclined to much like the training with Urahara. He's cool, don't get me wrong, but it wasn't really super. The 'become a Shinigami' part of the training was just sort of lame, at least naming/forming his sword was sort of interesting. I sort of kept reading feeling like it was blah blah whatever. Chad and Orihime and Uryuu's training was completely absent and even though I don't care too much about them it would have been nice to see a little more about them if I'm supposed to, ya know, care about them.
Rukongai Soul Society Arc:
Jidanbou fight was kinda neat, it was a good chance to show Ichigo's still a badass even if he's not the best. His mini-fight verse Gin was cool too. I have a very squishy soft-spot for Gin, mostly because of Cy, so I'll be interested in watching more of that. The scanlation I'm reading is -- very annoying. Everything from 'sixth division' to 'west rukongai' are all written out in english from their japanese names and it's making it very difficult to follow!
The randomly unnecessary fight with Ganju followed by the equally unnecessary 'lol we ran into each other today' thing just made me roll my eyes. He just doesn't hit me the right way. It continued to leave me with the feeling of long swaths of nothing interesting inter-cut with like a few pages where Ichigo makes a breakthrough. He seems to spend long patches of time doing nothing, or failing spectacularly before being shown a shortcut.
Seireitei Soul Society Arc:
Ok. So even almost half way through this part of the arc I was seriously considering giving up on Bleach. I'm still not sure I'll keep reading at the pace I was previously, but at least the arc closed with a bang.
Unfortunately, this part of the arc seemed to be nothing but a series of long drawn out fights inter-cut with a few pages of exposition. I'm pretty sure the fact that I'm complaining about this means that I'm not cut out for shounen manga. Some of the fights were pretty cool, but a lot of them I just wanted to keep clicking to get to the next nugget of exposition.
The Bankai training at least gave a vague sense of gradual accomplishment, unlike the previous training that Ichigo had done with Urahara. I still don't enjoy that sort of training stuff though. At least it's better than putting magic bullshit powers out at the most opportune moment of a fight. (cf: Quincy string power)
Ichigo's little team continues to come off as completely extraneous. The fights between them and various Captains and Vice-Captains were completely tiny and the only one that really made me particularly interested was Uryuu's vs Mayuri.
Favorite fights were definitely: Ichigo vs Kenpachi, Youruichi vs Soi Fon, Ichigo vs Byakuya and a honorable mention for Kenpachi vs Tousen because I enjoyed watching him get spanked.
The ending wasn't too bad although ... it did seem kinda odd for everyone to be all hugs and kisses and letting Ichigo go home with a pat on the back after he pwned like several Captains and Vice-Captains seemed kinda stupid so I hope there's a good reason for that.
Characters:
So originally I had planned to put down a few notes about everyone and make notes about what I did and didn't like about their characterization and everything ... and then I realized there were way too many goddamn characters who received Matt levels of character screen time.
Aside from the Captains and Vice-Captains, there were various secondary characters and so forth and it really was too much to keep up with. Only the ones that made an immediately awesome first impression were even considered for the honor of 'people who Katie was going to bother to remember the names of'.
Rukia - Let's talk about Rukia ... I'm very disappointed honestly. Even though she was not particularly powerful in the opening miniarc I'd gotten to really enjoy her and her team up with Chad and her personal conflict over Grand Fisher. To see her turn into a passive princess macguffin was annoying at best. I mean obviously there was a halfway decent reason because of her guilt over Kaien, but -- wow. Pft. I hope she finds some way to regrow that spine I was really impressed with in the starting arc.
Ichigo - Continues to be a typical shounen-tard. Basically nothing he did this arc particularly surprised me, which was both surprising and disappointing. His only growth came in the form of power-wang increases, and that isn't something I find particularly exciting as a reader.
Uryuu - Slight bump up in my esteem. I think I just have a serious weakness for 'throwing away your power for a shot at revenge' ... maybe that's just me. I don't love him, and if he doesn't have more awesome like that packed away I probably never will, but he's manage to pull out a more neutral reaction from me now.
Tousen - WTF ... those who follow my character love may or may not be familiar with my undying love for 'Justice characters' or at least one particular one (no points for guessing who). All I can say is WTF. I don't see how anyone can look at a plan that involves getting the entire Soul Society to fight amongst themselves to be anything like Justice or even 'the path with the least bloodshed'. Honestly if anything other than a Heel Face Turn is in his future I will be so disappointed I will not be able to contain it.
Soi Fon - Random surprise favorite character. I just ... really liked her! She was sexy, snarky ninja, how could I not like her? Her Release was cool, he character design was cool, I felt for her in her little backstory snip in a way I didn't really feel for many of the other characters. Whether that was because her story pinged me for some reason or because it was better executed than the others I am not objective enough to say. She's definitely taken the mantel from Rukia as 'Katie's favorite' for the moment.
Komamura - Awesome. I was aware there was a guy who was a wolf guy but I didn't really make the connection to 'that guy who was wearing a bucket on his head' until he was properly introduced. I just liked him, before I knew that was him he kinda creeped me out, but after his reveal he was cool. I liked getting to watch him fight Kenpachi, although that didn't reach 'favorite fights' status. His sort of unassuming loyalty really hit me the right ways.
Unohana - She may or may not remind me of a blonde loli I enjoy playing, mostly for the 'everyone's mom' aspect of her personality. I'd also be super sad if she's not Hana's mom, that's beside the point though.
Hana - As most people who both read my f-list and are into Bleach might know, a certain person who may remain nameless but whose lj user tag is pikabot has made me love this character with the heat of a thousand suns. His appearance in canon did not disappoint. He was a big-hearted ball of fail. Also, my new personal fanon is that he's a celiac.
Aizen - Not much screen time, obviously a bastard. His sort of 'bad guy' doesn't really ping me, his whole plan depended on having an overpowered Release ability, so even if he's a fucking genius it's just kinda boring that he did it with power-wang instead of brains. It also was a bit of a let down when the way he used to get the macguffin out of Rukia seemed easier and not-at-all difficult to accomplish by stealth. I feel like there were plenty of ways to execute the plan that would have had no one any the wiser rather than having to ninja-vanish into Hollow-ville.
Gin - Saved for last for no other reason than the indomitable darklightshades. Gin is the sort of villain who I find more interesting than Aizen, and the only thing that I think could make it cooler is if he didn't seem to wear his villainy on his sleeve as much. Maybe that's what makes him a badass, iono. It seemed like so many people thought he was a completely and total bastard but he moved around completely freely ... just kinda bugged me.
Characters in general: Pretty much everyone else didn't make much of an impression. There were a few I'm missing like Byakuya, Yoruichi, Yachiru, Renji, etc who while amusing, didn't rise to the level of getting their own little section for me to call them 'insane', 'really hot', 'adorable' or 'cutely fail' mostly because -- yeah, that was all they ended up being to me.
I think it's a fundamental flaw with the way Kubo intros characters. Yeah they look awesome and their sword-wang-powers are awesome and all but -- bor-ing. You can't introduce over 30 characters and then take the next 130ish chapters to develop them taking sometimes well less than a single chapterto give me further definition and backstory and expect me to do anything but want to turn the page when they show up. Shunsui and Jushirou vs Yamamoto fight suffered from this moreso than almost any other. I literally had nothing invested in any of the characters, and the fight itself didn't draw me in either. Comparing this to say Komamaru or Soi Fon's fights, those at least brought me in to the characters. Momo, Hitsugaya and Rangiku suffered similarly from me not really getting invested in them beyond some superficial character traits.
Perhaps either investing some of the Introductory arc or spending some of the pre-Seireitei SS arc developing these characters a little further would have gotten me greater investment. It's a little disappointing because a solid handful of these characters are portrayed by people I rp with and so I had hoped to really get into them but most of them found there way onto the 'not developed enough for me to care' list.
Further Bleach reading is up in the air, mostly due to my above mentioned disappointment. I'll probably start ticking through the next arc more slowly unless it really starts to hit my interest buttons again.
Pre Soul-Society Soul Society Arc:
Nice to really see Ichigo's protecting people and generally just being strong and protective. Rukia was sort of passive here in a way I didn't really appreciate. It was nice to finally meet the people who can kick Ichigo's ass now that he's been established as amazing-character it's good to see where he fits on the totem pole in the actual Soul Society instead of just kicking everything's ass.
I generally don't much care for training montages, so I wasn't inclined to much like the training with Urahara. He's cool, don't get me wrong, but it wasn't really super. The 'become a Shinigami' part of the training was just sort of lame, at least naming/forming his sword was sort of interesting. I sort of kept reading feeling like it was blah blah whatever. Chad and Orihime and Uryuu's training was completely absent and even though I don't care too much about them it would have been nice to see a little more about them if I'm supposed to, ya know, care about them.
Rukongai Soul Society Arc:
Jidanbou fight was kinda neat, it was a good chance to show Ichigo's still a badass even if he's not the best. His mini-fight verse Gin was cool too. I have a very squishy soft-spot for Gin, mostly because of Cy, so I'll be interested in watching more of that. The scanlation I'm reading is -- very annoying. Everything from 'sixth division' to 'west rukongai' are all written out in english from their japanese names and it's making it very difficult to follow!
The randomly unnecessary fight with Ganju followed by the equally unnecessary 'lol we ran into each other today' thing just made me roll my eyes. He just doesn't hit me the right way. It continued to leave me with the feeling of long swaths of nothing interesting inter-cut with like a few pages where Ichigo makes a breakthrough. He seems to spend long patches of time doing nothing, or failing spectacularly before being shown a shortcut.
Seireitei Soul Society Arc:
Ok. So even almost half way through this part of the arc I was seriously considering giving up on Bleach. I'm still not sure I'll keep reading at the pace I was previously, but at least the arc closed with a bang.
Unfortunately, this part of the arc seemed to be nothing but a series of long drawn out fights inter-cut with a few pages of exposition. I'm pretty sure the fact that I'm complaining about this means that I'm not cut out for shounen manga. Some of the fights were pretty cool, but a lot of them I just wanted to keep clicking to get to the next nugget of exposition.
The Bankai training at least gave a vague sense of gradual accomplishment, unlike the previous training that Ichigo had done with Urahara. I still don't enjoy that sort of training stuff though. At least it's better than putting magic bullshit powers out at the most opportune moment of a fight. (cf: Quincy string power)
Ichigo's little team continues to come off as completely extraneous. The fights between them and various Captains and Vice-Captains were completely tiny and the only one that really made me particularly interested was Uryuu's vs Mayuri.
Favorite fights were definitely: Ichigo vs Kenpachi, Youruichi vs Soi Fon, Ichigo vs Byakuya and a honorable mention for Kenpachi vs Tousen because I enjoyed watching him get spanked.
The ending wasn't too bad although ... it did seem kinda odd for everyone to be all hugs and kisses and letting Ichigo go home with a pat on the back after he pwned like several Captains and Vice-Captains seemed kinda stupid so I hope there's a good reason for that.
Characters:
So originally I had planned to put down a few notes about everyone and make notes about what I did and didn't like about their characterization and everything ... and then I realized there were way too many goddamn characters who received Matt levels of character screen time.
Aside from the Captains and Vice-Captains, there were various secondary characters and so forth and it really was too much to keep up with. Only the ones that made an immediately awesome first impression were even considered for the honor of 'people who Katie was going to bother to remember the names of'.
Rukia - Let's talk about Rukia ... I'm very disappointed honestly. Even though she was not particularly powerful in the opening miniarc I'd gotten to really enjoy her and her team up with Chad and her personal conflict over Grand Fisher. To see her turn into a passive princess macguffin was annoying at best. I mean obviously there was a halfway decent reason because of her guilt over Kaien, but -- wow. Pft. I hope she finds some way to regrow that spine I was really impressed with in the starting arc.
Ichigo - Continues to be a typical shounen-tard. Basically nothing he did this arc particularly surprised me, which was both surprising and disappointing. His only growth came in the form of power-wang increases, and that isn't something I find particularly exciting as a reader.
Uryuu - Slight bump up in my esteem. I think I just have a serious weakness for 'throwing away your power for a shot at revenge' ... maybe that's just me. I don't love him, and if he doesn't have more awesome like that packed away I probably never will, but he's manage to pull out a more neutral reaction from me now.
Tousen - WTF ... those who follow my character love may or may not be familiar with my undying love for 'Justice characters' or at least one particular one (no points for guessing who). All I can say is WTF. I don't see how anyone can look at a plan that involves getting the entire Soul Society to fight amongst themselves to be anything like Justice or even 'the path with the least bloodshed'. Honestly if anything other than a Heel Face Turn is in his future I will be so disappointed I will not be able to contain it.
Soi Fon - Random surprise favorite character. I just ... really liked her! She was sexy, snarky ninja, how could I not like her? Her Release was cool, he character design was cool, I felt for her in her little backstory snip in a way I didn't really feel for many of the other characters. Whether that was because her story pinged me for some reason or because it was better executed than the others I am not objective enough to say. She's definitely taken the mantel from Rukia as 'Katie's favorite' for the moment.
Komamura - Awesome. I was aware there was a guy who was a wolf guy but I didn't really make the connection to 'that guy who was wearing a bucket on his head' until he was properly introduced. I just liked him, before I knew that was him he kinda creeped me out, but after his reveal he was cool. I liked getting to watch him fight Kenpachi, although that didn't reach 'favorite fights' status. His sort of unassuming loyalty really hit me the right ways.
Unohana - She may or may not remind me of a blonde loli I enjoy playing, mostly for the 'everyone's mom' aspect of her personality. I'd also be super sad if she's not Hana's mom, that's beside the point though.
Hana - As most people who both read my f-list and are into Bleach might know, a certain person who may remain nameless but whose lj user tag is pikabot has made me love this character with the heat of a thousand suns. His appearance in canon did not disappoint. He was a big-hearted ball of fail. Also, my new personal fanon is that he's a celiac.
Aizen - Not much screen time, obviously a bastard. His sort of 'bad guy' doesn't really ping me, his whole plan depended on having an overpowered Release ability, so even if he's a fucking genius it's just kinda boring that he did it with power-wang instead of brains. It also was a bit of a let down when the way he used to get the macguffin out of Rukia seemed easier and not-at-all difficult to accomplish by stealth. I feel like there were plenty of ways to execute the plan that would have had no one any the wiser rather than having to ninja-vanish into Hollow-ville.
Gin - Saved for last for no other reason than the indomitable darklightshades. Gin is the sort of villain who I find more interesting than Aizen, and the only thing that I think could make it cooler is if he didn't seem to wear his villainy on his sleeve as much. Maybe that's what makes him a badass, iono. It seemed like so many people thought he was a completely and total bastard but he moved around completely freely ... just kinda bugged me.
Characters in general: Pretty much everyone else didn't make much of an impression. There were a few I'm missing like Byakuya, Yoruichi, Yachiru, Renji, etc who while amusing, didn't rise to the level of getting their own little section for me to call them 'insane', 'really hot', 'adorable' or 'cutely fail' mostly because -- yeah, that was all they ended up being to me.
I think it's a fundamental flaw with the way Kubo intros characters. Yeah they look awesome and their sword-wang-powers are awesome and all but -- bor-ing. You can't introduce over 30 characters and then take the next 130ish chapters to develop them taking sometimes well less than a single chapterto give me further definition and backstory and expect me to do anything but want to turn the page when they show up. Shunsui and Jushirou vs Yamamoto fight suffered from this moreso than almost any other. I literally had nothing invested in any of the characters, and the fight itself didn't draw me in either. Comparing this to say Komamaru or Soi Fon's fights, those at least brought me in to the characters. Momo, Hitsugaya and Rangiku suffered similarly from me not really getting invested in them beyond some superficial character traits.
Perhaps either investing some of the Introductory arc or spending some of the pre-Seireitei SS arc developing these characters a little further would have gotten me greater investment. It's a little disappointing because a solid handful of these characters are portrayed by people I rp with and so I had hoped to really get into them but most of them found there way onto the 'not developed enough for me to care' list.
Further Bleach reading is up in the air, mostly due to my above mentioned disappointment. I'll probably start ticking through the next arc more slowly unless it really starts to hit my interest buttons again.