New Bleach chapter out.
*sigh* Long rant at the end. Ignore if necessary.
Yeah, so....Ichigo's probably a Quincy too, since I presume Masaki was. Can I tackle that last? I'll tackle it last. This chapter felt short and clipped and....odd, to me. Juha has to leave? He was waiting for the Zero Guard, and are they not going to show up? What a painful way to end this little segment, with Ichigo just yelling (again) while the baddie walks away? Ugh.
A plus: Juha indicates that Aizen (presumably with Kyouka Suigetsu's aid?) is pulling some strings. To help Ichigo? Or at least to screw with Juha. Interesting, interesting... I could do with a little more of this.
As for next week....hold on to your hats, Byakuya fans. I suspect one of two things will happen. Either 1) Kubo will snap back to HM, as is his wont, to leave us all wondering about the aftermath, or 2) we're about to receive some either very painful or very healing aftermath scenes, and I'm not sure what to expect any more. I know what I hope for, but not what to expect.
As for Ichigo probably being a Quincy...
I don't know why this plot development bothers me almost as much as seeing my favorite character in this kind of condition. I understand well the peril of being a fan: it means you're a fan, not the creator. Kubo owns Bleach. It belongs to him. No matter how many interpretations I have, or ideas, no matter what I write, Kubo's Bleach is canon. I don't begrudge him that. And when the story goes in a direction I don't like or want or understand, I think it's not necessary to accuse him of being a "bad author" or not knowing what he wants to do. If Ichigo's going to be part-Quincy, I suspect Kubo's planned it for a while, or at least some time ago considered this an Ichigo endpoint. The hints in the Winter War arc and Isshin's longstanding relationship with Ryuuken give credence to it.
However.
There's also an implicit trust between mangaka and their fans. They build a world and intriguing characters; we invest in them. In turn, they cherish our investment - by guarding the logic and integrity of the world they've created. This is why, though I've had quibbles with Bleach or things I didn't want to happen (the pacing of the Winter War arc, Gin's death) they made sense in-world, functioned suitably in-world. But this Ichigo-Quincy thing feels so....foreign to me.
The Quincy have never been integral to Bleach in the way of the hollow and shinigami. Yes, that bitter past history was mentioned long ago, but the manga was built around Ichigo and his relationships with the inhabitants of SS, for better or for worse; Ichigo's hollow and the presence of the Espada (led by Aizen) and even the Visored solidified that. Having the Quincy appear as SS's enemies feels fine, to me, logical, but Ichigo being a Quincy himself feels....strangely out-of-tune in the way that the Fullbringer arc did to me, a departure from what, to me, makes Bleach....Bleach.
I think it scares me too because, in regards to the Byakuya situation, it didn't make sense according to Bleach's logic that he'd die in such a way. Built up to be this embodiment of courage, sacrifice, and the Japanese spirit, Byakuya being annihilated for nothing and left to die sounded...illogical, if not contemptuous of the character. And yet now, I don't really know. Once the mangaka violates that in-world logic, or seems to, anything is possible, I guess.
It's not that I hate Bleach or I intend to quit reading or anything like that. I love it, in fact, even now, which may explain why I feel some sense of let-down over this. I trust Kubo to make something of it, but it also now feels like the things in the manga that I thought were in some way inviolable....weren't. I really don't know where it's going to go.
And is poor Urahara still in HM? I'm going to have a rage stroke when we move on to HM without getting any SS closure.
P.S. I suspect the coming chapters might make me quite an Aizen fan. Just a guess.
Yeah, so....Ichigo's probably a Quincy too, since I presume Masaki was. Can I tackle that last? I'll tackle it last. This chapter felt short and clipped and....odd, to me. Juha has to leave? He was waiting for the Zero Guard, and are they not going to show up? What a painful way to end this little segment, with Ichigo just yelling (again) while the baddie walks away? Ugh.
A plus: Juha indicates that Aizen (presumably with Kyouka Suigetsu's aid?) is pulling some strings. To help Ichigo? Or at least to screw with Juha. Interesting, interesting... I could do with a little more of this.
As for next week....hold on to your hats, Byakuya fans. I suspect one of two things will happen. Either 1) Kubo will snap back to HM, as is his wont, to leave us all wondering about the aftermath, or 2) we're about to receive some either very painful or very healing aftermath scenes, and I'm not sure what to expect any more. I know what I hope for, but not what to expect.
As for Ichigo probably being a Quincy...
I don't know why this plot development bothers me almost as much as seeing my favorite character in this kind of condition. I understand well the peril of being a fan: it means you're a fan, not the creator. Kubo owns Bleach. It belongs to him. No matter how many interpretations I have, or ideas, no matter what I write, Kubo's Bleach is canon. I don't begrudge him that. And when the story goes in a direction I don't like or want or understand, I think it's not necessary to accuse him of being a "bad author" or not knowing what he wants to do. If Ichigo's going to be part-Quincy, I suspect Kubo's planned it for a while, or at least some time ago considered this an Ichigo endpoint. The hints in the Winter War arc and Isshin's longstanding relationship with Ryuuken give credence to it.
However.
There's also an implicit trust between mangaka and their fans. They build a world and intriguing characters; we invest in them. In turn, they cherish our investment - by guarding the logic and integrity of the world they've created. This is why, though I've had quibbles with Bleach or things I didn't want to happen (the pacing of the Winter War arc, Gin's death) they made sense in-world, functioned suitably in-world. But this Ichigo-Quincy thing feels so....foreign to me.
The Quincy have never been integral to Bleach in the way of the hollow and shinigami. Yes, that bitter past history was mentioned long ago, but the manga was built around Ichigo and his relationships with the inhabitants of SS, for better or for worse; Ichigo's hollow and the presence of the Espada (led by Aizen) and even the Visored solidified that. Having the Quincy appear as SS's enemies feels fine, to me, logical, but Ichigo being a Quincy himself feels....strangely out-of-tune in the way that the Fullbringer arc did to me, a departure from what, to me, makes Bleach....Bleach.
I think it scares me too because, in regards to the Byakuya situation, it didn't make sense according to Bleach's logic that he'd die in such a way. Built up to be this embodiment of courage, sacrifice, and the Japanese spirit, Byakuya being annihilated for nothing and left to die sounded...illogical, if not contemptuous of the character. And yet now, I don't really know. Once the mangaka violates that in-world logic, or seems to, anything is possible, I guess.
It's not that I hate Bleach or I intend to quit reading or anything like that. I love it, in fact, even now, which may explain why I feel some sense of let-down over this. I trust Kubo to make something of it, but it also now feels like the things in the manga that I thought were in some way inviolable....weren't. I really don't know where it's going to go.
And is poor Urahara still in HM? I'm going to have a rage stroke when we move on to HM without getting any SS closure.
P.S. I suspect the coming chapters might make me quite an Aizen fan. Just a guess.