Landmines.
Arrancar-specific landmines.
So… is Kubo just fucking with his readers or what?
Well consider that those landmine things were made my that crazy doctor… they are not all that surprising. Of course still kinda odd, but totally plausable… I guess.
The other thing is, I doubt that little thing will have been enough to finish him off. I’m expecting a two-on-two fight in the next few chapters.
Wow, Bleach discussions.
I don’t know what to make of the landmine, other than ‘lol Mayuri’. Personally I was hoping to see Chad have a rematch with Yammy, but I can see the importance of Ishida showing up to save Orihime. Still time for Chad to jump in to help, assuming Yammy survives. Which he probably will.
I still think there’s more than meets the eye here with Yammy’s actions, if only for the fact the first part of 342 just seemed suspicious.
Ultimately, though, this just feels like stalling. Since we all know that the ‘main’ fight of this arc is Ichigo vs Ulquiorra, and it just won’t end until that’s done.
If Yammy actually went down there, it would probably cement the fact that Kubo just forgot about the poor fucker, just like Wonderweiss (Where the hell is that retard anyhow?). Also, note the little detail of Yammy’s magically vanishing hole that suddenly came back this chapter.
I’m just a little baffled at the landmine, especially since half the battles involve people jumping and flying around mid-air. Also, when the fuck did he actually have time to plant the thing?
Frankly, I’m just reading to kill time until something more interesting comes around. Until Ichigo goes against Ulquirroa, we’re dragging ass.
I was wondering about Yammy’s hollow hole being missing in the last chapter too, but really, I’ll just chalk it up to Kubo having a crappy editor.
Who knows, though? Out of all the characters right now, I think Stark is up to something. I guess we’ll find out once Ichigo inevitably wins.
Yeah, it is dragging. This arc has been dragging for awhile, and the only part that really got interesting was the ‘Turn Back the Pendulum’ miniarc. Whenever Kubo isn’t focusing on ‘Hey look super awesome fighting while flying and with swords! Whee!’ and instead is more focused on the elements of the overall story Bleach can be fairly interesting.
Unfortunately most of the time it’s just about people firing lazors out of their blade.
So I recently decided to follow up on bleach on the manga frontier since I kinda got gurk on the Bount arc. Entertaining and all, perhaps a few too many characters to remember… and I’m still a bit out on who’s powerful and who’s not, since duh, Ichigo messes up anyone if given a loss and some time to ponder… but if he loses and someone who he has beaten earlier is the solution, then… yeah, power level > 9000.
One more thing…
FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS A BANKAI, is it just me or has Tite Kubo been weaned off breast feeding a few months too early? I swear I said the words “Can’t get worse than Matsumoto.” only to “Oh boobs, not again!”
(Not that I have anything against the fact… but… it’ll probably get worse…) Here’s to hoping for catgirls. Y’know, ones that aren’t called Mister something.
And to deviate from the topic slightly, Naruto’s new duds are quite pimp.
I can’t understand how anyone could faithfully watch the Bleach anime. Or One Piece and Naruto. Actually, I don’t understand why someone would follow Naruto in any given media, but nevermind.
Bleach is a horrible manga to animate because there’s a lot of fighting in huge panels with little dialogue, so five chapters rarely make ten minutes of animation. Hence you get HUUUUUUGE timewasting manoeuvres like repeating sequences, stretching and making a double-page spread last like thirty seconds. And when they can’t do it anymore, you get filler. Moreover, by virtue of being longer than the Great Wall of China, the majority of the animation is mediocre or down-right bad.
I heard the final Ichigo X Grimmjow battle had great animation and decided to watch it. It was awesome. Then I watched more chapters and realized that was clearly a rare occurrence. I did the same with well-animated chapters in One Piece. But holy hell, I’d never watch this thing weekly.
Also, Bleach is censored to bloody hell. Watch the Szayel fight and compare it to the manga.
Animated Bleach gets pretty bad, for the reasons you outlined. Hell, in the chapter right before Yammy showed up NOTHING HAPPENED. There was maybe five minutes of animation in that whole chapter, seriously. It kinda works for manga-form, I guess, but it’s gonna be hell on the animators since they’re already having to dip into periodic filler episodes to keep things stretched out.
One Piece though, I dunno, I don’t mind that animated as much as Bleach. It is, at least, friendlier to the animators and doesn’t waste panel after panel of splash images of implied action. At least not as much as Bleach. While it’s true the good moments are GOOD, the animators of One Piece at least don’t get as pathetic as Bleach does. The filler episodes of One Piece can sometimes (not always, but sometimes) be interesting. Sure arcs like Warship Island and Rainbow Mist sucked to high heavens, but G8 and even Ice Hunters were half decent. G8 especially for forcing the Straw Hats to actually infiltrate a Marine Base and be, gasp, stealthy. And it actually worked. Honestly, I enjoyed the G8 arc more than Skypeia. But this is a rant for another thread entirely.
Plus it helps that One Piece can still actually show stuff like blood and not censor it to look like water or chocolate syrup. Case in point: Zoro’s condition after Kuma left Thriller Bark. That wouldn’t have been even the slightest bit bloody if it were in Bleach.
Naruto, though, I don’t follow Naruto. Never did. From what I’ve heard I guess that’s a good thing.
I keep meaning to read some Bleach, but the sheer volume of…er…volumes, is more than a little bit daunting.
It may be for the best, the beginning is great, but you might want to put it off until the thing gives signs of becoming good again. The goddamn Namek-Mexico arc has been dragging on for YEARS and practically nothing has fucking happened, the side characters get more and more useless so that now they need rescuing from OTHER side characters, and Ichigo has undergone a lobotomy that essentially stripped him from any and all charisma he ever had, or maybe it’s the fact that he hasn’t said anything in the last hundred chapters that couldn’t be paraphrased as “I will defeat you!” and “Grrrrr”. Battles keep being won by the most incredible bullshit conceivable (No, I don’t care how awesome Kenpachi is, LOLTWOHANDS was fucking bullshit) and the power structure is a complete goddamn inconsistent mess.
I lost all hope and dropped Naruto for good after the unbelievably shitty Sasuke-Itachi battle, and am very close to doing the same with Bleach. Hell, Negima of all things has much more interesting battles than this shit now.
I used to watch Bleach quite a bit, it got boring as hell well into the Bount arc. I’d read the manga, but there’s a lot to go through…
But the whole Landmine concept? That sounds a bit messed up. Sorta messed up in Banana-hammer terms. (Somebody’s running out of ideas? lol) And I’m not a big fan of shit that drags on and on forever. Sorta why I quit watching Naruto to a point. You quit caring after a while and realize how stupid it is.
I still watch Bleach. I have no freaking clue why. I haven’t gotten anything remotely like enjoyment out of it for a long time.
Except the most recent episode, which is yet another filler with Lurichyo, who’s a breath of fresh air. That arc was much better than the “main” arc, in my opinion, with the exception of the fairly stupid “bakkotou” plot element.
Every so often they break up the fighting with an awesome episode that focuses on people back in the real world, and those episodes range from hilarious to touching. (The first movie, for example, had at least two scenes that were breathtakingly beautiful.)
Unfortunately, one has to wade through about 95% of crap to get those pearls.
Akkgh…
I hope you mean the concept of a filler arc away from Hueco Mundo and not that the character herself is a breath of fresh air because she is the single most obnoxious thing ever created by the Bleach animators, and I’ve seen the first movie with freaking SENNA. (Even worse, Senna was seen briefly in the background of this episode, HORROR)
Say what you will about the Bount arc, at least they TRIED to put some thought into its overall story. It just really sucked near the end when it tried to be Soul Society Redux.
The Captain Amagai arc though… eh… it had a few interesting moments. And hell, I was just glad to see Chad do something again, even if it was just to fight a stock bad guy and get taken out for the last half of the season. But Ishida was too, so I can live with that.
I didn’t really care for last week’s episode. This week’s, though, looks like it might merit a watch just on sheer cracky randomness. The episode is called ‘The Football Tournament of The hollows’, and yet we don’t see any Hollows in the preview. Perhaps Nel and friends show up later, but I’d be happier if the Arrancar show up just to play against the others. Hell, we already know this is non-canonical, why not go completely crazy for the hell of it?
Actually, I did enjoy both Senna and Lurichyo’s characters. I’m not sure why you were so annoyed by them, but I liked the exploration of the relationship between Lurichyo and Kenryuu/Enryuu (being torn between her spoiled, super-noble upbringing, her childlike tendencies and her compassion), as well as Kenryuu’s rather parental personal conflicts in raising her (i.e. wanting to protect her, wanting to fulfil her wishes, and wanting what’s best for the family all at once).
As for Senna, I thought she was a surprisingly bittersweet character that actually explored the idea about souls being human rather than just some commodity that Hollows theoretically eat (remember how the first 20 or so episodes actually dealt with this, and then forgot about it entirely?).
I think I like Bleach the most when it’s trying the least to be a shounen series.
I don’t disagree with your statement that Bleach is best when it’s not trying to be Dragon Bleach Z, but…
You thought Senna was a good character? SERIOUSLY? She was the Mary Sueiest Mary Sue that ever Mary Sued. Everything that revolved around her (like, the entire movie) did so for poorly defined reasons, mostly because she was ‘special’, she immediately got an omg special relationship with the main character for shoddy reasons, mostly because she was ‘special’. She waffled between suspiciously competent fighter and delicate flower at the drop of the hat, so she got to one-up Ichigo at being a Soul Reaper AND wibble tear-eyed as he dropped everything to run to her rescue because she’s just that damn special to him somehow.
She was just there for the fangirls of the series to squee over and give them something to personify as themselves within the story since her personality was so all over the place, at any one moment of the film she’s an entirely different character. Perfect for crazy fangirls to latch onto.
Yeah, I’ll admit that the idea of ‘what is a human soul’ is something Bleach should return to, since Kubo seems to have left it in the dust, along with most of the high school cast (who are far more interesting), or the idea of Chad doing anything relevant.
But Senna? She was just an atrocious, poorly conceived character. And she LIVES ON at the end as a new human being somehow or another, despite being completely obliterated after sacrificing herself. Because Mary Sues never face real consequences, ever.
Lurichyo, ok, some of the developments of her character weren’t so bad. On retrospect, I guess she wasn’t as bad as Senna. Perhaps I just immediately hate most bratty, better than thou due to position, characters that constantly pop up.
Did you not pay attention to the entire backstory of Senna? She didn’t, in any real sense, exist. She’s more of a human MacGuffin than a Mary Sue. She’s an amalgam of memories from all sorts of people, so her all-over-the-place personality makes perfect sense in context, and she was important not because of who she was but because of what she was. I don’t recall the combat parts all that well, but I don’t remember her being all that good at it except for right near the beginning when fighting faceless mooks.
In any case, merely calling something a Mary Sue, even if it is accurate, doesn’t immediately make it bad. I thought her personality and situation were handled quite touchingly. It was almost like she was a flare - very brief in duration, but a bright light while it lasted.
Oh I remembered all that. I think I’m looking at the actual intent of the creators, while you’re trying to find deeper meaning in it.
I don’t believe for a second that Senna wasn’t made to attract hordes of fangirls and to be a two dimensional plot point in order to get almost the entire cast together to fight some whizzy brief battles. Sure, you can find all that deep stuff if you try really hard, but what’s the point? If they happened to bumble into a character that can be sort of interesting when viewed from a certain way, do they deserve praise for that?
Yeah, right at the beginning was the only time she was any good at fighting. Right when she was first introduced. First impressions and all that.
Just being a Mary Sue, no, maybe not bad. She just oozed Mary Sueness, though. Maybe I was just feeling like a coldhearted bastard at the time, but nothing about her situation or personality touched me. She was just ‘Movie Only Girl’, a human MacGuffin, as you said.
And if you found all the stuff about her not being real at all so interesting, then what about her appearance at the end? Come on, that was just cheap.
About the only part of the whole movie I found particularly interesting was the point where Ichigo, apparently, lied about Senna’s grave being there. But that reflected more on Ichigo’s character than her’s.
The filler is killing me, what manga chapter picks up where the last canon episode left off (right after Kenpachi kills Nnotra)? Also were are you downloading translations from, I’m not up with manga releases.
The last canon episode was after Kenpachi killed Nnoitra, it was when Aizen entered Karakura taking the top 3 Espada with him to fight the Captains and Ichigo was racing to Ulquiorra’s location.
In the manga, that was Chapter 315. However, the 12 chapters that follow aren’t numbered 316 to 328, but rather -108 to -97 as it is a brief prequel mini arc (and one of the more interesting things lately), chapter 316 picks up after -97.
So, to put it simply, don’t look for chapter 316 right away as you’ll miss the prequel arc, look for chapter -108…
… actually, just go here.
I guess it depends how cynical you want to be. Me, I take media as they come rather than trying to second-guess how it got there. I quite liked the character.
I don’t quite remember the ending, to tell the truth. It’s some of the middle parts that stuck with me.