Review for Bleach: Series 13 Part 1 (2 Discs) (UK)

Introduction

It’s been six months in DVD release time since we last had a brief hit of the main storyline in Bleach, where things were poised between Aizen and the Soul Society, between Ichigo and Ulquiorra. You may have forgotten it all by now. I certainly did, having to review some 40-odd episodes of filler as the Shinigami’s swords all came to life and started having adventures of their own. Actually that last batch of canon episodes was itself preceded by even more filler. If this storyline were diluted by filler even more, you’d have to call it homeopathic. It’s no surprise then that this collection of 13 episodes begins with a whole episode devoted completely to recap, and the next episode preview at the end of that episode makes a crack about Ichigo unable to even remember Ulquiorra’s name. It’s not really that funny, as at this point, I can barely remember half of the characters in the show, including the regulars. What was that Quincy guy’s name again...?


You’d think that a teenager’s life would be complicated enough if he could speak to ghosts. But that was only the beginning for Ichigo Kurosaki. When he literally bumped into a Shinigami named Rukia Kuchiki, he was introduced to a whole new world. The Shinigami’s mission is to guide forlorn spirits known as Wholes to the Soul Society, and protect them and the living from Hollows, perverted spirits that have become monsters that prey on other souls, living or dead. They are not supposed to let the living know about this supernatural world, but not only does Ichigo see Rukia, circumstances force her to give him her powers, and train him to be a Shinigami while she regains her strength. Through their adventures, Ichigo learns that his classmates Orihime and Chad are similarly bestowed with spiritual abilities. He also meets Uryu Ishida, the last Quincy, heir to a tribe of spiritual warriors from the human world that once sought out and destroyed Hollows, before the Shinigami in turn eradicated them for disrupting the balance.


So where were we? Ichigo and his friends went to Hueco Mundo, the Hispanic land of the Hollows to rescue Orihime, who’d been kidnapped by the Soul Society traitor Aizen. He’s been turning Hollows into human looking Arrancars armed with Zanpakutos of their own. Ichigo has been training to become a Visored, which is like coming at an Arrancar from the other direction. Aizen’s plan becomes clear, he wants to take over the Soul Society, but to do that he has to attack Ichigo’s hometown first in the world of the living. At the end of the previous volume, after delivering a kicking to a major section of the Shinigami, he unveiled his plan, and left Ichigo and his friends trapped in Hueco Mundo to attack Karakura town. To forestall Aizen’s plan, the Shinigami came up with a plan of their own, setting up a mechanism to transfer the real Karakura Town to the Soul Society, and creating a fake town in which to engage Aizen and his minions in battle. But Aizen’s ready for this, as he and his Arrancars face the top Captains of the Soul Society. Meanwhile, Ichigo is heading to Las Noches to rescue Orihime, but the Arrancar Ulquiorra stands in his way.


Anyway, 13 episodes across 3 discs await in Series 13 Part 1, episodes 266-278, subtitled The Downfall of the Arrancars. I bloody well hope so. I’m going grey just waiting for something to happen in this show. Incidentally yes, 13 episodes on 3 discs which most other distributors manage to fit onto two, so you get more disc, twice the packaging to fit on your shelf, and you pay £5 more in RRP.

Picture

Bleach has now gone widescreen. It’s now in the modern TV friendly aspect ratio of 1.78:1 anamorphic. And that’s the end of the good news. The last few releases of Bleach via Madman Entertainment had native PAL transfers, 25 frames per second with 4% PAL speedup, but of high resolution and free of any standards conversion artefacts. Not anymore. With Kazé’s release of Bleach, we’re back to the bad old days of NTSC-PAL standards conversions. It’s worse in my opinion, as my limited experience of Kazé output has shown that while their Blu-rays are sweet, and their PAL DVDs are acceptable, their NTSC-PAL conversions leave a lot to be desired, and are the least impressive of any distributor that I have reviewed.


Incidentally Bleach’s 1.78:1 anamorphic image is now one of those few NTSC-PAL conversions that convert by simply repeating every 24th frame to create the 25th PAL frame. That explains the rhythmic judder in pans and scrolls, exactly once a second. On the bright side this means that the ghosting and blended frames that afflicted the earlier Kazé Bleach releases is gone, but the judder is annoying, and the image quality still looks of such low resolution that you’d still think it was a standards conversion.

Sound

There are some positives to be had in the audio department. The discs now have the surround flag activated, so you now have DD 2.0 Surround English and Japanese audio. It sounds exactly the same in practice however. More significant is that Kazé provide translated subtitles for the Japanese audio, and a signs only English track for the English audio. This season sees some new theme songs debuted for the series, but unlike the Madman discs, the songs don’t have subtitle translations for the lyrics. These being Kazé discs, you can’t change audio or subtitles on the fly, so Hard of Hearing English dub fans are out of luck.

Extras

You’ve probably already heard me whinge about Kazé discs and UPOPs, so consider it whinged again. These discs are locked up tighter than Fort Knox, and I had to guess at the run time for the episodes.

Kazé don’t put separate Bleach trailers on their discs, and neither do they offer a line art gallery. All you get are karaoke versions of the credit sequences, minus the credit text, but with a romanji (Japanese in English script) burnt in subtitle track that insists that you sing along. Disc 1 autoplays with trailers for the Bleach Hellverse movie and Bakuman, while disc 2 has a Black Lagoon trailer instead of Bakuman, while disc 3 throws in a Nura trailer as well.

Most episodes end with the Illustrated Guide to Soul Reapers Golden comedy sketches.

Conclusion

Let’s play a drinking game. Watch the Japanese version, and every time Orihime says ‘Kurosaki-kun’, take a shot. You’ll be dead quicker than you can say neknominate. I was seriously contemplating this game though, as once again, the main storyline resumed in Bleach, and once again I was brutally reminded that this is definitely not my shonen anime of choice. I like the stand alone episodes, the filler, the brief, twenty-or-so episodes of diversion in between the canon material, as that can be relatively short, sweet and self contained. The previous Zanpakuto sword arc was a nice bit of fun, although as so often happens with even Bleach filler material, it was outstaying its welcome by some 20 episodes in. But the main storyline! Yeesh!


This is for Bleach fans only. If you are a committed Bleach fan, and are in it for the long run, then you won’t be reading a review about a show which you’ve already decided to buy, other than to check for any glaring authoring goofs, and this collection of Bleach episodes lives up to the standard of mild incompetence that Kazé have shown up to now with their treatment of the show. It’s watchable if you’re forgiving. And you can be pleased in that Bleach gets back to what you have been hoping for, the main storyline and episodes spanning epic fights that go on for so long that you forget just why they were fighting in the first place. What we have here are thirteen episodes of epic battles between Ichigo, his friends and the Arrancars in Las Noches, and epic battles between the Soul Reapers and the Arrancars over Karakura City. Lots of fighting, absolutely no narrative development or character development whatsoever. The story ends exactly where it picks up with this collection.


SPOILERS!!!

Your enjoyment of Bleach will be directly proportional to how much you invest in it. If your suspension of disbelief wavers in the slightest, then there will be points where this show could lose you completely. I reached that point yet again with this collection, as I became convinced that rather than any measured story development, mangaka Tite Kubo is just pulling stuff out of his ass at random, long since having passed any rational limits of characters constantly levelling up and revealing new abilities in their quests to challenge their opponents, nuking whole nations with their special moves. In this collection, Ulquiorra blast a hole through Ichigo, killing him outright. Ichigo turns into a full Hollow, comes back from the dead, and kills Ulquiorra with a mega nuke special move, with so much energy released that he instantly comes back to life. I was swearing vociferously at the TV at this point. There’s only so much of this crap that I can take. Of course there’s no explanation, as the focus switched to another fight altogether afterwards, and by the time we will get an explanation, fifty episodes plus two stretches of filler will have passed, and you’ll have long since forgotten about it anyway.

END SPOILERS!!!


Speaking of forgetting plot points, with all this Hueco Mundo nonsense and epic battles and long stretches of filler, you’ll probably have forgotten just what started this particular arc in the first place. Remember the Visoreds, back around episode 140, before Kazé nabbed the Bleach license from Manga? You’ll have had a reminder in season 9, episodes 206-212, where we had the ‘past’ arc. Yeah, they were just a vague memory for me too. Anyway, they’re back at the end of this collection of episodes. I remember being jazzed by the whole idea of Arrancars and Visoreds way back when, but I can’t now for the life of me remember why.


Another drinking game. When you see one of the supporting characters on screen, try and remember their name before it’s mentioned. If you can remember, take a swig. You’ll be as sober as a priest on Sunday. I’ve taken to dubbing them with nicknames now, as I have no chance of remembering them, or their special moves which just blur into a generic blah to me. Kyoraku is the Dandy Soul Reaper, Halibel is Booby-Skull-Face. Frankly I have more fun watching the show this way. I couldn’t remember Ishida’s name for half an episode, and I was calling him Quincy M.E for that time.


Fights happen, a load of boring people pontificate at each other, recaps happen, previews happen, flashbacks happen (If Bleach had a Marathon Mode a’la Dragon Ball Z, it would be half the runtime), and it’s all watchable in a brain-switched-off sort of way. And it’s got a kicking end theme from Diggy-Mo for this batch of episodes. Personally, I’m just counting the Getsugatensho until we get to the more entertaining nonsense of filler.