Review for Bleach: Series 9 Part 1 (2 Discs) (UK)

Introduction

There's good news and bad news with this instalment of Bleach. The good news is that from Season 9, the episodes are in glorious widescreen. The bad news is that from now on, the discs will be authored by France's Kazé Entertainment instead of Australia's Madman Entertainment. Technically this should be all good news for Manga, as now they only have to reach across the Channel for materials, instead of 12000 miles across the world. It should deepen the working relationship with a company that is currently Manga's Blu-ray backbone, and the bottom line is that it ought to be cheaper to deal with Viz directly through its European arm, than it would be to have Madman as a middleman. Except five minutes with the Kazé release of Bleach Season 9 Part 1 has convinced me that even the most forgiving of Bleach fans will have much to complain about with the shift to Kazé.


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.


When last we left the world of Bleach, Ichigo and the others were in Hueco Mundo, trying to rescue Orihime from the Arrancars, and all in the middle of getting their collective butt kicked by overwhelming opposition. But you don't want to see what happens next. Indeed, at the start of this collection, voiceover guy appears and specifically informs you that you don't want to see what happens next. We've come to that point most dreaded in shonen anime, where published manga material begins to run dry, leaving no story for the animators to adapt, and they instead have to insert some filler to keep the animation on screen for the next few weeks and months. In Bleach's case, we have a whole season of filler material.


Cast your mind back to the end of the Soul Society arc, when Aizen, Gin, and the other one had betrayed the Shinigami, and left to carry on their rebellion elsewhere (resulting in the current Arrancar arc which is busy spinning its wheels on hiatus). That left a power vacuum at the top of three Soul Reaper squads, three vacant Captain spots that needed to be filled. This filler arc, The New Leader Shusuke Amagai arc relates what happened when a new Captain was recruited for Squad 3, to replace Gin Ichimaru. Squad 3 had been muddling along well enough under the temporary leadership of its Lieutenant, and the independent minded squad members weren't too keen on following a new leader, but the unlikely Shusuke Amagai makes an immediate impression as their new Captain when he saves the squad from a tricky situation in the Precipice World. Meanwhile, in the real world Ichigo and his friends have a new complication when hordes of Hollows suddenly start appearing, around the same time as a new arrival to the living world, the princess-like Rurichiyo Kasumarohji, and her bodyguards Kenryu and Enryu.


The first eleven episodes of Season 9, 168-178 are presented across 2 discs by Manga Entertainment, sourced from Kazé.

Picture

Volume 9:1 of Bleach is where the animation finally goes widescreen after over 150 episodes. From now, Bleach will be 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.


Bleach's 1.78:1 anamorphic image is now once more prone to significant ghosting and blended frames, a little more than would expect from a standards conversion, but you wouldn't expect the resolution and detail to be degraded as much as it is on these discs, nor would you expect the constant judder in pans and scrolls that makes you want to watch it on as small a screen as possible to avoid nausea. Compare it to Madman's current Naruto Shippuden releases, also in NTSC-PAL. You get the ghosting and blended frames certainly, but only really visible when using pause and frame advance, yet the resolution is almost on a par with native PAL images, and there is absolutely no judder whatsoever, just smooth animation.

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 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) player forced subtitle track that insists that you sing along.

But what you are going to hate the most, and will engender most complaints to Manga Entertainment, is that Kazé have stripped the episodes of the next episode previews and the Illustrated Guide to Soul Reapers Golden comedy sketches. When you're in a stretch of five episodes of sword wielding one-upmanship lethal combat, the comedy sketches are all that can keep a reviewer sane. More importantly, they are an integral part of each episode. But you know what? Kazé did save 37 minutes worth of BBFC certification fees, by not getting both the English and Japanese versions of the episode previews and comedy sketches rated.

Conclusion

It's been a long time since I've felt compelled to do this, but I'm rating Bleach Series 9 Part 1 on the technical qualities of the discs, more than I am the content. They say that you don't miss what you have never had. The converse is also true. We've had it good with the Madman releases of Bleach that Manga have released up till now, and since season 6, the image quality has been excellent in its native PAL form.


With this Kazé release, we're taking a massive leap backwards in terms of the quality. Three things may turn you off. The User Prohibited Operations on this disc that lock away the timer and the audio and subtitle options are a minor whinge for a reviewer whose life is usually made easier by easy access to a disc, but hard of hearing English dub fans not being allowed to fall back on subtitles is unfair. Not everyone is a videophile, and anime fans have lived with NTSC-PAL conversions for years. This is an exceptionally poor one however, and only the most forgiving could live with that judder. I don't believe that any Bleach fan will forgive the removal of the next episode previews and the Illustrated Guide to Soul Reapers Golden comedy sketches though. Any one of these problems alone would be reason enough to complain, all three together and it goes beyond annoyance. If I were a Bleach fan, I wouldn't want this release.


There will probably have to be some damage control for the next release. I've seen too many Kazé discs to ever believe they'll lose the UPOPs, but the visual quality has to be addressed, either go native PAL or at least make the standards conversion on a par with what Madman's efforts deliver. Above all, restore the next episode previews and comedy sketches, and offer those omitted from this release as an extra on the next. Otherwise Bleach fans will be left with getting a subscription and watching the complete episodes on Crunchyroll (in better resolution I might add), or if they can't live without the PAL discs, importing from Australia. It also becomes clear that Manga have started down a path that it is difficult to turn from. Viz US and Madman's releases of Bleach 9:1 have 12 episodes (did I mention that they get more than us now?), so even if contracts and obligations weren't an issue, Manga can't simply go back to Madman's Bleach 9:2 and pick up from there.


One thing really worries me now. I'm not a big fan of Bleach, but I do love Naruto. Naruto is another shonen action property that comes via Kazé's parent company Viz, although we do get the DVD masters from Madman Entertainment (the recent movie Blu-rays came via Kazé though). If Manga see a similar financial benefit in shifting to Kazé for Naruto and it receives the same treatment, then that's both of Manga's ongoing current shonen anime shows effectively crippled.


I suppose I ought to talk a little at least about what's on the discs rather than their technical issues. With Season 9 I finally begin to understand my perverse appreciation of Bleach. I say perverse, because I find that I can barely stand the canon manga adapted material, but instead enjoy the filler. It's supposed to be the other way around. It's the endless action sequences that I find unbearable, the fights that last over ten or twelve episodes, shifting from character to character, as constant levelling up, waving of big swords, and thermonuclear explosions of chi occur. Bleach has a tendency to separate its character development, humour and action, and action without the latter two qualities is dull indeed.


So it is that the filler comes as a godsend. Here's a short (relatively) Bleach storyline, it brings things back to Earth a tad, introduces some new characters, a new storyline, and unlike the main storyline, actually blends its character development, humour and action. There are two threads in the New Leader Shusuke Amagai arc, with the aforementioned new leader making waves in the Soul Society as he takes over Squad 3, while in the real world, Ichigo finds that he's now moonlighting from his job as a Soul Reaper, to act as a bodyguard for a princess visiting from the Soul Society. Rurichiyo is a proper little princess, haughty and imperious, and also isolated and unaware of the real world, spoilt and doted upon by her protectors Enryu and Kenryu, and very much living in her own world. They don't even tell her that she's been targeted for assassination, and that Ichigo is to protect her, which causes difficulties when she begins to realise that the truth is being hidden from her.


It's all because of politics in the Soul Society, and the assassins sent after her are the big challenge facing Ichigo and his friends in this collection of episodes. What makes it interesting is that they don't wield the same Zanpakuto as the Soul Reapers; instead they have parasitic swords that grow in strength from leaching spiritual energy from their wielders. The more they leach, the stronger the abilities, but also the closer their users come to death. And with these enemies being proper ninja, they'd rather die than be captured. Most of the focus in this collection is on the story that develops in the living world, with Ichigo and Rurichiyo. And there is a lot of comedy and entertainment to be had here. The story in the Soul Society with Squad 3 and the new Captain takes up a couple of episodes, also with a bit of comedy, but also establishing some ambiguity and ominous feelings about how that develops.


This fades into the background pretty quickly, leaving Rurichiyo's story to take centre stage, and that builds up with a combination of comedy, drama, and small bursts of action, until episode 8, when the ninja attack en-masse in one large attempt to achieve their mission. Here we get a three episode combat arc, with Ichigo and his friends splitting up to face various foes. Fortunately, unlike the main manga arcs, these fight sequences are short and sweet, and don't detract too much from the story. There's also a neat dramatic moment with Ichigo. His ninja opponent's ability is to force his enemy to relive his worst nightmare, and in Ichigo's case it means reliving the death of his mother. It's a powerful scene that the anime handles well. And right at the end we get a development that ties in the Squad 3 arc to the Rurichiyo plot line which leaves a tantalising cliff-hanger.


I guess there's something wrong with me if I prefer Bleach filler to Bleach canon, but I'm not going to apologise for it. If all things were equal, I'd be debating whether to give this collection a seven or an eight, as while the build up was great, the three episode stretch of action almost bordered on the tedious at times. But all things aren't equal. For years, we've had Madman Entertainment sourced discs, the equivalent of brand name Bleach, the sort that kills 'all known Hollows, dead!' Now, Kazé are giving us no frills Bleach instead, the white label, watered down, cheap stuff. The supermarket analogy breaks down, as Manga Entertainment are charging the same price regardless, and you don't actually have a choice.