Mini reviews of Television seasons old and new. No fuss. No spoilers. Occasional bunnies.

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Bleach : Season 1 : The Substitute Arc (2005)

Ichigo Kurosaki is an average fifteen-year-old guy, except he has orange hair and he’s able to see and talk with the dead. One fateful night he meets Rukia Kuchiki, a female Soul Reaper (aka Shinigami) as she battles something evil outside his home, something normal humans shouldn't be able to see but which Ichigo can. She tells him a Soul Reaper’s job is twofold: to help the benign dead soul (known as a Whole) pass peacefully over into the Soul Society and to banish the evil and corrupt lost soul (known as a Hollow) who has a taste for eating human spirits.

Ichigo and Rukia team up out of necessity to combat the Hollows and keep the world safe from their malevolent intent, but not before Ichigo undergoes an unexpected transformation; as a result his life changes from simple teenage embarrassment to full scale supernatural turmoil. Oh, and his father likes to ambush him and kick the crap out of him for fun.

The Bleach anime is one of those series that seem like it'll go on forever. It’s currently up to episode 353 at time of writing. I avoided it for a long time because I guessed it would be another dumb harem show, but it isn’t, it’s actually really good, full of character driven plot and action. It suffers from the usual 'bad guy stands and waits while the good guy talks exposition' fight scenes but less so than other similar shows. It has some wonderful use of music, and the animation is excellent considering it's knocked out so quickly. At this stage, it's highly recommended if ongoing weekly anime is your thing.

20 episodes (01-20), approx 22 mins each.

4 giant vaginas in the sky out of 5

2 comments:

BLACKTR0N said...

Be wary the animation will drop off after the 1st few "seasons" and there will be so many new characters that it's impossible to keep track.

Dr Faustus said...

I'll be picking up the 2nd box when I can. If it gets really bad I'll probably give up. Still, I was really surprised how good this one was. I bought it and thought, meh, I'll watch it someday. It took me 4 months to get around to it because I thought it'd suck. I loved it. :p