Shonen Beam

[scanlation by Binktopia]

Kurotsuchi Mayuri? Characters laughing? Apparently Aizen died last chapter. That could have been made a little more clear.

The Visored are here, too, as well as Unohana. This is like a casting call for anyone more tolerable than the characters we’ve had to endure for the last year.

Background of the week

Leave it to Kubo to make even his most interesting characters boring. Why don’t we get to see everything that happened with Zaraki and Byakuya? Certainly, that would have been far and away more exciting than watching Aizen turn into a butterfly and yell at people.

Probably the Spirit King

Judging by the non-Deicide title, I guess Aizen really is dead. What a completely anticlimactic end to the arc. That’s rather pathetic, really.

Ichigo being excited at the prospect of explaining everything to his friends is fine. Good, even. It’s long been obvious that he was up to something; he might as well ditch the secret identity facade. On the other hand, Ichigo showing sadness when thinking of Aizen is absolutely infuriating. This trend of obviously evil characters later being redeemed must stop. Let evil characters stay evil! Kubo lessens the impact of Aizen’s defeat by writing him as someone misunderstood, and any status that Ichigo gained by having a hand in Aizen’s demise is now lost. Besides, what message is Kubo sending readers by doing this? “You wasted the last few years following this guy as your villain, because he wasn’t that bad after all.”

Ichigo’s pondering of what Aizen could have wanted is even more preposterous. Has everyone, author included, forgotten that the Hougyoku is a plot-rewriting, series-breaking artifact? If all Aizen wanted was to be “just a Shinigami,” he could have done that. Absolutely idiotic.

More comparatively acceptable people. I’m having a hard time recognizing this as the same 3-character series I’ve been reading all year.

It's okay, I barely remember them, too

Ichigo had a seizure and died! Hooray! Now we can focus on… oh, wait, he’s just having some kind of stupid breakdown. Probably something Hollow-related. Cancel the celebrations.

Twist of the week

Final Flash: Frustrating as it was, I’ll take subtly terrible instead of overtly terrible any day.