Shonen Beam

[scanlation by Binktopia]

It’s too early to see Aizen again. No one misses him, nor does anyone miss the plot that accompanied him.

Aizen’s sentence being raised from 18.800 years to a tidy and convenient 20,000 years is amusing. It’s also reminiscent of Hayate no Gotoku!, when it’s decided that Hayate’s debt of 156,804,000 yen is too difficult to say, so it’s rounded… up.

Hayate could escape this, though

Yamamoto is alive. Huh. Ukitake’s comment that Yamamoto is currently irreplaceable speaks strongly to why he’s been kept alive; it was the easy way out for Kubo to keep Yamamoto alive, rather than deal with the serious scenario of a power vacuum in Soul Society. Unfortunately, in this case, the easy way out is also the less interesting option.

Replace that text bubble with "FORESHADOWING"

One chapter of Kurotsuchi and he’s already gone off to do more research. I suppose that fits his character, though.

Seeing Hitsugaya train reminds me that I probably would rather see more Aizen than more of this whiny little nobody. It’s not the fact that he’s the de facto Bleach female fanservice character; it’s that all his popularity-driven focus has produced absolutely no results. He’s still the same useless character who can’t protect one (incredibly irritating) little girl.

Matsumoto has every reason to feel sad. Her love was killed off for absolutely no good reason.

Ichigo is taking his loss of Shinigami powers in surprisingly good stride, which itself is a little upsetting.

Background of the week

The scene between Ichigo and Rukia, who is already fading away from Ichigo’s awareness, is rather well done. How Ichigo recovers from this will be crucial; if he continues to take it in stride like nothing has happened, it will feel like all the time spent on the Soul Society characters (Rukia in particular) was wasted, but similarly, Kubo can’t have Ichigo go too far in the other direction and be overly dramatic. This kind of storyline requires the kind of delicate balancing of a character’s emotions that I don’t have the confidence in Kubo to be able to pull off properly.

Twist of the week

Final Flash: Why can’t Bleach just end right here? This would be fine.