Director: Noriyuki Abe
Starring: Yuki Matsuoka, Johnny Yong Bosch, Fumiko Orikasa, Michelle Ruff,
Running Time: 275 minutes
Certificate: 12
BLEACH was once one of my favourite animes. From the very beginning I was absolutely hooked with the inventive stories, fascinating characters, and a mythology that was complex but never infuriatingly confusion. That has obviously become a big problem during later seasons of the long running series. BLEACH Season 10 sees our hero Ichigo and pals along with fellow Soul Eaters, battling the Espada. If you unfamiliar with any terms in that previous sentence, you won’t be enjoying BLEACH unless you start at the beginning, and even then I doubt you’ll get this far.
The main turn-off in this season is that BLEACH has become such a phenomenon that nobody involved wants it to end. It could been an astonishing 63 episode series, but here we find us starting at episode 190. So rather than completing plot lines and finalising certain aspects of the mythology, the writers have decided to constantly complicate matters. The series will change its own rules if it thinks a certain twist will extend its shelf life by a few episodes. It’s interesting, as somebody who stopped watching the show, to see how many characters now litter the stories. Certain characters go missing for long stretches, or just show up for a singular line of dialogue once in awhile.
Most disappointing is that this season abuses one of the aspects that made BLEACH great to begin with, and that’s the fact that fights can last over a few episodes. This entire box set is nothing but a number of fights that last for the entire run. If the fight ends, then somebody else will step up to the challenge. If a villain is losing, he’ll suddenly have a new power that makes the fight last for another 22 minutes. It’s an irritatingly lumbering attitude to have to action, because I just finished this collection feeling completely unfulfilled. After about five episodes, I knew the fights were a long way off any real conclusion, so I just couldn’t engage anymore. Fights need that unpredictable essence where you feel as though it could end at any moment.
There are still moments where you can see the brilliance of what once was. The animation is still impressive, and when the characters get a chance to speak and do something other than just fight, they are just as likable as they always were. However, these moments were few and far between. Creators of anime such as this need to realise that sometimes, less is more. It’s okay if it’s constantly repetitive and very formulaic, but if you constantly push the story forwards but fail to give the impression that it may one day have a conclusion, then I’m afraid I have better things to do.
BLEACH Season 10 Part 1 is released on DVD 14th January 2013. Click here to buy a copy.
