Bleach, Volume 48: God Is Dead

I have been very clear in most of my manga reviews that I don't rate single volumes; instead I rate the series as a whole at the end. With Bleach where there are select arcs that separate the series into parts I think I'll rate the arcs as a whole. I know Arrancar is sometimes considered to be split up into several arcs, but I'm just going on how the manga as a whole lays it out.

All in all, this should have been the end of Bleach. Aizen was a clear villain from the beginning, and so there were stakes. I'll just see how Kubo decides to continue Bleach and the next big bad.

One of the problems with Arrancar was its repetitiveness. I don't mean the similarities with the Soul Society Arc, which personally didn't bother me. I mean the show more battles. Almost every battle was the same. This kind of leads me to another problem, there were too many characters for me to give a shit about.
Arrancar gave some of the captain's some time to shine and let me get an idea of who they are and what there abilities are, and I liked that. The Espadas, I couldn't care less about all of them. The only Espadas that needed to be there in my opinion, and actually moved the story in any interesting way were: Aaroniero 9, Grimmjow 6, Ulquiorra 4, and Baraggan 2. Those 4 I felt were the best developed and helped the main characters grow in strength. Nel was fun until she just disappeared altogether. Also quick question, why do all of the main women characters have to have huge breasts? It's annoying and makes me lose any interest in whatever is happening. I don't mind when they wear clothes, but as soon as Nel gained her powers she just basically becomes naked. It just really kills it for me. I'd like to see Nel again, but at the same time, is it even worth it.

Back to the battles, and I'll give an example of why I thought they were repetitive. This is fairly spoilerly so apologies. The battle that really killed it for me was between Nnoitra and Kenpachi. Kenpachi is one of my favorite characters, but this battle was so tedious and frustrating to read I almost lost all interest in Kenpachi. The formula I noticed in this battle, which can be applied to probably every battle, is best exemplified when Nnoitra went from two arms to four arms, to six arms. In each of these situations he'd make it seem like this was his final form, but no there is a secret final final final form that can only be revealed at the most obvious moment, so as to drag out the fight for another volume. I was never hype seeing the transformations, just frustrated that these battles were taking so much longer. I know I said I liked Ulquiorra, but his super secret final final form really just ruined it for me at a certain point. None of these battles felt like there were any stakes because as soon as an Espada was close to defeat they just pulled some bullshit MacGuffin out of nowhere and yet still lost, and in some instances within the next few pages, what was the point of all that?

While being a battle shonen, what really saved Arrancar for me was the plot and how it progressed past story points. The 9 Espada was fun because he helped Rukia process the death of her mentor and help her grow past it. The whole prologue chapters were amazing, but I'm a sucker for a prologue as a historian, they gave some backstory to Aizen and the secret Arrancars that trained Ichigo. Those are just a couple examples of how strong the plot could be during Arrancar.

TL;DR It was good, just suffered from some repetition and formulaic battles. show less

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