Bleach Review

2011-08-13T11:41:00.000-07:00

I owe a lot to anime. Through joint love of the medium, I have forged friendships and experienced more variety of storytelling that I could ever have imagined. But the day Japanese animation changed my life for good was a bright spring afternoon when I first encountered a tale about a teenage messiah exorcising the evil from our world with his great sword of justice. Many people may dismiss Tite Kubo as little more than a derivative punk, doling out sub-par shounen every week. Such heretics however, should be ignored, for Kubo offers up far more than entertainment, he gives us the gift of salvation in the form of his epic fable, Bleach.
The fictitious Karakura Town runs rife with sin, with delinquents resorting to frequent acts of vandalism and bullying. While it seems that there is little hope for humanity, one orange-haired boy named Ichigo Kurosaki stands up to the immorality of the world, forcibly extracting apologies and repentance from the worst of the sinners. One day, he meets a shinigami (death god) called Rukia who reveals a hidden world of malevolent beings known as Hollows who consume innocent souls to satiate their own rampant hunger. When Ichigo finds his family under attack, Rukia lends him her power and awakens him to his true identity: the saviour of mankind. With new powers, the teen begins to fight against the hollows and purify them in order to rid the world of evil.
In the midst of its awe-inspiring fights depicting Ichigo’s divine retribution upon each wrongdoer, Bleach helps to assure us of how we should live and what awaits us in the future. Soul Society offers up solid proof that there is an afterlife, while the ghosts that linger in the human world teach us not to fear taking the next step on this journey. Likewise that the series still carries on to this day after a definitive conclusion, only gives more evidence to the fact that there is something more beyond the seeming finality of death. By ending the central story yet continuing the narrative, we simple men and women can clutch onto the knowledge that our human lives are but a chapter in a novel, and our souls shall continue to endure for many years to come, defying the laws of both mortality and plausibility at every turn.
There are several moralistic parables aside from the main story. While many heathens often refer to this as pointless filler, these hellions are indisputably wrong. Bleach’s side stories are integral to the series’ teachings, and guides its followers on the correct path. The cleverly scattered fables train us not to lose our tempers, but to have patience and faith that accepting the mundane or the downright terrible will ultimately make us appreciate the greatness all the more. After all, if we can endure episodes of the cast playing football for no logical reason, then we can certainly control ourselves when faced with rude individuals, bankruptcy or bereavement.
Likewise odd recurring jokes give us further guidance on the path to enlightenment. For example, one of the series’ most pitiful characters is that of Kon. That this pathetic being not only lacks a physical body of his own, but also fails to succeed in any of his endeavours proves that his depravity towards the female form – and particularly their ample bosoms – is not admirable, but deplorable. From this we learn that such infatuations will only lead to our downfall and utter ruin.

Anime Season News

Bleach Review