The Fall of Bleach: 4 Years Later

Four

years

ago I made a video called the

fall

of

bleach

as it happens at that time I had been making videos for about half a year and I had a small audience and that's why it was a shock when at a party a friend told me that the Bleach video that I had uploaded that same day it had been seen by 20,000 people. He was happy. The video was a big step forward for me in terms of written editing, telling a story and it became the third most viewed video on my entire channel with over 3 million views, but there was one problem: the information in which The story was based on was incorrect initially, the reaction was very positive, even Bleach fans seem to appreciate the video, but over time that started to change, people started pointing out obvious errors in the

bleach

drop and although at first it I dismissed it because people were angry on the Internet, I was finally left with the uncomfortable reality that I had above and I have talked about this on Twitter in other videos and in the description of that video. but there would always be people telling me that I needed to remake The Fall of Bleach and what bothers me most about these people is that I agree with them The Fall of Bleach was built on a simple idea that Shonen Jump magazine weakly ranks their series in order of popularity in its table of contents based on reader surveys and when I plotted the position of Bleach's table of contents over 10

years

, I noticed a trend as Bleach went from the third most popular position to gradually

fall

ing to the bottom. of the magazine before being canceled in 2016, my video chart had a decline in Bleach story quality correlated with trends.

There are two big problems here, the first is the idea that Shonen Jump's table of contents reflects reader surveys and is a widely circulated piece of misinformation. With no definitive evidence to back it up, sure it's possible that a negative response to Bleach in reader surveys pushed her to the back of the magazine, but it's equally possible that Jump wanted to take on Bleach, one of her most popular series. , and put it in the back to encourage readers to read the entire magazine and draw attention to lesser-known series. The point is that we don't know that it is a decision made by the editor-in-chief, but the logic behind it is not available to the public.

The second is the idea that Bleach was cancelled. This became another piece of misinformation that circulated widely when it was announced that Bleach would end in just five chapters, which caused a lot of speculation given how abrupt it seemed and created an interesting narrative when combined with the misinformation about the ratings, but again there was never any confirmation of this, it probably had much more to do with taite kubo's exhaustion after writing manga for 15 years as well as his declining health, and even Kubo himself

later

stated in an interview how he ended up the Serie. We wanted to ask, so the first thing we need to address is whether bleach really fell in popularity.

Well, our best indication of this is not its sales figures. If we look back at annual bleach sales, we can see a high of 6 million units in 2009 before a fairly steep decline. bottoming out at around 2 million units in 2016. But annual sales estimates can be misleading, so what do the sales volumes say? We can see here that Leeches volume sales peak at volume 37 selling 800,000 copies before a similar decline occurs as it leaves its final volume. sales of just over half of 440,000 copies, there's still a small margin of error here, so I want to see how Bleach performed compared to other hugely popular series of this era and we can see that in this table from Tata where You can see why they were called The Big Three Naruto in One Piece and Bleach dramatically outsold any other manga, not just in jump but in the world before Bleach began a pretty dramatic decline, disappearing from the top 10 in 2012 and eventually landing at position 22 in 2016.

It's impossible to take all of these figures into account and credibly argue that Bleach's popularity didn't see a significant decline, but if that's the case, what's the problem with that original video? The problem is that this is a serious misrepresentation of that decrease. And because I believed it, that, combined with my personal disappointment with Bleach, led me to make insubstantial claims, the best, and misinformation, the worst, but the much bigger problem is that I didn't correct those errors soon enough when I reviewed the video. The stats from earlier this year were still getting thousands of views a week which means I was still spreading that misinformation and in hindsight I should have done this a long time ago and for that there is no excuse, and for my audience, for people who love bleach. and to hell with taite Kubo, every single one of you deserves better than what I got here and I'm sorry, that's the most important thing I'm going to say in this video now what I want to do is reevaluate Bleach as a whole. and I must say it was a strange nostalgic feeling re-reading the first few chapters and I had to wonder what I would do now with this legendary series Eyes unclouded by hay and I was surprised to find that it's still Bud whoa, you lose again, bleach fans. losing again is okay, no, no, I'm, I'm just here, we'll get there, but before I do, I want to mention DBZ Imran's video on bleach in which he addresses some of the flaws of my original video.

This video is a much more positive take on Bleach than what you're going to see here, and while I don't agree with a lot of the conclusions he comes to about the quality of Bleach's story, he's a great guy and you should give him a follow. complete. If you like bleach, and I hope that my mentioning this will be taken as a sign of good faith that I do not consider my own views on bleach to be those of an omnipresent super-being whose whims reflect an indisputable truth, but rather I am just a awkward, square little person with an opinion as valid and flawed as that of other humans, but who just so happens to have repeatedly fallen backwards onto the YouTube mountain by complete accidents with a follower count that, oh Jesus, fills me up of existential anxiety.

I can only express through this Indiana Jones gift where a magic mug melts a man's face and with that in mind let's begin one of the criticisms I regret most in that original video is the idea that Bleach's art gets worse. Bleach's style changes over time. The course of his career started out as a looser, funnier style before evolving into something more rendered and moody, but that

later

style fits with the more serious tone of later Bleach and Kubo doesn't want to illustrate a lot of backgrounds, who gives any idea of if it is? chapter 6 or 600 the idea that kubo's artwork gives you something to complain about is crazy, he is able to create bottles with an explosive level of impact and spectacle and at the same time he is able to imbue his characters with a really subtle sense of emotion.

Kumo is a master at expressing. Visually who these people are and particularly through their clothing, let's take the 13 captains of Soul Society, all of whom had the same basic uniform but each one has altered it in some way with these little touches that are so subtle but so expressive on this page where it just uses little close ups of different Captain suits to identify them and you immediately know who they are just by how expressive these little details are and this goes double for Ichigo and his friends, it's part of the appeal of Bleach is that These characters are not just children. like in other Shonen series, but they are teenagers and Kubo communicates this beautifully through the clothes they wear, you can feel the early 2000s fashion in every character design and splash page, and it was stylish and cool, but critically it visually communicated the idea of ​​adolescence and that was Ichigo's appeal, he was not a limitless source of shonen optimism, he had a bad attitude and a bad temper, especially on this page where he expresses his disdain for the systematic authority of his school and its teachers, their willingness to fight against corrupt systems.

It became a lot more important later in the story, but it was also a lot of fun to watch, especially when these more quirky characters bounced off of it like Orihime. I understand how funny she is in the previous chapters, but this drawing of herself in the future. is perhaps one of my favorite panels in the entire manga after some supernatural shenanigans caused Ichigo to inherit the powers of rookia, a soul Reaper, basically Samurai Grim Reaper, is tasked with hunting and killing Hollow monsters, undead beings that They feed on the souls of the undead and this leads him into a battle with his first great enemy, Grant Fisher, as it is revealed that Grand Fisher is much more dangerous than the other Hollows, but is also responsible for the death of the mother. from Ichigo, who died trying to protect him, a trauma from which Ichigo never recovered. to give this fight a real emotional waste as he is not only fighting a terrifying monster but also his own inability to overcome his own pain.

Graham Fisher mocking Ichigo with a picture of his deceased mother and the really sad part is that Ichigo doesn't even win Grand Fisher. escapes and this is the moment I started to really love Bleach because pain isn't just something you can overcome in a single instant and Ichigo's failure to defeat Grand Fisher is a fantastic expression that this is the core of the Ichigo's character, his inability to escape his own pain and how that fuels his desire to protect the people he loves and it is that motivation that drives Ichigo through the first major story arc of Bleach the Soul Society, after After spending two months in the world of the living, the rookie is captured by two extremely powerful.

Soul Reapers and accused of the crime of transferring their powers to a human being sentenced to death in just one month with Ichigo and his band of teenagers with supernatural powers who try to save Rukia by launching an invasion of Soul Society entering a dangerous New World defined by a rigid hierarchy with rules that feel cold and unfair and if that's not a near-perfect analogy for being a teenager entering adult society for the first time, I don't know what the true beauty of this arc is, however, comes from the Soul Reapers themselves. and that is due to how well developed they are as an organization and as a community of people, the Soul Reapers are made up of 13 different squads, each led by a Vice Captain and a Captain.

Vice Captains are powerful warriors, each of whom possesses his own sword. special ability known as shikai and captains are dramatically more powerful by having access to Bankai spectacular ultra powerful techniques unique to each sword and it is great fun to discover what each captain and lieutenant can do and creates a tremendous sense of escalation as Ichigo passes to fight. from regular foot troops to vice-captains and captains who are depicted as these terrifying giants, enormously powerful and almost impossible for Ichigo and his friends to overcome, creating an incredible amount of tension and drama every time one enters the battlefield, but Even more than that, the reason 13 Chord Guard works so well as villains is because they don't feel like villains at all, there are monsters among them, but most of them just feel like people, the series takes the time to develop its historical reasons and, most importantly, relationships, choose two. members of the soul society and you can probably draw a sort of social web of intertwined relationships that connect the two and it is these relationships that are at the heart of the Soul Reapers.

They take the captain of squad 7, komamura and the squad captain. 9 Tosin Komamora, deeply ashamed of his beastly appearance, hides his face from the world, but finds solace in his bond with Tosin, a blind swordsman who doesn't care what anyone looks like and is really sweet, but there are so many little relationships like this . Childhood Friends Rivals Drinking Buddies Unrequited Lovers An enormous amount of time is spent developing these characters and their relationships and that's where the battles of this Soul Society get their emotions and you can especially see it halfway through the ark when Ichigo He faces Renji Abrai. of the Soul Reapers responsible for capturing Rukia, but the beautiful thing about this fight is that it's not just about a good guy against a bad guy, as it is revealed that Renji and Rukia actually grew up together in one of the most criminal districts. violent members of Seoul society and learned to survive. forming a Gang of Thieves with other children and seeking a life of impoverished happiness amidst the chaos, but as the two grew older and closer, they lost each of their friends due to the violence around them and were so desperate to build a better life for each one. others join soul society as students.

The Soul Reapers Bots are separated when Rukia is adopted by a prestigious noble family headed by piakia,so Renji and Rookie's life together comes to an end because of this when Renji finds out that Rookie is being put. death kills him, he wants to be the kind of person who can save her, but he also can't allow himself to believe that someone of his humble status can take on something as impossible and monolithic as soul society and especially its captain and Rookia's own brother. , the enormously powerful byakia, and why ichigo's presence in Seoul society torments renji because it forces him to confront that belief and that is the emotional core of this battle, so when ichigo defeats renji, renji's eyes renji are open to the idea that he can. he makes the difference and even if there's only a small chance, it's worth taking that risk for someone you love and it's that realization that allows him to switch sides and finally confront byakia.

This is what I love about Soul Society battles in every fight. meaning that every fight carries some emotional weight or reveals new information, even minor encounters like Chad vs Kyoraku demonstrate the ocean of power separating the normal people and the captains and as a result Ichigo appeared with kempachi which immediately follows feels even more desperate and terrifying because we have the context to understand how terrifying the prospect of facing a captain is, the battle that forces Ichigo to overcome his own fear of death in order to move forward and save Rukia in one of the confrontations. most violent in the series.

Every fight has a purpose. Each fight tells a story and serves as a link in the chain that advances the larger narrative, but it's in that larger narrative where Soul Society begins to form around these fights and becomes one of my favorite pieces of Shonen narration. As we get to know Yard 13, we begin to notice that not all of the captains seem to trust each other; some, like the soft-spoken Eisen, suspect something insidious. Growing up within the organization, certain orders from Headquarters 46, basically the shadow government of Seoul society, don't seem to make sense, as if the rookie is being executed repeatedly and seems to have something to do with the brooding Captain Ichimaru.

The snake-like Gin, who appears to be taking a disturbing look at wukia's execution, but as Eisen gets closer to the truth, he warns his assistant, Captain Momo, who may or may not be in love with him, that there is some danger within soul society and that's when boom saint Eisen ends up murdered. the next morning and you realize that this is not just a simple rescue mission, someone with the power to kill captains is behind a deep conspiracy that is taking over Seoul society and it is very exciting, but there it is when we found out: Hey guys, I'll let you know that.

I'm About to Ruin Seoul Society and it's two decades old and most of you have already seen it, but if you haven't seen it and you like Shonen, you should. It's fantastic and holds up beautifully, so you can skip it here if you want to avoid it. spoilers when Momo's friends enter the forbidden chamber of central saint 46 they are all dead but then who has been given the orders and oh my god he is still not alive what is happening and then he stabs mom every time and she loved you guys and she loved you and it is revealed that the real villain of this entire arc was not the evil snake man, it was the boy with the soft glasses, and even when Ichigo fights to the top of soul society and defeats Byakia's brother Rookie and personification. of putting what society says is right over protecting the ones you love feels monumental Ichigo has overcome the impossible system he has gained until Eisen appears and everything Ichigo has learned all the power he has gained is nothing in the face of this new enemy and Eisen eliminates an ancient artifact in Rookia's body that this horrible execution has just been implemented again and that together with the gin and tosin disappears in the world of Hollows while trying to ascend the power of divinity and man.

It's fantastic, the entire Arc builds beautifully to a shocking and satisfying climax that allows Ichigo to overcome his own trauma by literally facing the gods of death and saving someone he loves while overthrowing a corrupt system, perfectly revealing the true villain of Bleach, which leads beautifully into the next major story arc and is a pure Shonen narrative. Brilliance and I only have three. little problems with that: one Ichigo is kind of a reactionary character two, the world-building of Soul Society is a little weak, this is a place where all the people from all the cultures from all the ages are crammed into one gigantic other life, but instead of expressing that through the building of the world it feels like Kubo just looked at feudal Japan and said that and three.

I'm going to frame this in the form of a question that we'll come back to later and that is how does Ichigo win fights. all those minor problems that if we were talking about Soul Society on its own I wouldn't even mention them, but I do because they are the seeds of problems that will eventually grow throughout the series and have dramatic effects in later arcs and where those seeds start poking around the surface is in the next major hollow mondo arc after some skirmishes with aaronkar eisen's army of enormously powerful and totally non-furry hollow people.

I swear to god they're not furries, the Arc World trail starts and immediately we I have the same problem with the world building, this place basically holds up or at least has a bad afterlife and I think of all the crazy ways it's been portrayed in the media, but instead we just have a giant empty desert and it's cool. At this point, it's still not that big of a problem, but the much bigger problem with Hueco Mundo is that it's a solo partnership again and I was a bit general with this review last time, so let me be more specific.

Ichigo and his friends invade a Land of extremely powerful death gods who are part of a hierarchical organization to rescue their friend who has been imprisoned for semi-mysterious reasons, they immediately encounter a large enemy whom they defeat with an overwhelming display of strength before splitting up and Fighting their own individual battles, you fight a mad scientist who sacrifices his own minions. Chad is depicted as one of the most powerful members of the group before being crushed by an even more powerful enemy to demonstrate the danger of the opposing Force One of Ichigo's allies. He is a cute supporting character who eventually transforms into a sexy and powerful adult woman who used to be part of the opposing Force before switching sides.

Ichigo's old enemies appear to help in the final stage of the battle and Ichigo fights a low-ranking enemy first. then, a savage mid-rank enemy with a bestial fighting style and finally, to save the girl, a high-ranking, stoic and cold, enormously powerful member of the enemy Force who previously defeated him and during this battle loses control from his hollow side and goes crazy. before finally retrieving Troll and saving the day before Eisen reveals that the girl's kidnapping is just the small part of a much larger plan, this is not an overall structural repetition, these are the same story beats and It may be the first sign that Bleach is narrowly struggling with its long-term direction, but worse for being so similar to Soul Society, it shows you exactly what Hollow World is missing and particularly in the arankar, the problem with the Iran's greatest advantage is that they are never given the time to develop as characters.

The same way the Soul Reapers were, I can tell you every Vice Captain and even some of the sitting chairs of the 13 main guards. I can tell you about their backstories, their relationships, their motives, even the little side people that are really unimportant because the series has moved on. To tell you who these people were now with that in mind, if you've seen Bleach, can you tell me anything about any of the characters on screen right now? Their relationships, their goals, what about this guy or this girl, or who was this guy really? In him, I saw this like two weeks ago, is he actually a character?

Oh yeah, no, no, okay, this isn't to say there isn't any characterization, there is some and the glimpses we get of Iran's car are really interesting Neutra points out the hypocrisy of the Soul Reapers, everyone Kiora slowly develops a bond with Orihime and Barragán throwing in their Eisen accents in a final act of defiance. These moments are great, but they're so brief that they feel more like supplementary information than motifs. boosting the character's actions with most of the irankari, even some of the really important ones like Holly Bell, receiving little to no development and not only does it make the characters less compelling, but it also has a critical dramatic effect on how the characters work.

Bleach fights when I talk about fight scenes. I like to divide them into two narratives, emotional narratives and technical narratives, and to help explain this little idea of ​​an anime showdown like a game of chess, the emotional narrative is the story that has led the two opposing players to play this game. chess game your backstories your travels your relationships and what victory or defeat means for either of you In other words, the emotional narrative is everything that happens outside of the chess board, while the technical narrative is everything what happens on the chess board, the physical story that unfolds through each character's actions the logical progression of moves and counterattacks that leads one character to checkmate another to break this down in terms of a real battle , let's take Frieza vs Goku, the emotional narrative here would be that Frieza is a horrible space racist who validates his. existence inflicting pain and misery on anyone he deems weaker than him.

Goku is a member of one of those supposedly inferior races whose people have been genocide by Frieza and now fights to prove that Frieza's power does not justify his actions in terms of the technical narrative. I'm not going to go over everything because it's a very long flight, but the final stages of this battle are the famous moment where Goku goes Super Saiyan, allowing him to finally fight on unequal conditions with Frieza. Frieza, in turn, becomes more desperate, leading him to use his rather dangerous energy discs. The fight ends with Frieza's own attacks directed at him.

This is the logical progression of the actions. The technical narrative that closes the fight. As long as a fight scene has a strong emotional or technical narrative, it's probably going to end up being pretty entertaining with cool battles that incorporate both, but I'd say the strength of the battles in Seoul Society was in their emotional narratives and you can see which in the battle with Renji look at the amount of narration that was used to establish who he is and why. was fighting and how the outcome of that fight changed his future actions in that story and the problem with hoiko Mundo's battles is that there is much less character development, meaning the battles lack that emotional storytelling that was so critical in Seoul society and in me.

I would even say that of the really big fights like Ichigo vs Grimjo, no, I like Grimjo, I like him arrogant, I would let him buy me a drink, but my problem with his confrontation with Ichigo is that it lacks any kind of personal or emotional narrative that impulse. In the conflict, we get a little backstory about how Grimjoe ate his old Hollow Partners, which sets up a nice contrast to how he and Ichigo view relationships, but it doesn't escalate the personal conflict between each to get into Grimjo's a meaningful way and once. Grimjo is defeated, he simply disappears from the story as if his only real purpose was to be an obstacle for Ichigo to overcome.

Yeah I know, he shows up for a cameo 300 chapters later, never mind and compare it to Renji and Ichigo's emotional narrative and it's a lot less substantial. I used the fight with Grimjo as an example because it's actually one of the best encounters in Hollowworld, but the reality is that the vast majority of battles are much worse, most feel like they exist in isolation, without any kind of personal narrative. meaning or the feeling that they are part of a larger story and this leads to a second problem with bleach fights and that is that when you take away the emotional narrative, it exposes how simple and repetitive the technical narratives of bleach bottles are. . to show you what I mean here let's take your and see how he wins his first four fights wins his battle jerobo by revealing his new weapon the glove Sun Ray wins his battle with miru by revealing his new modification the Still, he wins his fight with Werner by reveal his new weapon, the ginray kojaku, and wins his fight with Sunder Wiki by revealing his new weapon, the salei shinder.

I'm not criticizing any of these fights individually, but you can start to see. a pattern here, each of his fights ends with him introducing a completely new element that the audience doesn't haveprior knowledge and it is that new element that resolves the conflict in stage writing, this is known as a deus ex machina, an unexpected power or event that saves a seemingly hopeless situation, but this is Shonen, so I will call it the problem of the star finger Starfinger is an ability in Stardust Crusaders when, to get jyotaro out of danger, the Platinum star is given the strange ability to extend his fingers and just stab people.

By far the problem I have with this is that Jotaro's Platinum Star is a short range high damage support, which means Johto's problem he must overcome in his battles is how to close the distance between his opponents and cause as much damage as possible and to do this he will need to carefully observe and understand your opponent's abilities and exploit the weaknesses of those abilities as they try to do the same to him. This is the kind of psychological tactical battle that would come to Define Jojo and how it's a '95 series. The male model shooting ghosts at each other can still be so compelling because it takes the viewer on this wild ride of moves, countermoves, and counterattacks to those counterattacks. , thus creating a solid technical narrative that takes the viewer through the fights.

The problem with Starfinger is that it allows jotro to cheat these short-range limitations of the Platinum star by skipping the entire fight narrative, robbing the audience of that story and Bleach is full of starfingers, now we admit it's not the only Shonen series guilty of this, but it does it a lot, for example. Kenpachi defeats Neutera by revealing his new two-handed technique. Chad defeats his first major enemy by developing a new demonic arm and the second by developing a second new demonic arm. Hirichi defeats Saifon by revealing his new shonko. The rookie defeats Deroy by invaling. his shikai yumichika defeats charlotte by revealing his shikai hisagi defeats findor by revealing his shikai tashiro survives halibel by revealing his bankai akaku defeats uh this guy by revealing his bankai see?

Do you see what I'm saying? Well we're not done yet. Later in the manga our heroes are being attacked by an anime, he uses the light of God ability and Nano reveals his sheik eye which turns out to reflect the light of God and there is even a complete sub-arc where, just when all hope is lost, the soul. The Reapers have a last-minute revelation where it turns out that they were all under a self-imposed power limitation that once released allows them to deus ex machina their way to Victory. I could go on, but the point is that every encounter ends with something the audience doesn't have. prior knowledge of how to resolve the conflict without going through the technical narrative, which means that the strategy or psychology of these fights does not matter because inevitably there will always be a final hour, unexpected powers or events that will save this seemingly hopeless situation and there are real cases of characters using Real Strategy and Bleach like Ushoda trapping Barragon in a barrier so he can't avoid Soifon's Bankai and moments like this are the most exciting in the entire series, but they are few and far between, much more common, being of what we just talked about and unfortunately the worst.

An example of this is Ichigo himself, the way Ichigo wins fights is universally through a massive surge of power that he uses to overwhelm his opponents, this is how he beats ikaku renji Kenpachi biakia grimjo algera and carries all the problems of the ones we just talked about, but because Ichigo is our protagonist several more a big part of the appeal of the Shonen protagonist is seeing them gradually improve at something, seeing how their fighting style evolves in fun and creative ways, those new ways of fighting allow them to climb to even greater heights within your world in hachimano ippo.

For example, we see Ippo go from knowing absolutely nothing about boxing to gradually learning Jabs' hooks, defense and footwork and then when he finally combines everything he's learned with Dempsey's finishing technique, he's one of the most exciting moments in Shonen because we've been there. with him from the beginning, this devastating move is the sum total of his entire journey and it's beautiful, in the same way, think of all the crazy and inventive attacks Luffy learns to do with his rubber body or the wild Naruto that achieved with shadow clones, not these moments. They just look cool, they're the physical embodiment of our protagonists having grown and evolved and that's the core of Shonen, but Ichigo doesn't really work like that, his power increases are usually justified through brief and often really feeling training sequences. abstracts that feel disconnected from how Ichigo actually fights when I first saw Halo Ichigo use his sword as a chain and sickle projectile weapon.

I thought it was going to open up a really cool new fighting style for Ichigo, but that never happens. Instead, the program only has these points where it counts. We are told that Ichigo is now stronger or faster or some ambiguous combination of the two, he gets new swords and suits, but after his reveal of Bankai and Soul Society, there is never a sense that the way he fights or the moves that he uses are evolving in a significant way, which means that his flights continue to end in these same great surges of power, but wolf with an eye patch, handsome devil.

I hear the comments section crying. Goku and Frieza also end up in a giant energy surge and look, that's a good point, but the difference is that Goku goes. Super Saiyan doesn't end the fight, it's just part of a logical progression that leads to Frieza being cut in half by his own energy disc. Goku gains a huge surge of power, but still has to use it creatively to defeat Frieza and end the fight. fight in this little moment of Storytelling where Frieza's downfall is his own anger and hatred turned against him and it's that level of Storytelling that's missing from Ichigo's victories because it's always just a giant surge of power that allows him to simply get around any plot obstacle. in his own way, and it's this lack of storytelling that leads to one of the most anticlimactic moments in Bleach, but first I want to mention that the sales data doesn't agree with me on a lot of these things.

The Orankar arc was actually when Bleach sales increased. at its highest point and anecdotally a lot of people love it and if you're one of them I'm not trying to say it's bad, just for me it's that this is when you can start to see the weaker aspects of the narrative of Bleach really hits the cutting edge and hell, even I'll say it gets a lot better in its second half, the battle for Cochran City and the reason for this is that we start to pay off a lot of those relationships that we established in Seoul Society by seeing Tosin finally regaining his sight and telling Komamaru that you are even uglier than he imagined is a very painful and sad moment for these characters, but it is an emotion like that that makes the battle with Eisen meaningful and Eisen presents himself as a genuinely terrifying villain, a cold and calculating genius who has manipulated this entire situation since From the beginning there are some really fun revelations and a genuine feeling of hopelessness as Eisen approaches a godlike state while each of the remaining heroes throw themselves into against him only to be crushed effortlessly and when it finally comes down to Ichigo versus Eisen feels. desperate and tense and exactly how the final showdown should be.

This is the anticlimactic moment I was talking about at this point, we saw Ichigo overcome his fear of death and protect someone he loves over and over again, we saw him save people that I saw him overthrow corrupt systems and with those motives exhausted the characters start to feel a little lost and that's why in the final battle with Eisen it doesn't really feel like there's much of their story left to tell and that's why the meeting with Eisen doesn't really feel personal or meaningful to any of the characters and I think that It's a big deal because for a final showdown like this that concludes almost 10 years of storytelling, there has to be some emotional way, it has to say something about its characters that is more nuanced. that only good against evil, for example, let's talk about yusuke against tigoro from the Dark Tournament Saga of uu hakusho.

At the heart of this fight is not a question of good versus evil, but whether it is better to live a life of simple mediocrity surrounded by people. love or throw everything else overboard in pursuit of single-minded ambition, and it's because of that question that this fight still haunts me a decade and a half after I first saw it and especially considering the 80-hour weeks I've had. to put in this video haha ​​just a little meta humor for you, it's that narration that I just don't understand about Ichigo and Eisen, especially when these solutions to the conflict are so brief and insubstantial.

Ichigo's dad shows up at the last hour offering to teach. gives him a new technique and after a brief training sequence, Ichigo powers Eisen so much that this God-warping reality can't even touch him, Ichigo blows Eisen up with a gigantic surge of power and that's it, and in that case the entire narrative. potential that we had been building since the beginning of the Seoul Society, it all just disappears and it is so deeply disappointing that I remember reading this when it first came out and it was the moment I lost faith in bleach for the first time and in my reread that has not happened.

I pushed my own disappointment aside. This moment foreshadows much bigger problems for Bleach, as I hear that those other two small problems I had with the Seoul Society have grown to the point that they will now have disastrous effects on this series because Ichigo is such a reactionary character who only responds to external events instead of pursuing his own ambition, there is now nothing to drive the character forward, which means that something external now has to happen to him for the story to continue and that leads to the second problem: Bleach's world-building in the one Kubo tends to write. in a way that means we only get as much information about the bleach world as is immediately relevant to the plot, but compare it to something like One Piece, I don't think it's a coincidence that one of the oldest and most successful Shonen series also has some of the strongest and deepest world-building where villain characters, locations and concepts are sometimes introduced for hundreds of chapters before they become a major part of the story, but what that means is that once As the story arc ends, Oda has a nearly infinite number of directions he can take.

The next arc of the story without losing any narrative momentum because she has already given us the context and information to understand why we should invest in the next part of the story. Bleach doesn't work like that with Eisen's defeat concluding every major story point and character arc that it signifies. A few small unanswered plot threads aside, there's nothing strong enough to get us to the next major part of the story, so Kubo now has to invent a new reason for bleach to exist and the result is the complete bearer of Arc, a part of history.

I enjoy fighting Eisen, but I haven't mentioned it, it's how Ichigo loses his power in that final attack. It's a big sacrifice for Ichigo, isolating him from the world of the Soul Reapers and making his character go back to being the normal teenager we knew. the beginning of the series and that's a powerful thing that altered everything we've been through, especially now that he has to say goodbye to Rukia, but the reason I don't mention it until now is because the central premise of the Fullbringer arc is undo all of that with the new character ginjou who claims to have a way to restore Ichigo's power, so Ichigo joins the full Bringers, a new cast of characters with a new villain and even a new Fullbringer combat system, the art of summoning souls from inanimate objects. to manifest weapons and special abilities, which leads to Ichigo fighting with a giant swastika for a while, but you know that has different cultural connotations in Japan than elsewhere, so let's move on from that.

To be fair, the new fight. The system feels like Kubo's attempt to revamp the repetitive bleach bottles and there are some really cool ideas here, like Tsukushima's sword implanting him in your past so that he becomes the most important person in your life, creating a great drama as he converts everyone. Ichigo's friends against him and his fight with Byakya is really the kind of tactical mind game driven encounter that I wish Bleach had more of. Honestly, I have a lot of sympathy for Kubo. There is no manual here that can tell you how to run a weekly manga.

Relevant series for over 10 years and I respect the risks it took in this Arc by trying to do that. The only problem is that I don't think those opportunities will be worth it again. It is very difficult to invest in the Fullbringer given the little character development. become and how disconnected they feel from the rest of the Bleach world and about halfway through the arc Ichigo gets his powers back.and we abandoned all semblance of the new Fullbringer combat system, which makes it feel a little useless and that's a criticism I would level. In this Arc as a whole, once Ichigo's powers are restored, the story simply revolves around the Fullbringers who are revealed to be the villains, the Soul Reapers, returning to defeat them.

Ichigo defeats our villainous ginjo with another giant surge of power and the end of it all. there's just a sense that nothing is really happening, the world and story of Bleach hasn't progressed in any meaningful way other than undoing the one aspect of the battle with Eisen that gave it meaning and I don't think the problem here is as simple as one. bad story, but how the long-term problems of bleach have left both the story and our protagonist without meaningful direction, resulting in an arc that feels, at best, like canon filler and, at worst, as a gigantic waste of time.

I do not think it is. It's a coincidence that this was the point in the series where Bleach's sales volume started to drop, but it was also after the Fullbringer arc that the Bleach anime ceased production and was taken off the air and this is really strange for multiple reasons. reasons, mainly because Bleach still had a missing story arc, but the strangest thing is that the Bleach anime DVD sold much better than Naruto, better than One Piece, and that's probably because of how strong the production was. from the anime. So why was it cancelled? Was it cancelled?

This is a good topic for speculation. for quite some time, so let's talk about it in a short interview. The quest I like to call it was that the Bleach anime actually got cancelled. I'd say the thing to know about DVD sales is that they only represent a fraction of Bleach's overall audience. half a million lifetime sales now if you factor that into total bleach unit sales, i.e. tanker Bond DVD sales are only 0.04 of that, so not really a metric helpful in understanding why the anime was taken off the air to answer that question. We'd have to do something super awkward and boring like delve into Bleach's Japanese TV ratings.

What we're about to do is how Binch's TV ratings tracked over time, but there are two things to keep in mind. One, the four different colors represent four different time slots and so are not directly comparable to each other and two, due to the enormous amount of filler content in the Bleach anime, this should not be taken as a reflection of the central story of Bleach, but what's interesting is that the full arc that brings it here in The Average performs worse than most Bleach filler arcs that struggle to stay above two percent audience share, which is a massive decline when it used to average between four and five percent in a similar time slot, so Bleach was taken off the air and replaced by Rock Lee and Pal's The Naruto spin-off despite still having a full arc left. and by the way, DVD sales are showing a similar decline, so the Bleach anime was canceled due to steadily declining ratings, we can now answer that question with an absolute and definitive, yes, probably, but that.

Is the United States inferring information from statistical data and not confirmation from an official source, so if new information emerges, I will be happy to correct that The fullbringer Arc had a disastrous effect on the bleach in both its candles and its television ratings and because it didn't advance the overall narrative. Bleach in some meaningful way Kubo now enters the final Bleach Arc facing exactly what he needs to reboot the entire series with a new story and you know, this time it kills him. The Thousand Year Blood War Arc begins with the Seoul Society. being invaded by a secret army of Quincy, a race of people believed to have been wiped out in a violent war with the Soul Reapers a millennium ago and Grace, the Quincy already have a place in the Bleach universe due to uru and the see them decimate the soul.

Society with technology that disables Bankai, meaning our heroes can no longer rely on the power that is protected throughout the story. It's devastating and shocking, especially when the Quincy leader sails, his psychotic and terrifying king kills Captain Yamato, the leader of the soul society and the strongest elder. Soul Reaper and it's such a fantastic way to turn the world of Bleach on its head to such an extent that Bleach actually saw a huge spike in sales at this time, but unfortunately it wouldn't last. The Thousand Year Blood War is interesting, easily better than Fullbringer. arc with some really fun villains, some cool long term payoffs like Nemu finally getting her time to shine, some cool fights like Kenpachi vs Grebby, in fact there's a lot of kinpachi that I appreciate, but just as good as the beginning of this arc It is eventually the long-term problems begin to arise, one of the main ones being Ichigo himself, the conflict with the yacht and the soul.

The partnership is great, it's super compelling, but it creates this problem where Ichigo, our protagonist, starts to feel like a supporting character in that conflict. He initially he doesn't. He has no more reason to stop Yacht than any other member of Soul Society, meaning the inevitable showdown between Ichigo and Yacha could lack that personal edge that made Bleach's previous fights so compelling and was arguably missing. in his confrontations with Eisen and I think Kubo knows it. this and his solution is to write a lot backwards. What I mean by this is that the Thousand Year Blood War contains a lot of flashback Exposition characters that explain how the entire story has been super connected the whole time, such as the Revelation that Ichigo's mother was actually a Quincy , but the reason she couldn't defend herself against Grand Fisher is because the moment she was attacked was coincidentally also the moment the bow woke up from a 900-year sleep and momentarily drained all the Quincy of their power, i.e. , in a kind of Ashton Kutcher Butterfly.

Effect where Yatch is responsible for the death of Ichigo's mother and they lean heavily into that plot point. There is also another subplot where Yacha is actually the man who lives in Ichigo's Sword throughout the series and has been secretly controlling his actions throughout. By the way, that was Eisen's deal too, but his actions during the Seoul Society established him as a master manipulator, while with yach he feels much less justified. My problem with these things is not that I think Kubo is making it up as he goes along. I don't know if it is and I don't care if it is, a lot of really great manga authors have been open about the fact that they improvise large parts of their story, so I don't really think it's a problem if you can do it well, but I don't think Kubo will do it, since the problem with this kind of retrospective exposition is that it's a very cheap way of trying to solve long-term story problems, and I say cheap because it's very easy to write like that.

It's very easy to retroactively explain how any situation was actually some evil genius's plan, for example, do you really think I made those completely obvious mistakes in my original video? Oh, poor fools, I planted those inaccuracies there knowing that the video would be controversial, knowing that the controversy would spread around the Internet like a virus, and knowing that four years later I could release another hugely controversial Bleach video and the fact that you've seen this far video means my plans worked, your watch time will boost the propagation of YouTube algorithm. this video all over the world and destroying Bleach's reputation once again and I won't stop.

I hope you're waiting for Bleach to drop eight years later because I'm going to keep making videos like this until Bleach's reputation is nothing more than Ash and Rust see, which is why I don't think Ichigo is a suitable protagonist for a series to long term, as the story has to constantly bend around it to keep it relevant and that leads to the kind of contrived writing we just did. It was talked about and because of that it tests the story's fictional credibility, making the main narrative thread hard to believe, but unfortunately this Arc is haunted by more old problems than just this one, especially in its second half. of intense battle, a flashback segment apart from the Wonder Reich. are hugely underdeveloped as characters, which as a domino effect of draining the emotional narrative from these fights, exposing the weaker technical narratives of them, the vast majority of which end up in Star Fingers again, these moments always look great, but in terms of creating a technical narrative. that takes the reader from one chapter to another, they fail and sales at this point continue to fall.

What is the biggest blow to the Thousand Year Blood War and perhaps to Bleach in general is how it ends, just like the final showdown where the yacht is just getting started. It was announced that the next volume of Bleach would be its final meaning. The story only had about five chapters left. Fans were surprised by posting long lists of unanswered plot points that the remaining chapters would have to conclude, but from a narrative perspective, Yacha is now a god. such as the power to see and control the future, left no room for a believable or satisfying conclusion.

Instead, what happens is that Uru uses a new weapon to disable Yacha's divine abilities and Ichigo slashes him with a gigantic surge of completely inexplicable power every time I read this I always feel like I missed a chapter or read something. wrong, then I read it again and find out that it's not, and if the fight with Eisen was disappointing, this is just devastating because there's a good story here that you fight for. his desire to put an end to Death and thus offer Ichigo fighting for the idea that it is death and suffering that gives meaning to life and hope and I think it is a beautiful message, but the problem is not with that message, but with the narrative that surrounds it.

We have two epilogue chapters and that's it, that's the end of Bleach, which brings us back to the beginning of this video. When I made that original Fall of Bleach video, I wasn't driven by a need for something that was already abundant. In the shot, I was driven by the disappointment of years of watching something I loved become something I didn't love, and by any metric imaginable, you can see that a lot of people felt that way, almost half of your audience, and I think it's important to acknowledge the point of view. of those fans because for me being a fan isn't about unconditionally loving something, it's understanding the reasons why you love that thing and being honest with yourself if those reasons go away, but four years later, the fact that I still have a problem with bleach doesn't means I wasn't wrong in that original video, but that doesn't mean I still don't have problems with bleach or that a lot of people didn't have them and if you're a big bleach fan all the way, if you've watched this entire video and you're not I agree with every point I make.

I only have one thing to tell you. Thanks for watching the video. I really appreciate your willingness to listen to me about this and I think it's great that you were willing to participate. an opposing point of view, and what's more, if you love bleach, if it's something that makes you happy in this cold, crazy world, then volume sales, TV ratings, hell, what do I know? I have a platform, it doesn't make my opinion any more valid than someone else's, if something brings you happiness, don't let other people's opinions take away from you and if people use this video to try to explain why you're wrong by enjoy the bleach, I think it's a little pathetic and that's not why I'm doing this after eight years of The anime Hiatus the Bleach returns for its final arc and I think it's incredible and I say it because yes, I criticize Kubo, but the only The reason I am willing to talk about your work on this channel is because I recognize the oceans of potential. the guy is an incredibly talented illustrator capable of writing great characters and telling amazing stories, he has everything a person could need to write the next great shonen series and I once burned the witch to be that series and I say that because even though Of all things, Bleach is It will always be a special series for me, it will always be the series I watched right when I was leaving high school and entering the adult world, reflecting the fears and anxieties of that time in this big, beautiful bottle anime, and that's why I'm always going to care about that, bleach, it's just my job to be as honest as possible about the media that I care about and that's why I want to, I don't expect everyone to like my videos and I'm sure that I don't expect everyone to agree with them, but I care a lot about what happens on this channel and I hope that's evident and that's why I'm going to remove the original Bleach drop and with that that's all I have to say about Bleach. thanks for watching friends thanks for joining me today oh boy can't wait to see the comments on this one yeahIf you want to see the original incorrect video I will leave a link in the description since I don't believe in hiding my mistakes but at least this way people can access it without having to go through it and if you want to help this channel stay alive, you can do it on patreon.com slash super wolf with eye patch, where for just a dollar you can have your name featured with these beautiful people right here special thanks this week too Barbara Cottle Vincent Heavenly dog ​​new Kirk diakking wrestler Lacey la booked and deep down not as deep as always find me on the hadest video game podcast, let's play The Boss or on the current podcast Twitter at eyepatchwolf friends take good care of yourselves and until next time