Kanamu Kobayashi/Staff reporter
Series Bleach is Japanese manga series written by Tite Kubo, which goes through the adventures of the teenage boy who goes and saves the entire world with his soul reaper power. This series consists of adventure, friendship, and overall great action scenes.
The Bleach series has been around for an exceptionally long time as there are 16 seasons of anime and 74 volumes in manga.
The first arc is called the “Agent of the Shinigami Arc” which goes through Ichigo Kurosaki, the main character goes through a series of supernatural events and decides to become a soul reaper, which he would then have to go save the world.
In this universe, soul reapers live in a different world than humans, which is called soul society. This whole arc focuses on who Ichigo is, how he got his powers and getting to see things he went through as a child. What I really liked about the first arc was how detailed and smooth the drawing was and the fighting scene with the first enemy was incredibly detailed and really pulled you into the story.
I also enjoyed reading the part where Quincy, Uryu Ishida came about and fought with Ichigo, as soul reapers and Quincy’s are natural enemies. The action scene where Uryu summoned the monsters and fought over who could defeat them more within a certain time and ended up hurting other people so they ended up working together was a very heartwarming scene. As Ichigo mentioned that even if they are enemies, they should work together as long as they have the same objective.
Something that I didn’t understand was how during the Arc, two of his friends gain their special powers through just being close to Ichigo, which is weird, because while Ichigo went through a lot of consideration and commitment to get his soul reaper powers, they just unleashed their powers just because their friends were in danger. If Ichigo was able to do that, he wouldn’t have had to see his family get hurt, which I found unfair.
In the end of the arc, Rukia Kuchiki, the soul reaper who gave the soul reaper powers to Ichigo gets kidnapped and Ichigo loses his soul reaper powers and has to regain his powers. Ichigo meets an odd man who was an ex resident of soul society who told him that he would be able to help Ichigo gain his powers back.
Another thing that I found that was off was when Ichigo got his powers he needed to stab himself with his Zanpakuto (the sword) and had to commit that he was never able to turn back into human. So he technically needed to die in the hands of a soul reaper and take half of their power to become one. What was weird in this scene was that, it makes sense that Ichigo still has his human body because he was born a human and a soul reaper is just a soul fighting, but when Rukia fights, she also has to get out of her “human body” to become a soul reaper, while she was born a soul reaper, which means that she was never born with a human body. In the soul society, where soul reapers are born, there is no such thing as a human body as they are just souls and spirits in the soul society.
Kubo has a unique drawing style and usually when following an action scene in manga is difficult to get by, as they cannot be explained by words, which could, for some people make it harder for them to follow, but Kubo’s art style and how he got around in his action scene made it so that it was easier for the readers to follow and understand the story. Though there are a lot of Characters in the whole Bleach series including the enemies, which I found harder to keep track of who is who. The author also announced that the new season of Bleach in anime is coming back after 10 years. Which a lot of the viewers are excited about.
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Thousand-year Blood war releasing in fall 2022
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