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Hidingo Kojimba
Mar 29, 2010

ZenMasterBullshit posted:

Kubo had a real sense of flairand modern style that shows up in those early OP and writing doofuses so I think the manga would have been infinitely better if the Souls Society never happened and it was just Strawberry and his weird townie friends getting ghost fighting powers and maybe they help that weird drug store owner when the ghost cops show up lookin for him.

Tatsuki got robbed is what I'm saying. They built her up as this kick boxer lady who was slowly being able to interact with hollows (Didn't she like bite one when it attacked Orihime at some point?) and she just gets forgotten.

I had *hopes* for the Fullbring arc. I thought it was gonna be Kubo doing a Town-based Arc with a depowered Ichigo and friends doing stuff together in a way that'd write the rest of the Town cast back into the story. (Since the Fake Karakura Town arc even had those brief asides to the Ichigo's schoolfriends that indicated Kubo hadn't exactly forgetten about them even if they weren't really doing much.)

Alas, it was not to be.

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Hidingo Kojimba
Mar 29, 2010


Bleachface? I dunno, sounds kinda racist. :haw:

Hidingo Kojimba
Mar 29, 2010

chumbler posted:

Maybe power levels are actually meaningless.

Truly, Aizen was a visionary that came to shounen manga five years too early.

Hidingo Kojimba
Mar 29, 2010

Mulderman posted:

Yes let's adopt the worst part of Bleach?

Too late for that. And really, a fixed episode run with a defined runtime might give the studio a chance to try and solve some of the pacing problems.

I’m more interested in what BTW is going to be like .

Hidingo Kojimba
Mar 29, 2010

Waffleman_ posted:

Considering that the oneshot was like two years ago, I think that there is almost certainly going to be some differences as ideas develop more. Like I said, the one-shot seemed to prop up the horny dude as a main character along the two witches and if he was here in that context again, don't you think he'd be somewhere on the key art?

If you were taking the basic ideas of the oneshot and turning them into a longer-running arc I think horny dude would make more sense as an antagonist since his whole thing is that he was the human best friend of the tragic villain character. Who was supposed to be a pretty decent guy aside from the fact he, you know, wanted to devour a witch.

Dunno if I should bother with spoilers for a 2 year old oneshot but whatever.

Hidingo Kojimba
Mar 29, 2010

gimme the GOD drat candy posted:

he had no time for ghost fights. there were too many married women to sleep with.

He always seemed like he was the main character of a totally different seinen manga series that just happened to intersect briefly with Bleach.

Hidingo Kojimba
Mar 29, 2010

JT Smiley posted:

I do think introducing DBZ style power levels was a mistake, because it always leaves the supporting cast in the dust while the main hero does everything.

You could sort of see an attempt to do away with it in the Fullbring arc by introducing power sets that were more wacky and less about just hitting harder, but given the hard abort on the ending of that arc I guess it wasn’t popular.

The Fullbring arc had a lot of problems but I find myself cutting Kubo a lot of slack on it cause it really seemed like an attempt to add something new to the Bleach formula that never really got a chance to go anywhere.

Hidingo Kojimba
Mar 29, 2010

Vincent Van Goatse posted:

I dunno about anyone else, but I forgive everything else about her character just for this moment. I just wish she'd kept that slightly-concealed weirdness as a character trait later on.

I weep for the Orihime and Tatsuki arc that never existed. Be interesting to see if Burn the Witch can capture some of that energy.

Hidingo Kojimba
Mar 29, 2010

I can see the Byakuya in Noel, but I don't think Ninny's got that much in common with Ichigo other than standard shounen protagonist stuff.

Hidingo Kojimba
Mar 29, 2010

Waffleman_ posted:

I mean to be fair standard shonen protagonist stuff was kind of the entirety of Ichigo after a while.

Also yeah this chapter did not feel like a full quarter of an entire story.

If Kubo wants to do this as an irregular series (i.e. ongoing story arcs, just not as a constantly-ongoing-till-cancellation weekly manga) I'm all for it. Would be good for Jump to experiment with a format like that.

Hidingo Kojimba
Mar 29, 2010

Vincent Van Goatse posted:

Burn the Witch has the greatest collection of sillyass attempts at "Western" names I've seen or heard of in a manga since whatever that thing was that had a character called Satellizer or something like that.

Pfft. If we're going by grave cultural errors that are super serious and very definitely important, the fact that Ninny and Noel are buying their tea from a machine during lunch is a big one. I mean tea machines exist, but not in the Japanese fashion. The only time you'd grab tea from a machine is if you're attending an event or function of some kind, or you're at some other company's office or something, otherwise you just boil a kettle and make your own.

Hidingo Kojimba
Mar 29, 2010

Say what you like about BTW I think Jump having pre-defined “seasons” for a series rather than just releasing it perpetually till the ratings/sales tank is pretty interesting. Wonder if they’ll end up structuring more manga that way?

Hidingo Kojimba
Mar 29, 2010

See, I actually think the basic setting’s pretty fun. If anything Kubo’s devoting too many words to trying to explain it when “London with dragons and witches and poo poo” stands just fine on its own and explanations about how Wing Bind actually works can wait till he’s got a longer arc to let it breathe. For a 4 episode story you should just introduce the core characters and their gimmicks and leave world-building as subtext. But personally I think detailed world building is overrated.

Hidingo Kojimba
Mar 29, 2010

Kild posted:

It was established in the one-shot that she likes him. in fact the only time she shows any emotion / breaks her stoicism is around him.

I mean, it would be nice if they actually had something in common, or did things together, or had any real interaction outside of acting like assholes to each other but anime gonna anime.

Edit: Balgo has powers which everyone treats like a big deal despite the fact they basically don't do anything in the plot, no matter what they might theoretically be capable of? Balgo is totally Orihime. Does that mean Macy is gonna be this manga's Chad?

Hidingo Kojimba
Mar 29, 2010

The scene doesn’t require it to be Momo they’re fighting the whole time, personally I figured Aizen swapped her in when Toshiro stepped up to fight him.

Hidingo Kojimba
Mar 29, 2010

TheHan posted:

I think at least you can feel things about Chad, Orihime went from being a really fun character to a void. By the Sternritter arc she's just a glorified medkit.

Another reason I was so disappointed with how the Fullbringer Arc ended. It really seemed for a bit like Orihime and Chad were going to get to do stuff there.

Hidingo Kojimba
Mar 29, 2010

Gologle posted:

Remember when Yoruichi was so strong that her sword actually made her weaker so she ditched it? That should have been Kenpachi too. That said, I don't mind Yachiru being his zanpaktou, it's fine, I don't think it makes either her or Kenny less cool.

It's a shame Kenpachi and Yachiru never got to fight Starrk and Lilynette. That woulda been some fun symmetry.

Hidingo Kojimba
Mar 29, 2010

ZepiaEltnamOberon posted:

The gyaru is easily my favorite new character.

Among, uh, all 2 new characters.

My crack theory: mute shinigami with the exploding spirit animal shikai is Starrk's purified soul. Like, almost certainly isn't gonna be the case but it would be kind of cool if that lonely guy got some friends in the afterlife.

Hidingo Kojimba
Mar 29, 2010

chumbler posted:

I don't think any reasonable person could doubt this when looking at the fullbringer arc especially.

Yeah, the way that the entire arc just derails when all the most popular-in-the-polls shinigami captains show up and kill everyone screams editorial intervention.

Hidingo Kojimba
Mar 29, 2010

chumbler posted:

Not just that, but the rapid turn to "actually we're all secretly evil". And he clearly wanted to do more with at least Riruka.

The villain-turn was probably planned all along. I mean, book guy’s memory powers are foreshadowed from the moment he turns up, but yeah the upending of the plot and the sudden dropping of plot threads and characters was out of nowhere.

Hidingo Kojimba
Mar 29, 2010

PringleCreamEgg posted:

Honorable mention: don kanonji and keigo asano vs Aizen

Special points go to Mizuiro's how-the-hell-does-he-know-this-stuff use of improvised explosives vs Aizen. Completely useless because Aizen is 90% of the way to godhood at this point, but if Bleach was a seinen manga Mizuiro would be the main character.

Hidingo Kojimba
Mar 29, 2010

Some mysteries are better left unsolved.

Hidingo Kojimba
Mar 29, 2010

MonsterEnvy posted:

Szayelaporro going to hell just means he was a bad person in life.

I'm still betting that new lieutenant from the Hell special with the animal-themed shikai is purified Starrk.

Hidingo Kojimba
Mar 29, 2010

Lt. Lizard posted:

Aizen twist was completely unexpected, but to be fair the only way for it to be possible would be if Aizen had some kind of power that would allow him to hypnotize/change perception of the majority of Soul Society members and surely author wouldn't give a villain such a clearly overpowered and almost uncounterable ability, right? :v:

I mean, most of it could probably have been done with a much smaller-scale illusion ability and just having two other captains in on it. The actual twist and the basic outline of Aizen's plan were perfect for a shounen manga. The total hypnosis effect was just overdoing it. (Also could have done with Aizen not having a virtually consequence-free backup plan if he failed at executing Rukia.)

Hidingo Kojimba
Mar 29, 2010

NikkolasKing posted:

The Fullbring Arc.

They had interesting powers, more than just Big Energy Attacks or whatnot.

Sadly having creative powers < big energy attacks so all the Captains destroyed them and that was that.

I’m still mad we didn’t get a really good Chad fight out of the Fullbring arc.

Hidingo Kojimba
Mar 29, 2010

Stairmaster posted:

We had the Chekhov's gun of zaraki explaining he named yachiru after the only person he ever respected tho.

Yeah I think he had that particular plot twist planned from the moment he introduced Kenpachi and Unohana. Kubo makes up a lot less bullshit on the fly than you might think from some of the wackier plot elements, even if some of it is clearly retconned. (I highly doubt he'd planned out exactly how Arrancar worked when he first showed Grand Fisher getting his mask physically chipped off, for example.)

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Hidingo Kojimba
Mar 29, 2010

chumbler posted:

Fullbringer arc being unpopular is further proof that shounen readers/editors have no taste.

Indeed. I was so looking forward to the prospect of Chad and Orihime getting some good screentime too.

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