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REVIEW: Bleach Volume 56-74 Manga Review

I guess it is time, once again, for ANN to piss off Bleach fans. Guys, if you wanted a lot of comments, you should have held off until a new trailer for cour 4 to drop! But who knows, maybe this will get attention?

I will say, at least this time, I didn’t see a reference to Supereyepatchwolf's videos. Sure, the arguments are basically the same...but eh, progress!

I would advise the folks who are annoyed to just ignore this review. Because, at this point, who cares? One more negative Bleach review isn't going to move the needle for anyone. Certainly not for a manga that has been finished for, like, a decade.

For instance, Ichigo is repeatedly framed as a saviour of Soul Society or described as an overt member of their ranks in this arc, when his relationship to the Gotei 13 has always been, at best, tenuous and driven by mutual benefit. While he's definitely aligned with the Soul Society and is interested in protecting it, as some of his friends live there and the universe will blow up if it's destroyed, he hasn't really been on their team, and much of these volumes clunkily force Ichigo to participate in the combat.

Speaking of Kenpachi, I cannot believe Kubo thought it'd be an interesting twist to turn the unique way Kenpachi's ability works and his relationship with the childish Yachiru, two of the main things that define the character, into every other character's relationship with their Zanpakutō.

That's not foreshadowing, that's just name symbology that doesn't mean anything until the eleventh hour when her sword appears without foreshadowing.

And the light novel has no bearing on the manga's shortcomings, especially when I'm specifically talking about an anime adaptation that has already taken from CFYOW (by making Shinji's bankai reveal significantly worse) and had the chance to do more with the character given (again) the power of hindsight

Saying it's just name symbolism in a series that puts a lot of foreshadowing and symbolism into names isn't the gotcha you think it is.

There's a very specific reason why Hisagi's training can only really come to blossom with the events of CFYOW, this isn't like Shinji where they can move up his bankai reveal without much worry.

It is, because a story is more than just symbols. You need to actually have, you know, a story, setting things up and paying things out for the audience. Which involves more than just giving the audience a name and then applying a meaning to it later on, because that's all extra-textual and does nothing to flesh out the actual characters or scenarios - the stuff with actual substance and staying power beyond someone going "oh I guess that's what her name means, okay"

You do realize that these are made-up events right? That these are not some immutable reality that can't be changed? That there can be any number of additions or modifications to make it so that Hisagi's contribution to the show we have in front of us isn't "gets beaten, has multiple scenes dedicated to him training (that are added to in the anime), gets beaten again with zero fanfare, disappears for the rest of the show"