Oh, man. Someone else who's still reading Bleach! (Also, hi! new body here!)
And thank you for this post, as it gives me some new and interesting things to think about wrt Bleach, which I've been reading on and off with decreasing levels of investment and increasing levels of horrified fascination (how long can a fight scene go on for?! how many times can a female character get sidelined?!?!) for, well, years.
I have a lot of residual fondness for it nonetheless, as it was I think the first manga I ever read - or at least the first crazily-addictive-shonen-manga (I think the actual first might have been Blade of the Immortal, which is obviously an entirely different kettle of fish). And I still remember being blown away by my first exposure to both typical manga visuals (establishing shots of the sky! and telephone poles!), and what I now realise are hilariously archetypal shonen tropes (Ichigo is getting a new power! omg!). Good times.
So I'm interested that Bleach is still holding your attention while Naruto etc have fallen by the wayside - I gave up on Naruto even before the timeskip (for some reason its treatment of female charcters irked me even more than KT's) and the only other shonen I'm still sorta following is Kekkaishi, which gets flagged in my head under 'children's serial that I like and can respect' rather than, as with Bleach, 'baffling and bizarrely compelling cultural artefact'.
And, well, I agree with everything you say here - I too have been wondering what Aizen's final form would be like for a while (at the moment, a crazy moth-seraph! who knew!). And I appreciate the way the power-as-transformation theme runs right through from the insta-costume Ichigo gets as a Shinigami - perhaps the lines have never been as tightly drawn as all that. I suspect though that Ichigo's willingness to [MORE SPOILERS] sacrifice his power will insulate him from any long-term ill effects, and I'm sure that, as you say, ascension of a sort is in the offing. The power that interests me, though, is Orihime's. I guess she's going to get to destroy the mystical ball-bearing at some point, but I hope she's allowed to do something else along the way.
Anyway. As you can probably tell, I have been nursing a need to vent about Bleach. So thanks for the opportunity!
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And thank you for this post, as it gives me some new and interesting things to think about wrt Bleach, which I've been reading on and off with decreasing levels of investment and increasing levels of horrified fascination (how long can a fight scene go on for?! how many times can a female character get sidelined?!?!) for, well, years.
I have a lot of residual fondness for it nonetheless, as it was I think the first manga I ever read - or at least the first crazily-addictive-shonen-manga (I think the actual first might have been Blade of the Immortal, which is obviously an entirely different kettle of fish). And I still remember being blown away by my first exposure to both typical manga visuals (establishing shots of the sky! and telephone poles!), and what I now realise are hilariously archetypal shonen tropes (Ichigo is getting a new power! omg!). Good times.
So I'm interested that Bleach is still holding your attention while Naruto etc have fallen by the wayside - I gave up on Naruto even before the timeskip (for some reason its treatment of female charcters irked me even more than KT's) and the only other shonen I'm still sorta following is Kekkaishi, which gets flagged in my head under 'children's serial that I like and can respect' rather than, as with Bleach, 'baffling and bizarrely compelling cultural artefact'.
And, well, I agree with everything you say here - I too have been wondering what Aizen's final form would be like for a while (at the moment, a crazy moth-seraph! who knew!). And I appreciate the way the power-as-transformation theme runs right through from the insta-costume Ichigo gets as a Shinigami - perhaps the lines have never been as tightly drawn as all that. I suspect though that Ichigo's willingness to [MORE SPOILERS] sacrifice his power will insulate him from any long-term ill effects, and I'm sure that, as you say, ascension of a sort is in the offing. The power that interests me, though, is Orihime's. I guess she's going to get to destroy the mystical ball-bearing at some point, but I hope she's allowed to do something else along the way.
Anyway. As you can probably tell, I have been nursing a need to vent about Bleach. So thanks for the opportunity!