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Reviewed by Michael Aronson “During a bloody confrontation with a sadistic Soul Reaper, Uryu chooses a path that will temporarily grant him enormous power, at great personal cost. Meanwhile, Ichigo races to master a powerful technique that will help him fight Byakuya and, hopefully, save Rukia from execution.” New Reader alert! New Reader alert! Now, I’m not usually one to criticize a book’s accessibility – or lack thereof – but that could be because I don’t usually fill the role of the new reader and, if given the opportunity, I arrive at the beginning of a series. But then, I jumped into Death Note at one of the most intricately complex moments in the middle of the series and absolutely loved it, so there’s no reason why a fifteenth volume can’t offer that kind of accessibility. Unless, of course, it suffers the kind of slow pacing that would make the creator of Dragon Ball Z envious. Do you enjoy stories in which the characters are obsessed about their power levels and focus half their dialogue on such? How about when they shout out fancy names for ludicrous fighting movies and then gawk while internally sharing with the reader how impressed they are? While it seems western comic readers are ridiculed for fantasizing about which superhero could beat which other superhero in a fist fight, only Japanese comics seem to indulge themselves in these kind of infantile exercises. Bleach might be the current leader of this genre, and its excessive power squabbles are only made worse by my being oblivious as to how powerful these characters began and why I should care about their increased strength. The only thing I can advise readers curious about Bleach is that the fifteenth volume isn’t going to satisfy your curiosity. Comment on this review of Bleach v15 on the Manga Life Forums. |
7 May 2008
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