Anime Pilgrimage RTT

Bleach – episode 70

March 7, 2006 on 9:28 pm | In Bleach | 1 Comment

Bleach is striking almost the right balance of school life comedy and supernatural gadding about. This episode has some okay comedy, but where it most stands out is in its hilarious application of late eighties and early nineties OVA villainry rules.

Spoiler: If you’ve seen episode 69, there will be no spoilers here. This will be my only buffer for this particular spoiler.

Ichigo and Rukia look sure to die at the hands of Yoshino’s fire monster. Deus Ex Machina Ryou (the other Bound) saves their lives so that he may punish Yoshino and, incidentally, allow Ichigo and his comrades several episodes to toughen up.
Ryou takes Yoshino to the Bound leader, Jin, because she’s done something against the Bound code.

Rukia also explains why she has been sent back to take care of business in Karakura but, in a feat of excellent script writing, the scene begins with “and that’s why I was reassigned to Karakura!”
So, in essence, she has not given a reason at all.

The action on offer was fairly lame; Ryou’s snake concept is good enough, but the entire scene was compromised with the ridiculous animation of a hose and reel turning into a snake. Everything else that Ryou turned into snakes could conceivably be made into snakes, and the morph animation was plausible. The reel, on the other hand, simply disappears.
I couldn’t take any of the fight seriously after that.

Still, Rukia raised a good point about the ability to see death gods (as Ichigo’s father and one of his sisters could see her), and the development of Ishida as a “worthless” character is steaming along nicely. His need to assist despite his powerlessness has been good and subtle … up until now, when Ryou points out “You are weak and useless! We Bounds will look forward to eating your soul!”
Yeah … score one for the obvious.

Enjoyable enough Bleach: not challenging, but not mind rottingly stupid. Plus Yoshino is interesting.