One Piece - Sailing the East Blue (1/?)

Introduction:

This year is the year I finally decided to start reading Eichiro Oda’s One Piece after years upon years of putting it off. I knew it was good, but the art never really drew me in and the character designs were a little wacky and, like most people, the length was a little daunting, to say the least. The whole series is going to wrap up around a cool one hundred and twenty volumes if Oda is to be believed. No small feat of both artistry and reading effort.

I finally got the push to start it from a close friend of mine wanting to start a podcast where we watch shitty battle shonen movies. Which meant a manga readlist that was already miles long without One Piece. Which meant that I would have to catch up to One Piece to some degree. That’s when I found out that One Piece, like a lot of shonen, is split up incredibly cleanly between its larger story “sagas.” One Piece’s average out to around 9 volumes a saga. So a plan formulated in my head.

See, I knew that One Piece would end up being special to me. I made the decision to pace myself. My plan for One Piece became this: I was going to buy the entire series physically, in omnibus format, saga by saga. I would then read each saga as a break between other manga. So, when I finished reading Part 1 of Naruto (pre-timeskip) I put Naruto down and picked up the first One Piece omnibus. I was immediately hooked.

 

I should preface that, at the time of me writing this, I’m actually only 15% through the series or so. I just started volume 16, in the middle of the Drum Island arc, part of the Baroque Works/Alabasta saga, the second story arc. Most of my opinions on One Piece as of now are mostly gut feelings, ones I got whilst reading the first story saga, East Blue.

Gushing:

So Yeah. One Piece is a battle shonen. It has a power system, people fight, there are speeches about friendship, and the bad guys get beaten by the good guys because of said friendship to some degree. It is also incredible. What starts out as a goofy, almost Osamu Tezuka-esque pirate manga very quickly and very subtly shows its hand as infinitely more than that as early as the second arc, Orange Town, and very unsubtly shows its hand in the next arc, Syrup Village. 

 

See, One Piece is about this guy, Monkey D Luffy, an incredibly stupid pirate. He goes around on adventures with his crew, the Straw Hat Pirates. The only thing is, Luffy has no crew at the start. It’s just him and a dinghy versus the world. He has the goal of becoming the “king of the pirates.” You all know that from the 4kids rap. Pretty by-the-numbers shit for a battle shonen. The hard-headed, devil-may-care good boy who wants to be the president of the pirate-wizard-ninjas goes around making friends and beating the bad guys.

 

What sets One Piece apart is that it feels like the culmination, even at the beginning, of one person’s life’s work. See, Eichiro Oda didn’t just make One Piece his life when he signed that Weekly Shonen Jump contract in 1997. One Piece has been part of his life since he was young. And boy it fucking feels like it. He has lived and breathed manga since he was a kid, both reading and drawing it. 

 

One Piece’s world is, to use an annoyingly obvious world, alive. It is textured and real feeling. The entire planet is mapped out with its own ecosystems and hemispheres. Every town feels alive and unique, every island breathes not just life but creativity. Oda has created a world that is equal parts “a believable place where people are born and where they live and die” and “an adventurer’s paradise, where danger lurks around every corner as long as you seek it out.” And it’s all in the brass tacks. Oda has put clear thought into grounding the whimsical, magical feeling of the world. “Yeah there’s an island of dinosaurs, but here’s how the island of dinosaurs came to be, with thought put into how the ecosystem would have developed and how it fits into the larger puzzle of the world and how it came to be during the time that One Piece takes place.”

 

This texture and whimsicality is extended to the characters as well. Take Buggy the Clown. Buggy the Clown is a man who was born with a large red nose. He is sensitive about this large red nose. If you mention it, get gets pissed off. It also just so happens that he decided to theme his entire pirate crew around the circus, with him as its ringleader. There’s lion tamers, acrobats, and his pirate flag has Buggy’s large red nose on it. It’s fucking hysterical, yes, but it’s also grounded in the world. 

 yes, this guy:

 

Wait, Metaphor??:

See, pirates in One Piece are more than just “pirates” in the textual sense, but they also represent, in a metaphorical sense, the concept of “freedom itself.” To be a pirate, to express yourself and to be who you truly are, is freedom. If you are a pirate, you are unequivocally free in the truest sense of the world. But it doesn’t just say that all freedom is good. There is “freedom to” and “freedom from.”

 

A character like Luffy, who runs around beating the bad guy, represents this kind of “freedom from.” Freedom from the chains of society, its expectations, the oppression of an abusive government like the one that holds his first real crewmate, Zoro, in its clutches, etc. To Luffy, hell, to be “king of the pirates”, is to be defined by your “freedom from.” 

 

However, look at Buggy. Buggy is free, yes. But his freedom is twisted. He uses his freedom from authority to become authority. He has become someone who takes people’s “freedom from.” He is exerting his “freedom to” do whatever he wishes, and he is using his “freedom to” hurt people. This is where Luffy steps in.

 

Like, all battle shonen are about, on multiple textual levels, clashes of ideology. Bleach is full of it, Naruto is full of it, but most of all, One Piece is full of it. Luffy, the ultimate avatar of “freedom from,” goes around tearing down systems of oppression. He shows the world that they can overthrow their masters and live their dreams if they only take that scary first step towards true freedom. All while he himself reaches towards the freest freedom of all. 

 

Back to the Characters:

To wrap back around to the characters, there is also care in how they affect the world. See, Luffy has this idol, Red Haired Shanks. Luffy grew up in a town that Shanks called home for a few years and it is in Luffy’s relationship with Shanks that Luffy’s wish to become a pirate formed. This is emboldened when Shanks saves the village from bandits, and Luffy from a sea monster, sacrificing his left arm for Luffy’s life. For Luffy, to be a pirate is to be like Shanks. To fight the forces that would make you cower in fear.

 

 

 

But Shanks isn’t just a figure in Luffy’s life. One Piece isn’t that kind of story. See, Buggy the Clown grew up with Shanks. They shared a pirate crew and grew apart because of how Buggy feels Shanks betrayed him. One of Luffy’s crewmates, Usopp, his dad is a part of Shanks’ crew, and you can see Usopp’s dad in chapter one hanging out with Shanks. Stuff like that is ALL OVER One Piece. 

 

And when Luffy is out of someone’s life, let’s use Buggy as an example, their story doesn’t end. People’s lives aren’t defined by one person’s presence. The world moves on without you. And so Oda periodically checks in on characters who aren’t around for the Straw Hats’ adventures at that moment, but who still have things going on. You get to watch Buggy recover from his encounter with Luffy, you get to watch Luffy’s friend Koby the Cabin boy training to be a navy officer, you get to watch Usopp’s friend Kaya train to be a nurse. And these events, these glimpses into places that the story isn’t at, are important. Buggy comes back. A Lot.

Outro:

 

And that’s what makes One Piece special. It’s a goofy, plucky manga about a goofy, plucky pirate going around fighting the bad guy, yeah, but to just sell it as that would be to do it a disservice. One Piece is also a complicated, textured work. One where a dense web of connected characters is overlaid on a world that is living and breathing, each island a character in its own right. It's a journey I find myself wanting to just devour wholesale. But it's one I'm deliberately pacing myself on. I'm also not going to read it weekly. My plan is to catch up to the beginning of Wano Country, the current arc, and wait until it ends. And then I will binge Wano, and wait once more.

So yeah. One Piece is a manga that, to me, feels like a healing salve for the soul. I find myself, even this early in, thinking constantly about the Straw Hats. About how I want my journey with them to last forever. See, the length of One Piece is a turnoff for some, and rightfully so, but if you let yourself get absorbed, you might end up like me. Someone wishing to spend the rest of his life going on periodic adventures with the straw hats. I cannot wait to follow the Straw Hats through their lives, to see Luffy become King of the Pirates, but I find myself secretly wishing that it'll never end. All of this, and I'm not even a quarter of the way through the manga as it is today. So yeah, like Nami says, my cares do just melt away on a ship like Luffy's.

Naruto - To Be A Ninja

I just finished reading Naruto by Masashi Kishimoto and surprise surprise it was good. Great, even. Lovable characters, engaging storylines throughout, really tight theming woven throughout the entire work, etc.

The Bad:

Before I gush about what I loved, I'm gonna get some nitpicks out of the way.
The art by the end of the Great Ninja War arc was really messy at times, which comes with the combat being so literally world-shattering. The character art was consistently good throughout, it just made the battle scenes in this battle manga hard to follow. Thankfully, the last fight was very very very easy to read.

I think that, while still engaging, the Great Ninja War arc got a little bogged down in fanservice and complicated fight scenes, which is the point don't get me wrong. Part of the draw of the series is the power system. It's just not a power system I personally could keep up with. By the end of it, I was treating everyone's jutsu like regular superpowers, ignoring the power system rules entirely. Same goes for the transforms people got, all of which I just mentally referred to as super saiyan forms.

Continuing on about the Ninja War, it definitely has some of the weakest moments in the series as a whole, but it's made up for by having some really genuinely great scenes and character moments. Naruto really rewards investing in EVERY character to some degree, which I like. And there's some really nice fanservice. Maybe I just have trash brain, but getting to see Zabuza and Haku and Sarutobi and all those characters that I loved but aren't around any more, that shit was fun. It had some dream matchups, some dream rematches, it's all just good fun.

Karin is just the worst character and I genuinely dislike her. Sakura's writing goes REALLY off the rails around the time of the Gokage summit. My favorite characters all ended up taking somewhat of a back seat, which is completely fine because they still got their cool moments. The Sakura thing is just so egregious because Naruto is a series where everyone feels very consistently written and each character is really easy to understand, and her fake confession to Naruto feels so out of place and mishandled because it just is not informed at all by her character up to that point and is a huge sore thumb in her arc.

Kishimoto's women are not great in general. Even Tsunade and Temari, who I love, are still like, not the best. Especially with how good his male cast is.

Killer Bee didn't need to be rapping with ebonics in the localization. It's a little cringe.

I wish the manga wrapped up Orochimaru's plotline a little neater.

Ok that's the bad

The Good:

The good is that it's good. It's really good. Naruto, like Bleach, feels so misunderstood by anime fans at large. The characters are lovable, their designs are appealing, the art is good, the fights are cool, the story is engaging, and it pays off well. It never truly loses the scrappy charm of part 1, it just grows up and matures alongside Naruto himself.

I think my favorite part is the Sasuke Retrieval arc of part 1, but the Pain arc is also really good and beloved for a reason. I guess my thing is like, when an arc isn't as good as the one that came before it, that doesn't make the arc BAD. I LOVE the Fake Town arc in Bleach, it's my favorite arc! It doesn't make Thousand Year Blood War bad. 

Naruto's ending is incredible. That final fight is great, and Sasuke and Naruto are really compelling characters the entire series, so the final encounter pays off super hard in that regard.

And like, I dunno, I just love battle manga. All I really need in my life right now is good characters in a fun world with cool powers and a strong grasp on weaving a theme consistently throughout. Naruto's thesis is basically just Evangelion's thesis but with ninja wizards. "Human interaction is painful and you will be hurt and maybe even will want to hurt others, but human interaction can also be beautiful and healing and life-changing in a good way."

Conclusion:

There's this monologue that Sasuke gives at the end of the series. One that starts out with "We started out as lonely brats... starved for love and fostering hate." He then goes on to thank Naruto, saying "You never cut me off, in fact you never stopped trying to get close to me. You could have justifiably come charging at me with hatred, but you never stopped calling me your friend."

That shit is why Naruto owns. That shit is why I read fiction in general. Humanity kinda sucks, but people themselves can be incredible. Naruto owns because Naruto could be anyone, really. Naruto may be the reincarnation of some sage's kid, but that isn't what makes him special. What makes Naruto special is that he cares. He cares about others, he wants to see them grow and succeed and become better people. 

THAT is why I read battle manga. Because at their best, they're life-affirming, positive works. Works that bring out the good of humanity even in the most dire of situations. They're like injecting pure, unfiltered serotonin into my eyeballs.

So yeah, Naruto is great. I get why it's one of the best selling comic series of all time. It's compelling and cool and has universal themes and relatable characters. It's not in my top 3 battle manga, but it's one that is going to stick with me for the rest of my life.

Trigun Retrospective

 

Intro:

 

            Yasuhiro Nighthow’s Trigun was one of my first ever manga, one I read ten years ago now. I read it because it was in my middle school library. I found the two hardcover volumes comprising the initial series tucked away at the bottom of a bookshelf in the corner of the library. “Why is it backwards?” I thought to myself, flipping through it, enamored by the art.

 

I read those volumes so many times, upset that my library didn’t have Trigun Maximum, the sequel series. Fortunately the regular library a short walk away from the school had it, all fourteen volumes. I devoured it. And then I found out there was an anime. Needless to say, I was in love at the time. But as time passed, it kinda left my brain. I was young, and I knew Trigun was good, but I didn’t actually understand why it was good. So, it got shelved in the back of my brain as “a thing that is good.” 

 

A few years ago now, however, I rewatched the anime with my fiancé. I loved it, if you couldn’t tell. I had resolved to reread the 16 volumes that make up both manga series. I didn’t get around to it until this year. I’m really glad I did.

 

Trigun is probably one of my favorite series of all time now. As a child I liked it because it looked cool and I thought it was neat that Vash didn’t kill people. As an adult I like it for those reasons, but also because of how, for lack of a word, philosophical the series is.

 

Now, of course Trigun is just a compelling work of fiction. All of the characters are engaging and incredibly complex, the setting is fun, the designs are cool, and the story is really gripping once it gets its teeth into you. But as I was reading the manga for Trigun Maximum it occurred to me what reading it felt like to me. It felt more like reading a dialogue of philosophy over reading a quote-un-quote “normal” manga.

 

Characters and Their Philosophies:

 

The four principle characters, Vash the Stampede, Nicholas D. Wolfwood, Legato Bluesummers, and Millions Knives are all complicated, textured characters, but they also feel like mouthpieces for philosophical arguments. Every conversation, both spoken and through action, feels like an explicit clashing of ideologies. This is normal for fiction, but it is in this clashing where Trigun plays its true hand. The story and the setting fall completely to the wayside when not just these four principal characters, but all of the characters, talk to each other. It’s reminiscent of dialogues written by philosophers like Kierkegaard or Hume.

 

I want to define the four principal voices in the manga quickly, the ones that do the philosophical heavy lifting. Of course there are other voices that are also important, but they exist as extensions of the principal characters’ philosophies. The principals are:

 

            The un-aging Vash the Stampede is a hardline pacifist. Killing is a no-no, and when he is forced to engage in violence, he intentionally avoids killing blows and helps his adversary make it out alive as much as possible. He seeks the ideal moral outcome, one where everyone lives and changes for the better, above all.

 

 

Nicholas D. Wolfwood, Vash’s on-again off-again companion, is a trained assassin masquerading as a preacher. To Wolfwood, killing is a necessity, something that needs to happen some times. To him, killing is the moral thing to do if it’s to achieve an outcome that, at the time, seems moral, but isn’t ideal.

 

 

Millions Knives, Vash’s brother, is the exact opposite of Vash himself. To Knives, humanity is a stain on the galaxy. The ideal moral outcome to Knives is one where humanity is wiped out so they stop abusing the life-giving Plant organisms and so they stop consuming and consuming and consuming, as humans are want to do. To Knives, killing is an absolute rule. Humans must die.

 

 

Legato Bluesummers is much like his master, Knives. Unlike Vash and Knives, however, Legato is a mortal, a human being who has seen firsthand the horrors caused by humans on their fellow man. He is a victim of a society that failed him, and in his detached rage, he wishes to see the human race exterminated, as they only exist to hurt. Much like Knives, Legato sees killing as a must. Humans must be exterminated.

 

Alongside these principals, there is a side cast. Vash has Rem - his guardian as a child, Meryl Strife - his love interest, a and an adopted family. Wolfwood has the orphanage he is from and his colleagues in the assassin group he is from. Knives and Legato have the Gung-Ho guns, a group of killers hired to challenge Vash’s ideals directly.

 

 

(Livio the Double Fang is one of my favorites, one who is absent from the anime)

 

Vash and Wolfwood spend the majority of the manga going back and forth about the morality of killing. For example, there is a scene incredibly early on where Vash defeats the minor antagonist of the chapter. Vash, being Vash, leaves the character alive. As Vash turns to leave, however, Wolfwood executes the antagonist. 

 

Wolfwood justifies the execution as both a mercy – Legato would simply kill them anyway when they leave for failing – and a necessity – if we didn’t kill him, he would simply kill you when you turned your back. Vash replies in anger – by killing them, he says, you take away their choice to not fire back. You take away their choice to change. Scenes like this are Trigun’s bread and butter, bringing up an argument for and an argument against violence.

 

 

 

It’s very similar to a manga from the early 2000’s, my favorite manga actually, Vinland Saga. Much like Vinland Saga, Trigun is a story that doesn’t just engage with violence for an aesthetic hook, but it engages with violence as the core of the story. It’s not a story with violence, but a story about violence. Violence in every aspect, physical, mental, emotional, etc.

 

i just love this shit a lot:

 

I want to avoid spoiling much of the story, as it’s a story worth experiencing. The manga series are the preferred way to go through Trigun, but the art is muddy at times and it is a story that demands a more literary mind. It’s incredibly engaging, but not as in-the-moment exciting as other series in the same genre. If you want a series that instantly hooks you, one that has your blood pumping the whole time, look to other series perhaps. However, if you are patient and wish to grapple with your own personal philosophies on violence, I implore you to read all of the manga. It is well worth your time and patience, for even if you aren't wowed by the story, you will be better off for going through a work so unique in its medium. 

 

The anime, on the other hand, is another, albeit similar, beast.

 

Its 26 episode run aired before Maximum even started publication and adapts almost none of the manga, being basically entirely anime original. It exists as mostly a thematic overview, a trailer of sorts for the concepts that the manga discusses deeply. However, it’s just as engaging philosophically in its own right. It's also, to be honest, more instantly engaging as a story, sharing an episodic structure with works like Cowboy Bebop. The plot stakes backseat to character-driven short stories that all tie into the greater overarching themes of the story.

 

The characters are the same and the core situations, though in completely different contexts story-wise, are still there. It’s just not as meaty as the manga. If Trigun’s anime is like a nice dinner, Trigun Maximum is a thematic buffet that you want to keep eating at. It's one that I am going to be eating at for the rest of my life, that's for certain.

TL;DR:

 

All this to say that, in my re-examination of this franchise that helped define my tastes in fiction and my own personal philosophies, I love Trigun a lot. I don’t think it’s a spoiler that Trigun takes Vash’s side. No one has the right to take the life of another. However, if you do commit that sin, you are not marked for hell forever. Your ticket to the future is always blank, and with a blank ticket, you can go anywhere, do anything. Trigun states that the song of humanity is a never-ending song of change, of growth, of, well, life.

 

 

i rly like bleach :(

 

 

(i am aware that this cat is what i look like right now)

Intro:

There’s an inherent problem with discussing the positive qualities of a divisive work. That Is, people who disagree with you/who have made their minds up will think you’re deflecting or trying to “justify” liking that thing. It happens all the time, especially in the anime fandom. I’m guilty of it myself! I constantly scoff at fans of things I’ve decided aren’t good, like fuckin Darling in the Franxx, which is a bad practice when it comes to enjoying media. I fully admit to that. It’s a problem.

            I say this because I fucking LOVE Tite Kubo’s Bleach. Not just like, “oh I like this thing a lot” which is how I am with most battle series, which is also just how most people are with media. I finished that shit and gave it a tentative like, 7.5/10. I thought it was fun and good and had a lot of cool shit and great characters. It peaks at volume 48, but every series has its clear peak, and some have it earlier.

            But then something happened. Whenever I consume media I really like to find something that will stick with me. I don’t pick what I dive into easily. It’s why I don’t really keep up with serialized art. Because that shit’s not done yet, and I like to see if something from like, say, Spring 2020 will really stick around in the public discourse for a while. And obviously I don’t follow this rule hard and fast, I’m only human and plenty of serialized art does catch my eye enough for me to decide to make the emotional commitment of “this isn’t over and may disappoint hard with my time investment.” And also, when I wait to see what stuff sticks around, it’s usually the stuff that has more meat to chew on, more stuff to think about and analyze and stew on.

Which is why I like to look for finished stuff, older stuff. And when I find something I decide to consume I really, REALLY try to stick it out to the end, even if it’s not like, clicking with me. I’ve had so many times where I’m like “yeah this is fine” but a work really knocks that ending out of the park, or has that turning point that makes the investment feel worth it, way more than those disappointments (so far.) I also just like, LOVE analyzing stuff. I prefer having meat to chew on. Textured relationships, complicated characters, intricate plotting, something to keep me thinking long after I finish it. I want to be sitting a week later and have a thought float across my mind that makes me go “OH FUCK!” about something.

            All this to say that when I finish something I want it to be something that stays with me. I don’t like discarding media when I’m done with it. I finished Neon Genesis Evangelion seven fuckin years ago at this point and not a day goes by where it doesn’t cross my mind. Vinland Saga is my favorite manga ever and I think about the farming arc constantly. The visual novel The House in Fata Morgana is a perfect example of something I wasn’t super hot on at first but as I kept going it kept improving on itself, making smart writing choices only to fucking EXPLODE in quality halfway through where it gives up the goat, pulls back the curtains, and starts smacking you left and right with insanely intelligent and emotionally charged writing decisions. I want media to feel special.
            So when I finished Bleach and I was like “hm people told me this was shitty? But it was good. Great, even” I trawled the internet to find out why people didn’t like it. Most of it boils down to the same like “I dropped off after Soul Society/the filler arc between Soul Society and Arrancar turned me off” discourse, or people going “Kubo clearly gave up after Soul Society, he just wanted to draw cool shit and got roped into writing a plot… so stinky.” “Hueco Mundo is soulless” etc. And then, Bleach stuck. It stuck with me HARD. It lives in my mind rent-free now. I love it.

            That cynicism around the rhetoric of “Kubo gave up” feels so unearned and pessimistic to me. You aren’t Tite Kubo. You don’t know his thought processes. Assuming the author’s mental state is so counterintuitive to thinking about media. Like, when Soul Society ends, Tite Kubo has set up this fucking insane plot hook that had been led up to up ALL ARC. He then goes on to deliver on that plot hook in spades. It fucking owns!

If you don’t like a certain plot beat or aesthetic decision or whatever that’s fine, media is subjective, but you do a disservice to yourself and to like, how art is made when you look at something like the Hueco Mundo invasion and immediately disregard it out of hand because of like, a gut reaction of “oh but didn’t he just save Rukia? Now he’s saving another friend?”

And like, don’t get me wrong, Bleach isn’t perfect but I feel like everything before the Fullbring arc is clearly and obviously intentional if you’re not a cynic. I’d go so far as to say that the first 48 volumes of Bleach, the pre-timeskip arcs, are like, pretty close to a perfect battle series. At least for me.

I’m also going to be focusing on the first 48 volumes (Substitute Shinigami vols 1-8, Soul Society 9-20, and Aizen 21-48) because I feel that it’s clear that Bleach peaks at volume 48. Everything after the time skip is obviously a dip in quality, but it’s still nowhere near as bad as people say it is. Like, it’s mostly just fanservice for the characters and emotional payoffs that aren’t necessary but hit because of how lovable the cast is. Also, I love the final volume of the series a lot and think the ending is good even if it’s not as bombastic as it could have been. Bleach is genuinely, honestly just misunderstood, and that misunderstanding comes from how it doesn’t hold the reader’s hand.

Storycraft:

            Stories are not, and again this is my opinion, just things to passively consume and go “that made me feel emotion.” That’s a valid way to consume media, of course, but stories are also more than just the text on the page. More than the emotions that it makes you feel. More than just quote-unquote “unique” story ideas or crazy plot gimmicks. Stories are things to be picked apart and thought about on more than a purely textual level of “this is what happens without any inferences or analysis.”

Also, A story doesn’t need to spell everything out for you. It shouldn’t have to. But so many anime series do just that. Anime will sit the viewer down and exposit lore, plot, characterization, etc. at the viewer without any nuance or depth and people will eat that shit up. Hell, if it’s done well, with texture like in Attack on Titan’s basement reveal, I eat that shit up.

            But Bleach really doesn’t do that. Outside of the usage of flashback-no-jutsu, a storytelling tool long derided despite how well it can be used for dramatic effect/heartstring pulling/really concise and efficient characterization, Bleach expects more of the reader. It tells its story and conveys its themes through text, visuals, and even the absence of text. All basic storytelling methods, obviously, no duh. Saying a story “tells its story through text/visuals/whatever” is kiddie shit. But it feels like something that needs to be explained sometimes. Especially to a wider fandom that seemingly doesn’t get what an “inference” is half the time.

            So when I say something like Bleach tells its story/conveys its themes through an absence of text, I mean the things that characters don’t say to each other. How they act. How characters like Gin Ichimaru and Soskue Aizen lie through their teeth, or how a character like Grimmjow expresses himself through his actions, through violence. How Tosen and Shuhei’s relationship deteriorates through their lack of communication. Shinji never opening up to and getting to know Aizen leading to basically EVERYTHING that happens in the series. How Isshin acts around Ichigo before the reveal that he’s a Soul Reaper too.

 

Visual analysis:

            This brings me to the visual storytelling of Bleach. One of my bigger sticking points is the derision of specifically Hueco Mundo itself. Many people (my mind wanders to Super Eyepatch Wolf and his videos on Bleach) will analyze the Soul Society and its denizens to death. How the Soul Society is designed after feudal Japan. How its visuals, to a Japanese reader, will convey a sense of age. The characters all have stories about being trapped in a cycle of toxicity and violence perpetuated by the aristocracy. The architecture in the inner Soul Society, the seireitei, is fucking massive. Buildings tower over the cast. It’s oppressive and claustrophobic. The Soul Society and its customs are clearly archaic – rooted in tradition over logic. Bleach’s worldbuilding follows this through-line, one of thematic visual metaphor over the concrete, “this is a real place” worldbuilding that exists in, say, One Piece.

            So when Ichigo and the Gang roll up into Hueco Mundo and they find a barren wasteland devoid of life, it felt pretty fuckin clear to me what Kubo was going for. For one, the empty wasteland of Hueco Mundo is oppressive as well, but it’s also very alien. Instead of the claustrophobic bureaucracy of the Soul Society there is the suffocatingly vast desert. There is no society here, it is a land ruled by beasts. Coupled with the Espada (and other arrancar) who are like, obvious parallels to the soul reapers, and the animalistic nature of life in Hueco Mundo, shit’s meant to represent raw emotion and instinct. The Soul Society is an ancient, tradition-based culture full of people and civilized (to a point) life, with all of its ups and downs. Hueco Mundo is the opposite. Like Thomas Hobbes-ass fuckin “life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" ass shit. Hobbes, in that quote, is describing the “natural” state of mankind, an animalistic life. The Soul Society is rigid, emotionless tradition. Hueco Mundo is wild, animalistic instinct.
            This is reflected in the ways that the Espada/Arrancar mirror the Gotei 13. In the Soul Society you get the rigid structure of the squads, where outside of petty politics, it’s a system that is ruled by tradition and rules. The Espada, on the other hand, is a chaotic free-for-all to grab the top spot with people undermining and even killing each other constantly in order to gain power.
            I could go through and make a bunch of comparisons between a whole lot of the Arrancar and the heroes, but I’m gonna leave it at specifically Ichigo/Grimmjow and Kenpachi/Nnoitra. If I wanted to keep being pretentious I would bring up the Jungian idea of the shadow self that’s ever-present in the Persona series, where Jung states the shadow to be the unknown dark side of the personality. According to him, the shadow, in being instinctive and irrational, is prone to psychological projection, in which a perceived personal inferiority is recognized as a perceived moral deficiency in someone else.

            Ichigo is a a hotheaded, kind man driven by a “morally good” purpose so to speak. He wants to help people. He was molded this way by his upbringing and society. Duh, obviously, no shit. “A person is molded by their upbringing” is character writing 101. But then you look at Grimmjow. Grimmjow is, intentionally, a mirror of Ichigo. His personality is  also hotheaded and he’s driven by a purpose that had Ichigo, a delinquent, been brought up in a more toxic environment he very clearly could have had. That is, Grimmjow is motivated by anger and the lust to be validated. He wants to be strong, and he wants people to know he is strong.

Also, and this is another obvious one, Ichigo and Grimmjow are Orange and Blue respectively. Complimentary colors. Their personalities are really one in the same, Ichigo was simply allowed to be nice, taught to care, whereas Grimmjow, through his instinct and existence as a hollow in Hueco Mundo, became an angry, competitive person. Grimmjow, having no other course of life ahead of him, became the way he is because in Hueco Mundo life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Had he not become strong, had he not become selfish, he would have perished. He had to be the king.

            Then you have Kenpachi and Nnoitra. Kenpachi is presented in the Soul Society as someone who lives for the fight. Combat is the air he breathes and it’s so ingrained in his personality that a fight should be fair and honorable that he intentionally dampens his power level so it’s fairer. When he finally learns his bankai, it’s literally to make a fight perfectly even. Then you have his arrancar mirror, Nnoitra. Nnoitra is a physical embodiment of a fighter’s id. He lives for the bloodlust. To crush his enemies underfoot. He does not care about the power imbalance, he just wishes to win. He’s also, design wise, not just completely opposite of Kenpachi’s bulky man muscle, being a skinny twig boy, but also reminiscent of Unohana, the previous kenpachi, with his long straight black hair. There’s also the whole “mirrored eyepatch thing” This tracks for so many of the arrancar and soul reapers.

 

“Hueco Mundo is just soul society again”

            No it’s not, the Orihime rescue is like not even a third of the Aizen arc, content wise. Rescuing Orihime is also given different narrative weight because we, the reader, know she was coerced, but the characters do not. For all they know, she defected. Alongside this, who gives a shit if a similar plot beat occurs in a story. Shit happens all the time and the Aizen arc is literally way more than just the Orihime rescue. This whole “Bleach repeats arc structure” is a bad faith criticism that ignores the visoreds, Turn Back the Pendulum, and the fake Karakura town stretch. This brings my point back around to “think about shit a bit more and stop being so cynical.” Art is deliberate. People who make art for a living don’t fucking half-ass it. Especially not someone working on a clear passion project. Like, Tite Kubo went on record to say that, had he not been pressured into starting TYBW early, he would have had more arcs between fullbring and TYBW. Stop being silly.

 

Emotional throughline:

 

            Bleach has an emotional maturity and depth to it that I feel is rare in battle series. Much like how its worldbuilding is designed to invoke strong visual metaphor over being concrete, “real” worlds, the way it handles its characters and their emotions is on a similar wavelength. Many battle series have characters just fuckin, scream their feelings, or be super blunt, or never lie or whatever. Bleach doesn’t do that. On top of that, Bleach’s cast, despite being so young overall, feels so much more mature than other battle series. The way they carry themselves, how they look, how they emote, it’s a far cry from the Narutos and One Pieces and My Heroes of the genre, works where characters are very emotionally charged and vocal.

            Characters in Bleach lie. They internalize things. Characters like Gin keep their heart so close to their chest that they’ll be lying through their teeth, but their face is rendered so that you see the pain they’re keeping inside. They don’t just fly off the handle and go on speeches about friendship, they show how they care through action and dialogue that shows that friendship, not just tells it. People act like humans, not characters. Their relationships are intimate and complicated and painful and real.

            And like, again, Bleach doesn’t tell you this. It shows you this. Sometimes through flashbacks but mostly through dialogue and interactions that are subtle. Bleach expects the reader to intuit things. To make inferences. To read between lines and understand the characters as people in a way that other battle series don’t do nearly as well.

 

Ok I don’t really know where I’m going with this anymore:

 

            I dunno Bleach fuckin owns dude ok? I went into it last year with zero to negative expectations and I came out of it with one of the most emotionally mature examples of a battle series I’ve ever gone through. The art owns, the cast owns, the themes own, the scenarios own, the powers own, the metaphors own, it’s just like, Fuck.

            And obviously I don’t expect any opinions to be changed after this, I just wanted to get these words out of my head in some coherent way. Bleach means so much to me and I know to people who dislike it this just seems like “n..nonlnon .no I  it’s G o OO GOOD I p-p-p-rpomise” but like. It is good. It’s fucking great.

            If you have zero opinion on Bleach still, great! Give it a shot. If you don’t like it, that’s fine. Obviously tastes are different. I just love this series a lot. Too much probably. And I wanted to just fuckin get why, to some degree out on the page. Bleach is a series that I’m going to be thinking about and digesting and picking apart forever because of how hard the characters and themes resonated with me. That’s so subjective it hurts.

But you never know, even if you don’t do it with Bleach specifically, go into the next piece of media you consume with a positive mindset. Sometimes you’ll get burned and it’ll just be bad, but if something makes you go “why?” don’t just leave it at that. Continue. Ask “why” and then look at the text and figure it out. It’s fulfilling and engaging and fun!!!!!