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August 21, 2004
The power of Bleach
I heard the young moderns talking about this one before it was picked up by Viz. And seeing the first 2 volumes at $7.95 AND having a coupon for 25% PLUS it being triple Replay point weekend, I just couldn't pass it up.
Story: Orange-haired Ichigo (yes, "strawberry" - those wacky Japanese) Kurosaki is a high school boy who can see ghosts. One day a girl appears in his room to fight off a "hollow" - those evil spirits who devour souls - and is incapacitated while saving Ichigo. Desperately she passes half her shinigami powers to Ichigo so he can save his family, but after the beast is dispatched, they find that she's accidentally given him all of it. The girl, Rukia, decides that until her powers can be restored, Ichigo has to take over her shinigami duties. So she takes human form, moves into Ichigo's closet, and begins the training. Violence and hilarity ensue.
At the center of every great manga are the personalities of the main characters, and there's a nice mix in this one. Ichigo tries hard to be a badass, but he just can't stop helping ghosts and small animals. Rukia has lived at least ten lifetimes and is all experienced and cool, but is fiercely devoted to protecting human souls and is helpless in the face of cute bunnies. It's sort of like seeing Kyo and Hana team up to fight evil spirits.
Because this is a shonen manga, there has to be some fanservice. And so Ichigo is secretly crushed on by the girl with the biggest boobs in class who in turn is being pursued by the resident class lesbian. But she actually gets a good story early on and the fanservice is not as persistent as a Ken Akamatsu manga (since, after all, the fanservice is not the point of the story, as it is in all of KA's stuff). So I suppose one can live with the spandex school uniform blouses.
In between the fights with hollows and the spats between Ichigo and Rukia, there are some intriguing ideas about the disposition of souls after death. The sketchy artwork takes some getting used to, but the intriguing premise more than makes up for it. I look forward to seeing how this proceeds - apparently it's still running in Japan's Shounen Jump, so there's a ways yet to go.
I wonder why evil spirits in Japan are always covered in stripes?
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Posted by Innocent Sidekick of Evil at August 21, 2004 10:57 AM | Posted to Bleach
