Chapter Bleach: Bleach vs. Plagiarism

Hello, RPGJay here. I suppose I should start off by mentioning that I used to be a fan of Bleach. A few years back, I really got into anime and manga. One Piece, Naruto, and Bleach were really my first foray into the world of manga since my days of watching Dragon Ball Z reruns as a kid. After the Soul Society arc, something about Bleach changed. I kept reading though, slowly watching this series that I once loved become something different. It wasn’t until the Arrancar arc that I finally snapped. Bleach had become unequivocally awful. Worse yet, to this day, this series that was once splendid is still continually degrading. Now is the time for healing, let’s delve into The Heart of Bleach.

Ordinarily, I would be talking about the physical side of the Bleach manga in topics such as pacing, padding, panel structure, etc. I am postponing that future series of columns for today’s subject. To sum up the current arc of Bleach (as of June 21, 2011), the Fullbringer arc, it’s about a group of characters, one of the main characters having lost their powers before a time skip, having to team up with a new cast of characters with powers completely different to any powers seen previously, to fight an evil group with the same new powers and restore the powers of one of the main characters.

Which is not to be confused with the Chapter Black arc of YuYu Hakusho, which is about a group of characters, one of the main characters having lost their powers before a time skip, having to team up with a new cast of characters with powers completely different to any powers seen previously, to fight an evil group with the same new powers and restore the powers of one of the main characters.

Oh yeah, I went there.

The purpose of today’s article is to show not only how the current Bleach arc is plagiarizing YuYu Hakusho, but also how it rips off other manga. Warning, if you have not read the Chapter Black arc, you will be spoiled. I hope you enjoy this comparison.

Story:

YuYu Hakusho:

A brief time skip occurs following the Dark Tournament arc, Yusuke and gang go back to their regular school life. Kuwabara, one of the main characters, as a result of fighting Toguro last arc has lost his spiritual powers (i.e. the ability to see ghosts and use his spiritual energy to fight). However, Yusuke is kidnapped by a group of three teenagers with unusual powers. Yusuke’s friends and Hiei all gather together to find the group’s hidden mansion and rescue Yusuke. After defeating the kidnappers, then revealed as Psychics, and rescuing Yusuke it is then revealed by a newly revived Genkai that the whole kidnapping was all an elaborate training regime to prepare the group for the real threat.

Sakyo’s plan from the last arc has not stopped; someone else is planning on opening a whole to hell in a nearby city, the effects of which are causing some citizens to obtain strange psychic powers. With the help of some evil Psychics (made evil by the eponymous tape Chapter Black), this unknown person is trying to destroy the world. Yusuke and gang team up with these Psychics to stop this evil team of Psychics led by a former spirit detective like Yusuke. Kuwabara’s lost powers are unknowingly restored by one of these Psychics along the way.

Bleach:

For sake of being fair, the Fullbringer arc is still ongoing so not all details on the plot are available yet. Given Bleach’s glacial pace though, they may not be available for awhile.

A lengthy time skip occurs following the defeat and capture of Aizen. Ichigo and his crew all return to their normal school lives. Ichigo, as a result of his fight with Aizen, has lost his spiritual powers (the ability to see ghosts, fight with spiritual energy, etc etc). Worse yet, the gang have no way to contact Soul Society for help, so Ishida Uryu is left to fight hollows in Ichigo’s place. Assuming you’ve read past volume 5 of Bleach, you should be wondering why anyone agreed to allow the Quincy to do that for the last few years.

However Uryu is badly damaged by a stranger with strange powers that no one has seen before. Ichigo, after a fashion, is enlisted by a group of people who have the same sort of powers (including Chad of all people), called Fullbring. They want to stop Tsukishima, a former member of their group X-Cution, and train restore Ichigo’s powers in their secret apartment so the Fullbringers can no longer have their abilities. X-Cution is also apparently led by a former substitute Shinigami, like Ichigo.

Analysis:

The two stories, aside from minor details, are nearly identical. It’s uncomfortably similar. But trust me, we're only getting started with the comparisons.

Allies:

YuYu Hakusho:

From left to right we have Yusuke’s new Psychic allies: Kaito, a student at Kurama’s school

that is nearly on par with Kurama’s intelligence, Kido, the unofficial leader of the group, Mitsunari, the man with the Polnareff/Guile haircut, and eventually Morota, who joined after Yusuke made the convincing argument of PUNCH HIM IN THE FACE.

Admittedly, aside from Kaito, most of the new Psychics aren’t particularly developed beyond their initial introduction (that is, after the “kidnapping”). However you get the impression that they’re all good natured people that just want to help their city and are willing to put their lives on the line to do it. Except Morota, whose list of accomplishments is getting shot in the head, getting horribly sick, and getting eaten. Their personalities are distinct though. Kaito is level headed and intelligent, Kido can be cocky but a nice guy, and Morota is arrogant and cowardly. The only one that is hard to get a grasp of is Mitsunari who is a stoic and doesn’t really contribute much to the story. Still 3 out of 4 isn’t bad.

As for their designs, they are alright for the most part. Each one is very distinct so you won’t get any of these characters confused with another. As for Mitsunari’s hair, I wouldn’t say it would more likely be a rip off of either JoJo’s Polnareff or Street Fighter’s Guile (the latter was inspired by the former). I’d be more inclined to call it an homage knowing the author’s passionate love of video games. Besides, it’s only one character that makes this reference. If I’m not mistaken, I believe a few other Street Fighter characters have made cameos in YYH previously, so Mitsunari’s hair isn’t so problematic in regards to plagiarism as it is problematic to the environment. Seriously, how many cans of hairspray does that man have to use every day just to keep that look? I think the cast needs to worry more about the hole in the ozone layer opening more quickly than they do about the hole to hell.

Bleach:

Count off the plagiarism squad!

From left to right we have Not-Aizen#1, Perona from One Piece, Bradley from Full Metal Alchemist, black Pakunoda from Hunter X Hunter, and Hitsugaya variant#9001.

I wish I was kidding.

As for their personalities, they’re Bleach characters. Aside from their powers it’s honestly hard to distinguish them apart. Giriko (Bradley) and Jackie’s (black Pakunoda) personalities are non-existant. I get Giriko is supposed to be a butler so maybe you could make the argument that he is supposed to be the stoic one (though Jackie seems to be stoic as well), but even when their

own apartment (aka the secret hideout) is blown up the only thing that troubles him is that he has to call the police and such. C’mon, emote for Christ sakes. Give me at least the impression that you are anything but a bunch of lines scribbled together.

Jackie though is exactly the same. Kids, let me tell you about what not to do when writing a character. Define a character by events, fights, or powers. In a good character, I can name their personality without ever mentioning what they have or haven’t accomplished. I can tell you what they are like, how they would react to situations, etc without ever actually describing their appearance, powers, or accomplishments. Even if they haven’t been around that long, in a good character I at least have the impression I can get into their heads and know what they’d likely think. If you’ve read Bleach, stop reading this article for a minute and answer this question:

Without mentioning their appearances (that includes gender), powers, and fights they’ve been in, name ONE difference between these two characters. Short answer is that you can’t.

Riruka (Perona) is…just terrible. She’s horrifically annoying, every other line of Riruka is of her shouting at something. Though I’ll be fair and say that I’ve read far more annoying characters in other series. I think what gets me though is her large amount of panel time. It gives off the impression that Tite Kubo is desperately trying to push this character down our throats. That, and she has one of the dumbest powers in this entire series (more on that later). Also I can't help but think she's basically Hiyori with longer pigtails.

Yukio (Hitsugaya Variant) is a character I’ll admit I initially liked if only because he openly dislikes Riruka. That’s always a good sign isn’t it? I immediately latch onto a character just because they have one thing in common with me, hating Riruka. Other than that there really isn’t much to his character, he’s lazy, rich, he is constantly playing a PSP, and doesn’t like Riruka. Not much else to say about him.

Finally there’s Ginjou (Not-Aizen#1). He’s another hard character to get a mental grasp on, but for different reasons than 99% of the other characters in this series. Nothing about him is really consistent. He runs a secret hideout with absurdly difficult phone instructions, yet he can’t figure out that anyone with Reiatsu tracing powers can easily find his apartment. He wants to recruit Ichigo into his ranks, but despite having met him more than once he barges into someone else’s apartment to eat ramen so Ichigo will notice him (I still don’t know what the hell happened). He says he’s going to train with Ichigo but then starts randomly talking about whether Ichigo has ever wanted to be in a video game. He says he is someone Ichigo should trust yet he insists that Ichigo doesn’t know anything about Urahara and his own father Isshin. I don’t get it. Is Ginjou supposed to be a hero or a villain? Is he an anti-hero that’s only using Ichigo to his own “benefit” (when you plan to lose your powers for helping someone, I use the term benefit very loosely)? I can’t tell what Ginjou is supposed to be, and this eerily similar panel didn’t help:

Analysis:

This is just atrocious. Bleach is blatantly ripping off multiple character designs and reusing some old designs as well. This is just inexcusable. If it were maybe just limited to one character, MAYBE two, I’d be more inclined to call it an homage, like YYH. Instead we have this random mish mash of characters that likely won’t contribute much to the story beyond maybe one or two fights with their power.

Enemies:

YuYu Hakusho:

In sake of fairness since Bleach hasn’t gotten around to introducing any other characters besides the main villain of this current arc and his lackey, I will only focus on the main villain and lackey of Chapter Black.

The enemy team during the Chapter Black arc was composed of 7 different characters, 5 of them Psychics, each with a codename (Black Angel, Gatekeeper, Gamemaster, Gourmet, Seaman, Sniper, and Doctor). Their goal is to have the world destroyed by powerful demons since they feel humans no longer have the right to live. That was the initial plan anyways before things got really weird. In either case, let’s get started.

Sensui (codename: Black Angel) is the leader of the group and definitely a gigantic threat. He was the former spirit detective prior to Yusuke before retiring due to going absolutely insane. Sensui reemerges years later with his partner and admirer Itsuki (Gatekeeper) to open a hole into hell, and then brainwash a team of psychics that would eventually be created along the way using Chapter Black, a video tape that’s the highlight reel of humanity’s worse accomplishments. Apparently it’s so bad that watching even 5 minutes of it will make any human consider genocide of their entire race by super demons the right thing to do. Ouch.

Chapter Black?

Sensui, despite the many misgivings I have against him by the end of the arc, is a very interesting character. For starters, he is a former spirit detective, which makes for a great villain to have against Yusuke. In addition to having similar powers to Yusuke, Sensui also has multiple personality disorder in order for him to deal with the horrible things he’s seen. While I don’t think that aspect worked well in execution, it was still an interesting idea in concept at least. It certainly makes this villain memorable. His design is alright, it definitely gives off a creepy vibe. I don’t know, maybe it’s the dot between his eyes or his permanent rape-face, but every time you see this guy, you know shit just got real.

Itsuki is one of the few gay characters I can recall in shounen that isn’t made out to be a joke. While other than his homosexuality and love for Sensui there really isn’t a whole lot to Itsuki other than the fact that he is the one that’s opening up the hole to hell. So we shall move on.

Bleach:

Our villain is the bastard lovechild of Aizen and Hiramaru from Bakuman.

SUPERFANFICWRITERSQUADGO!

Seriously, how does Tite Kubo get away with that? Who’s the editor that approved this?

Anyway this is Tsukishima (Not-Aizen#2). His plan has something to do with Ichigo and his friends but I honestly don’t have a single clue as to what’s going on. Tsukishima wants to fight Ichigo or at least stop him from gaining Fullbring powers for some reason. I have no idea what Tsukishima’s plan is. He also knows Ichigo’s friends and has targeted them and stabs them with his power (more on that later), but nothing he seems to do makes sense. He apparently did not want Ichigo to meet Ginjou and develop his powers, yet now he seems interested in Ichigo developing his powers and is willing to let him go. He just seems to be the obligatory villain and does everything for the sake of being evil. As of this current writing, the Fullbringer arc has been over 25 chapters long. That’s more than enough time to establish a villain and his motivations.

Also I would limit the comparison between Tsukishima and Aizen to only physical appearances if Tsukishima didn't also apparently have illusion abilities like Aizen. UGHHHH.

His lackey is named Shishigawara. His job seems to be failing at his job. He’s so bad that during his failed assassination attempt of Orihime (he can’t hit women) Tsukishima tries to kill him…only for Shishi to apparently forgive him completely later since he picked up groceries. Man the employment benefits must be nice if your boss trying to kill you is easily shrugged off by you later. As of current writing he doesn’t seem to actually have any powers so why Tsukishima sends him off to do anything is anyone’s guess. Maybe his power is to change his hair style between panels?

Evaluation:

I’d like to give the benefit of the doubt with Bleach, really I would, but there is no way anyone could read through an issue of Shonen Jump and not see the obvious rip off of Hiramaru. This is a disgrace and a terrible villain with no real or consistent motivations. What a joke.

Powers:

YuYu Hakusho:

The Psychic powers were created as a result of the change of energy when a gigantic hell hole is being widened, though not everyone in the area receives them. It’s literally ordinary humans with powers that aren’t necessarily spiritual or demonic created from the unusual energy fluctuations. Though even if the hole is sealed the powers that the humans have will still continue to exist. The powers are very JoJo esque in the sense that the powers are very niche but usually have a set of rules of what the user can and can’t do within their psychic territory.

The Psychic powers do make sense in how the power is manifested, as the powers reflect the user’s personality. Though not everyone is developed well enough to make perfect sense, you can still see a common pattern. Kaito doesn’t like violence and is a master at language so his ability is to set up a territory where no violence can occur and if anyone says a taboo word their soul is forfeit. Gamemaster does nothing but play video games so he can set up a territory using his game system to apply video game logic onto his territory. Gourmet is always seen stuffing his face every other panel he’s in so he can engulf anything (or anyone) and receive the abilities of who he’s eaten. Doctor can use a psychic scalpel, chemically adjust his body, and release a virus into demon bugs that turns people into Muscle Man from Regular Show.

Truly a fate worse than death

Bleach:

When a parent is attacked by a hollow, survives, and the wife gives birth, their child will become a Fullbringer, a human with the ability to pull the souls out of objects they have affection towards to use as weapons. At least I think they’re human.

Do I really need to point out how nothing about that explanation makes sense? Even if I’m willing to accept that having your mother being attacked by a hollow makes her children have powers, why would those powers have anything to do with objects? Wouldn’t they be more hollow-like?

Even if you were willing to accept the origin of these powers, the Fullbring powers themselves don’t have any consistency. Okay so you have to particularly like an object to utilize it, like a favorite necklace. Fair enough. How then are they able to fullbring asphalt to super jump or fullbring the air in order to flash step? Do you have to really enjoy the air or ground in order to do it? That’s just broken. Even the objects where it would make sense don’t necessarily have limitations. Riruka can fullbring literally any object she finds cute. That’s so vague it hurts. Not to mention it makes her status as a Perona ripoff much easier to identify (dream of cute things anyone?).

The powers themselves are what I like to call “because I said so powers”, how do they work? Because the author said so. The powers themselves barely have any connection to the objects anyways. Giriko can set timers for indefinite amounts of time on any object that will explode if the vaguely defined condition is not met before the timer goes off using his pocket watch (which totally isn't at all like a taboo word rule from Kaito). Riruka can shrink anyone or anything she finds cute and she permits to accommodate the object she’s sending them into. Oh, and she deactivates the power by sneezing on them. Yukio's powers revolve around his PSP (WHICH TOTALLY ISN'T AT ALL LIKE GAMEMASTER NO SIR). Tsukishima’s power is that he can create a sword that can cut anything out of a bookmark. But even that’s up for debate since he may or may not be able to turn people against others by illusion cutting them. Sure why not? Aizen's illusion powers weren't at aaaaall annoying right?

Analysis:

Bleach’s Fullbring powers, unlike the Psychic powers, don’t make any sort of sense. I also can’t help but feel Bleach is also ripping off JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure since more than a few Fullbrings are named after bands (Invaders Must Die, Time Tells No Lies, etc). I know JoJo is not the only manga that had music-themed naming schemes, but it's still uncomfortably similar.

Conclusion:

I can’t say I’ve liked Bleach intentionally for a long time. However even I think Tite Kubo can do much better than plagiarism. This is proof that Kubo ripped off YuYu Hakusho’s Chapter Black arc among many other series all in the course of this current arc.

This week in Bleach : 451

So, following last week's eyesore of a cliffhanger, we pick up with

An encore of 397's "What the hell did you just say".

After babbling at Ginjo for several panels, Ginjo , with a shit eating grin that he and Tsukishima inherited when Aizen left the plot, says his own version of "Didn't you know, I've had the upper hand since before you were born" and goes to attack Ichigo.

Oh remember how Orihime, suposedly a main character, managed to use her powers for something other then background/offscreen healing two chapters back , for the first time in roughly three years ?

Well no need to worry, because she's instantly put in a magic bullshit cage, her powers, involvement and development completely nullified.

On a sidenote: doesn't anyone else hate how Kubo's been taunting us with Orihime actualy starting to attack, but being cut off before her powers can actualy manifest ? It's like he's teasing us with "Remember this guy whom Orihime used for fighting and used to talk with ? Well I DON'T !"

And no I am not talking about the colour page, that's just desperation and I won't even get into that.

So after that, Ginjo begins slashing at Ichigo, laughing at how he asumed he could make out his location through presence and sound (which would be used in 9 out of 10 other training arcs, mind you) he then starts boasting about how Ichigo was already dead when he came to him, and then about how he's gonna kill Orihime and Chad. But then, surprise surprise, Ichigo, thanks to his one sole motivation (because it's been previously admited, Ichigo has no real goal as a protagonist, he's kinda like the manga version of Davis from Digimon 02) "fwendship", Ichigo manages to sense Ginjo's reiatsu and attack him and , whadya know, it was all a snare by Ginjo to provoke Ichigo to finaly reach his spirit-fullbring ejaculation (seriously, it looks messy) while he's nearby to make sure it doesn't get out of hand.

.....

However:

Remember that Ichigo was completely blind the whole chapter ?

Now how does one explain all these faces Ginjo makes while flaunting his suposed badness ?

Your plot point has expired # 3

This time around the topic is what comes to mind first for most guys when they think of Bleach; a constant, rubbed-in-your-face presence of jaw dropping, shiny, beautiful, plentiful, larger than life, multicoloured, multisized swords.

Swords. Right.

Swords has been the weapon of choice for the vast majority of the series characters, be they shinigami, arrancar or fullbringer, and as such they and their abilities form the core of the fights of Bleach. Naturally, this meant that Kubo needed to make the blade of the series’ protagonist special, fitting of the beloved shonen trope of the one of a kind wunderkind. And if there’s one thing Final Fantasy VII has taught us, it’s that you simply cannot go wrong with a sword so big that it should do more damage to the hero’s spine than the enemy.

I believe Asakura Yoh is the current record holder -that tentlike thing he’s in is the swords hilt

Thus we arrive at Ichigo and his Megazanpukoto, and to put the cherry on the superpowered protagonist cake, the soul cutters size is reflective of ones Power Level. The fact that this is no ordinary sword/powerlevel is established as early as chapter one by a wide eyed Rukia, and later echoed by an incredulous Renji, who repeat the thoughts of any reader over 16 when they declare Ichigos sword the most ridiculous thing they have ever seen. At this point Kubo probably realized that having Ichigo steamroll his way through the entirety of Soul Society because of his unheard of strength would make for a terribly dull arc.

Solution: Renji proclaims that though Ichigos sword is long, it isn’t used to its full potential; Ichigo just isn’t as good as a man with that big a sword should be. So since Ichigos swordsize was just indicative of his true full potential, strong opponents running around with smaller swords than him isn’t that weird since his abilities hadn’t caught up with his swordzise yet. Problem solved!

….but if that was the case I wouldn’t have a post would I?

Fast forward to after the SS arc. Grand fisher reappears, arrancarized, wielding a sword that makes Ichigos look like a toothpick, menacing as fuck. As he faces down Isshin, he points out that, in perfect agreement with everything in the story so far, he has a damn bigass sword, and as such, Isshin can consider himself royally boned. Isshins retort?

“fair point. But I need to be elevated post haste to a top tier fighter, so sucks to be you”

See, apparently sword size means absolutely jack, since as duh everyone except dumb hollows knows, anyone of Captain strength or higher is constantly suppressing their zanpakutos size since otherwise they’d run around with swords the size of skyscrapers. This makes Renji and Rukia the most easily impressed shinigami in existence, because ignoring that any shinigami with the slightest bit of intelligence would figure out the sword compression deal, it should be most obvious to people either related to or subordinates of Captains… Like sisters or vice captains for instance. So unless they’ve started making skyscrapers less than two metres tall, Rukia and Renji have absolutely no business gaping at Ichigos sword like it’s the most impressive thing ever.

Because when we have a reference point called “skyscraper!” for the captain level, logic dictates that there ought to be a general transition towards that length across the shinigami ranks. In other words: if random pathetic fodder shinigami KO’ed by chad has a 1m sword, Renjis should be the size of a schoolbus. That is of course, unless your sword just changes a few millimetres when ascending from lowly mook to vice captain and then explodes into the Empire state building at the captain rank, which doesn’t sound very plausible to me.

Which makes this guy one of Soul Societys top dogs. Who knew.

As it stands, Kubo could have spared himself quite a few plotholes if Isshin had said that “vice captains and captains” compressed their swords rather than just Captains. For a time this seemed plausible; Renji once brought up restraining his power in the human world, but his was later revealed to be the limiters, an external compressor, not a conscious internal one. Meaning that in SS, strength gauging by sword size is still completely fair game outside of captains.

And while the surprise of Rukia and Renji would still be as nonsensical as ever, sword compression would have helped alleviate one of Bleachs’ most obvious issues: Powerlevels.

Oh don’t worry, I’ll Be getting to that down the line.

Remember Grand Fisher? Remember his absolutely gigantic sword? Remember the fact that he was an arrancar just based off a single hollow? Grimmjows fraccion (I’ll be harping on them a lot) were arrancarized adjuchas, which means that they’re each thousands of Grand Fishers mashed together. Strangely this doesn’t seem to give them anything but standard-sized swords, but maybe Aizen taught them compression…and somehow Fisher didn’t notice…I don’t know, but let’s just roll with it. One thing is sure though, their “true” sword size should be much bigger than Fishers, which in turn was much larger than Ichigos. See where I’m going with this?

These guys get absolutely butchered by vice-captains and seated officer level shinigami. With non-compressed swords, smaller than, or same size as the arrancars. Even though Ichigos swordsize was appearantly unheard of.

And this is where the biggest contradiction with Rukias/Renjis surprise at Ichigos strength reveals itself: They both ought to have bigger swords than him. You could argue that Renji went through a powerup, but Rukia certainly didn’t, and Rangiku neither, and at this point I’m starting to ramble and I’d better end this because my head is starting to spin and this could go on and on…

But why?

Aside from the obvious reason of making Isshin have a badass moment, Kubo perhaps thought he was patching up a plothole that ultimately is unpatchable. But the reason we have an issue at all is likely because, as stated by the man himself, Kubo had not thought up the concept of captains and head captain of SS when he started the series, and as such hadn’t factored in how their strength would compare to Ichigos. And then come the arrancar arc, also thought up on the fly as SS arc was ending, he needed the series now huge cast to be relevant à logic be damned, these guys can take out Menos Grande on steroids now, where before Renji and Rukia shat their pants at them. Bottom

line is that Kubo introduced a concept that he subsequently neglected, which as we will see is a staple of his, but unlike so many other plot points he actually brought it up again, only to create a whole new mess of other issues.

So, the entire concept of swordlenghts as powerlevels, I declare you a bona fide PLOTHOLE!

Your plot point has expired #2

Still thinking about a good logo.

For this first proper post, I’ll be taking a look at something that qualifies as both a blatant contradiction, and shoddy writing: The relationship of Byakuya and Rukia.

Now,as any Bleach fan would know, Byakya was presented as the main antagonist of the SS arc. Sure, Yamamoto was stronger by far, and Aizen stole the show completely in the end, but for the majority of the arc Mister Headress was the guy we all knew would be Ichigos final obstacle because of how hell bent he was on Rukias execution. And then, Byakuya became a protagonist, with a good relationship with his sister, whom he even rescues from certain death. But the problem is that Kubo basically has written two different Byakuyas.

The first Byakuya is the arrogant, haughty main antagonist of the Soul society arc, and was a major bastard through and through. He was hell bent on executing his own sister, personally, with no pity whatsoever, based on the flimsiest most ridiculously unjust of grounds- and if anyone tried to argue this point, he’d make a counterargument with a million pieces of flying shrapnel, former lieutenant or not. Rukia herself says that she’s confident that he of all people won’t hesitate to kill her, and that he’s never even properly looked at her since her inclusion into the family. He could hardly speak a sentence without making a snide remark about humans, and was overall an unsympathetic douche. This comes very well across in this particular scene, a flashback of Rukias:

Rukia has just finished her first day of duty, is understandably psyched, and Byakuya doesn’t even turn to face her, as he asks the sole question: “what seat did you get?”

Rukia tries to point out that making officer on your first day of service is a little optimistic and that she didn’t make it, which fits pretty well with Rukias less than impressive performance against Fishbone D in chapter 1.

This gets her a prompt “I see. You may fuck off now” from Byakuya.

What a total prick.

Of course, we all now what happened: Aizen was the true antagonist, freeing up Byakuya for a villain-come-hero instant turnaround. He was now absolutely 100% guiltless in the whole Almost Killing Rukia ordeal, and it instantly mended their relationship.

Look, he even saves her and everything!

“If anyone gets to execute this girl, it’s me! “

And then after Aizen splits and we enter the SS cooldown phase, we finally get some insight into Byakuyas character and reasoning. The Byakuya Redemtion Train is chugging along merrily. We learn that Byakya did what he did because, as a noble, he felt he absolutely have to obey orders to set an example. Ordnung Muss Sein. But he didn’t WANT to kill Rukia and that’s what counts, right? I mean, if the central chambers declared war on cats as an april fools joke, I’m sure we could all forgive Byakuya going on a feline massacre as long as he feels bad about it.

No.

Byakuyas reason for wanting to execute Rukia so badly boils down to being not because he hates her, not because she’s charged with an extremely gruesome crime with ironclad evidence, not because he’s brainwashed or manipulated, but because “I was told to”. Now, I’m not saying that soldiers shouldn’t obey orders, but theres’ a difference between following sensible (Fall back! Thats’ an order!) and moronic (swap your grenades for rotten fish! That’s an order!) orders. And blindly following “Execute your own sister because of this absolutely insignificant felony she has committed, and please ignore the extremely unorthodox and suspicious progression of this trial, that’s an order!” falls firmly into the latter category.

But the redemption train keeps going, and eventually arrives at Supporting Character Central. Here we find the new and improved “mellowed out” Byakuya, the kind of guy who looks the other way as people invade Hueco Mondo unauthorized, who thinks the traditional captain garb is meaningless, gets pissed and serious if people lay a hand on his dear little sister, and likes to chill at the local starbucks. In the name of character development and “seeing the light” in the time post soul society this is acceptable, even if Rukias –and everyone elses- immediate acceptance of Byakuyas sororicidal behaviour is a bit jarring. However, things get iffy when New Byakuya starts invading the past and overwriting Asshole Byakuyas existence entirely.

The reason I’m saying this is because of this scene:

When Grimmjow and his posse attack karakura, we see Rukia One-shotting an arrancarized adjuchas. Should the reader remember that Rukia is not even a seated officer, that her jaw dropped upon seeing just a gillian, and that she couldn’t even sever the arm of a regular hollow, this should cause some raised eyebrows on the readers.But not to worry, Rukias soul mod explains It all: Rukia COULD easily have been a seated officer, but her big brother secretly prevented her from getting promoted, because of the danger a position like that would entail. Apart from this not addressing the two latter oddities in the slightest, just think about that explanation for a second.

Byakuya, the guy couldn’t even question orders when tasked with executing his own sister, screwed with the rules. In order to prevent a promotion. Because he wanted to protect that very same sister from harm. Whaaaaaat.

Apart from this clashing rather horribly with Byakyas entire SS characterization, allow me to remind you of the Asshole Byakuya example so cleverly placed earlier in this post. Indeed, it seems Byakuya chided Rukia for not making officer, when he in fact at the same time was keeping her from making officer.

You might say that he was just putting up a front to hide his secret, but this hardly flies.

Because why did he even bring up the damn topic then?

And how big a secret can it be if freaking MOD SOULS knows what a big softie Byakuya really is?

Byakuya and Rukias rank advancement, I hereby deem you a certified PLOTHOLE.

But why did this have to happen?

The reason for this glaring contradiction is simple: Kubo could get two birds with one stone with this little retcon. Firstly, after having her be unimpressive/powerless/damsel in distress for the first 200 chapters, Kubo realized that Rukia needed a major credibility boost to be relevant against the new standard of enemy powerlevels. Solution: he makes her an unofficial officer courtesy of her brother, who gains several redemption points in the process.

I guess we should consider ourselves lucky that Kubo hasn’t done a flashback chronicling Mayuris admirable Test Subject treatment policy…yet.

Your Plot Point Has Expired #1

Mr. Ixolite here, whom some of you may know as The Daz of Apforums. Being overly analytical and rational in my way of thinking, I’ll be concerning myself with the fields of contradictions, plot holes, and less than stellar writing. I too started out genuinely liking this series; after getting hooked on One Piece and Naruto, checking out Bleach came naturally, and I’d heard stuff about an awesome twist and a menacing villain. I quickly made it through the Substitute and Soul Society arcs with a sense of satisfaction, though I frowned a bit at the Aizen twist. Come the arrancar arc I caught up and lost interest due to the slow pacing, and I put the series on hold for a while. When I picked it up again I could read all the way to the “winter wars” beginning, and though I was considerably less invested in the series now, my hazy memory concerning earlier events made me resolve to reread the series. Older, more observant, and with a knowledge of future events in the series, this reread caused quite a few more frowns, and catching up again just around THE HEART I was reading the series for very different reasons than before.

Now, for this first post I thought we’d take a look at the writing style of the man behind the white, Kubo Tite.

Writing a long running series is hard, and writing it on a weekly basis is very hard. The longer it keeps going the bigger baggage the series has; characters, relationships, plot points and explanations pile up, and the writer needs to keep track of it all—you need only look at Marvel and DC, with their franchises spanning as many as 50 years, including different writers, continuities and crossovers, to see how this can get messy. Though compared to American comics, a manga artist has the advantage of not having to share his work with any other writer, and having significantly fewer years of continuity to remember, in addition to the slower pacing and fewer story arcs than the average shounen fare found in Bleach.

That still doesn’t mean that writing a coherent weekly series isn’t difficult, however, and authors have several ways to counter rampant plot holes and contradictions to keep a logical story flow.

The most exhaustive and taxing way would be to plan every single event in minute detail, which is probably only feasible with shorter or non-weekly series. More plausible is creating a general outline of the story, most importantly the ending and the major events leading up to it. By having a skeleton to put the narrative meat on, you ensure that you always have something to work towards.

The author may take time off to get an overview of the story, and plan ahead.

If your series is made up of loosely connected “episodes,” then not only are arcs shorter and easier to write, it’s also easier to discard unneeded plot elements and characters.

Or you could just make a gag series, where nothing is required to add up.

And finally you could just give up and reboot the whole damn thing.

So what does Kubo opt for? How does he overcome?

Well…

Bleach may feature a hefty amount of reality bending illusions, but the universe hasn’t been reshaped just yet. It could be called episodic for the first few volumes, but 95% of the series is currently made up of two inseparable arcs with the exact same villain and cast. Kubo very rarely takes breaks, and often has more pages per chapter of Naruto and One Piece (the amount of content found on those pages, on the other hand, is a topic for another day). And although some of the other writers on this blog may disagree, Bleach isn’t officially a gag manga. Yet.

This just leaves us with the standard method of good old fashioned planning ahead. Sure, Kubo has stated that there’s no ending of Bleach he’s aiming for, and there’s no theme or message that he’s trying to convey, but at the very least you’d be safe assuming the current arc having some direction and structure. But you’d be wrong, because this is where Kubo sets himself apart from other mangaka.

TK: I think it (Bleach) maintains a freshness because when I create manga, I don’t think about what’s going to happen—I just come up with an idea and let it flow. It’s a weekly installment, so I have a very short time to create manga, but the good thing is that because it’s short, I can come up with the idea and start creating it.

(From the Anime Insider interview)

Now, a little improvisation has never hurt anyone, but it’s a bit overwhelming that he seems to do it on a weekly basis. So how does he ensure that these improvised decisions don’t conflict with the past? Maybe he just has a really good memory? After all, Bleach’s pacing has resulted in it having just two major arcs of plentiful fighting and limited story to remember.

PWCW: Have you ever gotten yourself into a situation that made you say, “Uh-oh”?

TK: I don’t really face that kind of situation because it’s a long story and sometimes I forget what’s happened in the past, but I read the previous volumes of Bleach and that usually helps me to create and have a new idea.

(From the Anime Insider interview)

I guess not. “Oh, but he does say that he rereads Bleach! This doesn’t mean his writing makes no sense!” I can hear some people saying already, but that’s not the real issue here. Aside from the obvious danger of contradicting yourself by writing on the fly while forgetting the past, take a look at Kubo’s actual answer:

He never runs into problems with writing his story because he forgets the old stuff. Ooookay.

Still, the constant improvisation and forgetting could just refer to minor, unimportant things, and not affect the story progression itself. And even if some story elements are improvised, it doesn’t automatically cause contradictions.

But when the improvised events are some of the most pivotal moments in the entire series, and you combine it with a lacking memory of your own work, you have a recipe for disaster. When Ichigo was Rukia’s subsitute, there was no such thing as Captains in Kubo’s mind. When Ulquiorra and Yammy appeared, there were no Espada. Kubo had no idea who the murderer would be when he killed Aizen off. Aizen’s escape from Soul Society only occurred because Kubo “felt he wouldn’t die”—not because he’d already thought of the Arrancar arc. Up until the very end, Kubo didn’t know how the Arrancar arc would draw to a close. He doesn’t know how the current arc will end.

And so on. It has even reached a point where there is no such thing as true foreshadowing in Bleach.

To draw or not to draw. Some foreshadowing lines and such, will for sure be tied together one day. That is, closer to "coming around (the idea)", and "remembering it" than "thinking of it". In the beginning, I myself do not know the reason but "this is best for this", "there's nothing but this", those thoughts run through my head and (I) decide on drawing that for the character. If I do that, while drawing the following [next/future] story, I'll definitely come across that scene thinking "was this thing I drew from that time for this?"

(Masked interview)

There is only Kubo introducing incomplete concepts, maybe remembering concepts later, and maybe explaining them even later. Well, that’s assuming he even intends to do as much as that, and not just leave it to the readers’ imaginations.

So the answer to how Kubo maintains Bleach’s continuity is simple: He doesn’t, really. Now this post doesn’t prove that Kubo creates plot holes, but it exposes the series’ propensity for plot holes. To see the plotholes themselves you have to stay tuned, but thankfully the great insectoid overlord Aizen has given me a true bounty of material to work with.

BTW, I apologize for not having pictures or drawings in this wall O’ text, but my laptop is down and my options are limited.

Attack From Behind: The Top Disappointments of BLEACH So Far

Welcome to the first post of my new column, Attack from Behind! By this point I've spilled even more ink ragging on BLEACH than Kubo has splashed all over his manga, so I figured I'd capitalize on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to disseminate my snark to the masses. The people must be warned; or, if it's too late and they're stuck on the BLEACH train until it finally crashes like the rest of us, they must be entertained.

IAWT # 0 : Introduction

Lustmord - Zoetrope

A creature, refferred to here as Hypothetical Species A, when faced with a survival endangering obstacle , has one of two options. Either it mans up to the problem and promptly evolves to save it's hide, or it has the fully legitimate option to choose extinction. I'm sure certain members of the species doing their best to evolve would have something to say against the latter, but what can you do ?


But then, what will you do if that danger or circumstance cease to be present ? You can of course boldly move forward and continue on you path to become galaxy conquering space aliens, or you can just get rid off whatever it took your race countless generations to achieve. The species' elders might protest, but young people, being the slackers they are, woudn't see anything wrong with shedding a useless limb or two. Or in the case of the Kauai cave wolf spider, their eyes.

Now , you might think this only applies to living things, but then you'd be mistaken. This Blog shall be dedicated, in most part, to the scientiffic examination of the singular phenomenon of literary de-evolution known amongst the youth of America as "Bleach".


There was, indeed, a time when necessity to achieve reader popularity forced this series to achieve certain levels of artistic performance, as well as storytelling competence, to create a premise that the young, impressionate minds of Jump readers could be absorbed with and secretly identify themselves with in some way.

But, and this is a statement we of this blog all agree upon, once this popularity was achieved, a certain choice was made, which sent this series down an ever more steep slope of shedding all things "excesive" and unecessary. This choice lies in the belief that it was purely the artistic pizzaz of the series, the wide angle shots and prety poses, that had made the readers interested.


And this is the problem. For though we all believe that at one time or another the series had promise, it has since turned into little more than a collection of reaction shots, alternate angles and pages with sprawling dust clouds, both literal and figurative.

Our mission is to present our own analysis of the extent of this phenomenon, as well as to try and present whatever is actualy good about the series in the best light possible. We hold no malice towards those wanting to read this series, we simply offer a different point of view, and try to invite them to stand aside and try to look at Bleach from a different angle, to see if there may not be something burried underneath that they might have been ignoring, and might even have a chuckle at.

We also promise that on the day that the major faults we find in this series have been disposed of, we shall gladly end this project.


With that said, we welcome you to applied logic, our tribute to Bleachs unique form of entertainment, and proudly proclaim: In Aizen We Trust