Hole of Reproach: The Shinigami and the quest for the mystical door that is right in front of them

There are a few definite truths in this world. Politicians will lie. Chris Bores will misunderstand how the internet works and Kubo will write himself into a corner.

The man has taken the art of writing himself into the corner and has surpassed all his peers. He gave Aizen not one, but two insanely broken and hax abilities with no limitations. Then he gave insane hax abilities to Quincy Brain in a Jar kid. In both instances Kubo solved the problem like he does best, by ignoring it and making the users sabotage themselves out of nowhere. See Aizen's out of nowhere defeat, not at all caused by Ichigo's final desperation move but because Aizen "always wanted to be weak". Or by having brain jar kid imagine his non physical body be as strong as Kenpachi and then forgetting to make the body actually be able to handle it. And that is somehow enough to take him out for good despite it not really being his body.

The current situation perfectly symbolizes that not only is Kubo still doing his patented "fresh" technique of thinking things up on the fly, he's still just as bad at it. Take for example the Shinigami. The Soul King just got killed and they've been trying to get to the Soul Palace to stop Bach from destroying all of Soul Society since chapter 612.

"I will now sing my cover of the entire Beatless discography"

And yet in chapter 623 the Shinigami have yet to move from the spot. And not because Kubo forgot about them, oh no, he has been almost exclusively showing them in recent weeks, as Ichigo and co. got blown off the Palace and he needs to prolong the "tension" before they get back. But in all that time, the Shinigami have just stood around talking about going up. And more and more people kept gathering to go up. By now there should be someone selling fastfood on the sides and the Shinigami should charge admission. "Revenge quest to the Soul King Dimension for purposes of revenge ? That will be 5000 kan please."

It's sad how useless these guys are. Either they stand around and watch Ukitake's hand demon thing go to the Soul Palace, and then they watch eyeball monsters coming from the palace. There was literally no reason for them not to use the already opened door, but I guess we needed to have impotant scenes like them stading around doing nothing, which don't even convey the amount of people in the room properly. If the guys below actually decide to tag along to the Palace too, then I have no idea what they are going to do. Maybe they will fight Bach's moustache or something.

Oh if only we had gone with that "Do something" plan instead of the "Look really intently at the sky" strategy, you might not be hurt.

You know you'd think that maybe these two new characters from the beginning of the arc would possibly be among the seventy six people lining up to take a trip up into magic "Ruling People is Hard do it for me" land. Well, you might say that my expectations are too high but well, there's just some reason why I thought they would be important. I don't exactly know why that was, I knew before but now I can't seem to remember....

If only I could put my finger on it.

But the best thing is that the they've waited so long the door itself got tired of waiting and closed itself. And what caused them this final delay ? Why none other then the triumphant return of  the mighty Nanana Najakubububuup and his traveling minstrel show. Now Kubo must have remembered he set up his targeting Renji so, good, I'd like to find out what his powers are and plus, I'm ready for a break from the mono...

NEVER MIND

Well, now Quincy Renji backstabs Nanananana because he apparently still wanted to protect "High Majesty" from harm despite well, Bach non ambiguously attempting to cannibalise them to give strength to the four men in his army he actually kinda maybe gives two shits about. But Nanana wanting to protect Bach anyway is fully in line with his character, I mean he did after all.....look at Renji while he was asleep. Yeah I got nothin'.

And so three more join the journey to the Promised Soul King Land. At this point it seems more like a state of mind then an actual location. I can't wait what more diversions and intrusive plot twists Kubo will throw at us to justify why the Shinigami can't leave just yet because he has no idea what to do with so many people once inside the palace. Maybe Pepe will come back from the dead and force everyone to make out with each other which will lead to bursts of random infighting. Or maybe Brain Jar Kid will show up and poof up ice cream. Who knows, Kubo's imagination is so so limited !

We shall sign off in the classic Bleach way:

DUN DUN DUUUUN

See you the week after Golden Week.

Hole of Reproach: Three Year Bachiversary

It has been a while. Bleach has still been it's usual self quote table inscribing self (BRAIN IN A JAR Quincie says hello), but I figured the other people on the blog were doing a good enough job summing things up on their own and I felt I'd be sort of cramping their style to repeat basically the same complaints.

This week however (chaper 619 for future refference), the sheer volume of brain dead idiocy coming from Seňor El Moustachio has driven me to finally adress a question that has been left unanswered for so long. Mainly, Bach's goal.

As unbelieavable as it is, this month marks three years since Ol' Buckbeard first appeared in the series. This same arc has been going on since early 2012.

Let us walk down memory lane and reminesce about that moment shall we. We had just gotten over the arc that was so bad that even Kubo suddenly found it in him to not have everything move at the speed of a celestial body and actually shifted into high gear to blitz through everything. There, we got what basically amounted to Ginjo being pissy as fuck because he was given a job by Soul Society and the people who did so actually, gasp, supervised him ! Which was enough to try and kill Ichigo for his powers in a scheme that made no sense and which resulted in the character assasination of Chad and Orihime which felt like a direct insult after Kubo's line about it being Chad's arc. We cut back to Ichigo getting his powers back via Magical Spine Puncture and everything was okay.

We then spend some times on rookie shinigami who seem to have actual importance given one of them shows up on the cover of Chapter 483, only to disappear forever with no warning. We get Ichigo and company going to Hueco Mundo to save a guy from Nel's posse, and in the meanwhile we have the introduction of He Who Grooms His Nose Hairs Into a Moustache, Bach.

For someone who doesn't like fights you sure seem to be doing it a lot, Buckface.

Now let's move back to the present. Three years from then, Bach has killed the Soul King which will, as he knows, destroy the afterlife and human world (and also Hueco Mundo because Kubo thinks people still care about that despite it being a wilderness full of giant soul eating monsters). He is fighting Ichigo inside the palace and is trying to blabber out some nonsense along the lines of "we are the same you and I". Implying some sort of bond between them as Quincies, despite the fact that the only reason Bach is walking around is because he sucked countless Quincies dry of their life essence to the point where they died. And he's just recently begun to suck the life force from his remaining troops in the Seireitei. So yeah, you're full of shit dude.

And then when Ichigo tries confronting him, he utters the following line:

Gee, I dunno, maybe because what you are doing will literally destroy all of reality, killing everyone Ichigo has ever known in this world and the next, along with every human who is alive and every human that has ever lived.

And Bach not only knows this, he's seemingly known all along, and yet we still have absolutely no idea why he is doing it, nor why anyone would be willing to help him once they've learned that fact. Even if the Shinigami commited genocide against your people, what the hell do the billions of people on Earth and in the whole of Soul Society have to do with that ? Worse yet, the entire point of Bach, as revealed to Uryuu by Haschwalt is to lead the Quincies in a never ending war where they would constantly get killed so they can give their life energy to Bach. And apparently both Haschwalt and Uryuu still go along with this whole plan KNOWING THAT, but if that is literally the whole purpose for you existing, what does it matter what Soul Society did ? We saw earlier the Quincies on the battlefield don't want to get sacrificed to Bach either so again, this raises even more questions about this.

Once again, Kubo's vaguebooking and intent on making the bad guys seem mysterious has resulted in a seemingly unbeatable all knowing Bad guy, whose actual motivation and goals make absolutely no sense if you actually piece together the breadcrumbs Kubo randomly tosses out along the way. There is no stated reason why Bach or any of his followers would want to destroy all of creation, especially if their purpose as Quincies is to hunt Hollows and thus protect humans from them. That's like the Pope suddenly pulling out a missile launcher and blasting the congregation at the Urbi et Orbi because now the Catholic Churches' mission is to destroy all of creation, including themselves.

The rest of the chapter basically just has Bach prattling on, even trying to blame Ichigo's mother's death on the kid by stating "his weakness killed her". Uh no asshole, it was you deliberately draining your powers to awaken from your Odinsleep that left her defenseless against that Hollow AND YOU KNOW THIS. Then Uryuu jumps in to kill the Soul King again and says how no one should get in Bach's way. At this point I wouldn't be surprised if Uryuu is doing this to legitimately help Bach, the man who directly murdered his mother, when he knows that Bach just wants to Keffka shit up. I don't know, we saw how Chad's development was handled when he was supposed to be in the spotlight.

Of course the problem now is, Kubo has set up like 20 + people to go to the palace to fight Bach. That plus Aizen screwing about, will probably result in us not knowing what the hell Bach is even trying to achieve for even longer. And if he and Bach get into a meaningless philisophy dick measuring contest....good lord.

AfB: Black People Are Wacky! Laugh!

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AfB: Use Your Brain Bleach

BLEACH hasn't been faring very well in the JUMP Table of Contents for a while now, and its volume sales, while still respectable, are slipping as well. And yet it seems like, as a series, it's simply rolled into so much moss that the editors have let it continue rolling down the hill on the condition that this is the “last arc.” Oh, they've attempted some life support. There was a stretch where BLEACH got color pages every other week, but by now they've probably realized that first aid spells, far from helping, only succeeding in doing bonus damage to the undead. Here are all the color pages since the beginning of the Quincy blitzkireg, complete with my snarky ass captions.

"The final war us readers have been toothing after since the beginning--can Ichigo finally defeat Zangetsu!?"

 BLEACH was a manga all about holy wars up until now, but you didn't figure that out because it was a fourteenth level secret (it was scrawled in microwriting on Rangiku's nipples in every panel, including ones without her in them. It read "WHY ME cruSADe").

A Day in the Life of Juha Bach, Master Strategist

This is a rough draft of what I imagine the day of Juuha Bach/Ywhach must go like, seeing as Kubo decided the dude can't even have a bed to sleep in, never mind a table to have things on. Days in Magic Unnamed Interdimension Quincieland must be really boring.

My hobbies include staring blanky, staring at nothing and staring blanky into space. I also sometimes space out or get lost in contemplation.

5 AM: Wakes up, orders ice tea.
6 AM: Kills the person who brought him his tea because they did the job he wanted them to do
6:10-7:45 AM: Moustache Grooming
7:45-9:10 Watching Sturm der Liebe
9:25 Reads the newspaper
9:35 Has the meteorologist killed for being a prophet
10:00 Plays Chess
10:35 Deliberately sacrifices his rooks, bishops and pawns
10:46 Gets a second queen
10:51 Sacrifices said second queen because he was intending to lose her from the begining
11:22 If he loses he stabs his opponent. Meanwhile if he wins he stabs his opponent.
12:00 Eats dinner mostly consisting of cold, unheated sauerkraut, which he doesn't heat up to not upset his cold bloodedness.
13:00-18:00 Afternoon & Evening nap time. All loses experienced during this period by the quincies were meant to happen from the begining.
18:20 Takes his hollow antibodies supplements.
19:00 Goes to execute people with battle experience without bothering to get any information from them
19:01 Sends inexperienced rookies to try and take out the same people the previous guys were executed for not beating
19:20-22:45 Makes speach about peace while eviscerating his underlings
22:50 Has everyone leave the battlefield
23:00 Has everyone go back to the battlefield so he can have another invasion on record and can technically call the previous invasion a "success"
23:01 Goes to Sleep, listening to Wagner and thinking about his secretary, The E Sternritter, Eva.

AFB: In the War Room with As Nodt!

Hello, everyone. I've been playing a lot of Luigi's Mansion recently, and I figured I'd use my soul vacuuming skills to keep As Nodt around for a spot of tea coming off his stirring defeat this week. This chapter's developments were so exciting I nearly popped an emotion! It was scary--

Did someone say "SCARY"!?!?!?

Pipe down, you. Anyway, how are you for discussing some of the tactics in this epic clash of dumb vs. dumber?

CAN IT ALL BE BOILED DOWN TO A SINGLE EMOTION??

Maybe...?

Is that emotion...

Don't.

...FFEEARRR!?!? 


I think we're starting to see the main issue with the Vandenreich already!! They are a military force of simpletons.

Hole of Reproach: The Unbrearable Confusingness of Rukia's Being

Greetings dear readers. I once more decided to delve deeper into the moldy, rancid heart of Bleach, in order to try and understand the inner workings of a mind who'se sole purpose seems to be self adoration. (If you don't know what I mean, check my previous article here.

With that shameless bit of self promotion out of the way, let's get back to what we love best here at Applied Logic, aside from group orgies and devil worship. Namely pointing out how Kubo has no idea that things he previously wrote still exist and he just can't will them out of existence because he's bored.

Today's is a typical example. There I was, minding my own business, reading Bleach, getting bored as hell by the Quinci invasion consisting of a bunch of forgettable losers and bishounen , when Rukia suddenly showed up and

decided to try and do something.

Which was a big shock to me considering that the last time she attempted usefullness she was the only shinigami to get defeated by the Fullbringers (the less we say abotu Renji's..."victory" the better) and the last time before then was getting her ass kicked by Yammy, which wasn't even a one on one really. So I was more then happy to see her do something. I would be even happier if Origime and Chad, who'se involvement with this arc thus far seems to be little else then nominal, would do something too but that's like asking for Kubo not to be racist to his fans while trying to sell them his stuff.

But anyway Rukia is actually on the battlefield. And she's fighting As Nodt. Okay, I guess that's alright, beat the guy whom her precious big brother (who wanted to secue her execution for an incredibly minor offense, which was in direct contrast to the promise he made to his dying wife, because he made another promise afterwards in his head in the presence of his parents' gravestones, obviously) could not. That's alright by me.

So her new powers are.....hmm....how does this work again ?

No no, I know that, I was asking about your new powers. You know, the sword. The pointy thing. How does that work ?

So basically kinda like Hitsugaya, only you can't create ice, or control ice. Okay but how does it work ?

.

That doesn't make sense because you couldn't move then. You even said your so cold you blood froze in your veins. But then again this is the afterli-

Uhm....wha...uh...You're currently dead because you're in the afterlife. And you are in the afterlife because you died. And just in case you needed to have this specifically confirmed

Remembering things is hard, especially when YOU wrote them

It's really sad that the afterlife in this series has become what it is. I mean Shunsui has tickets that allows you to go there for crissake. But still I was kind of hoping people would remember their own backstory, and Kubo would remember none of these people are actually alive. They are souls. Who came to Soul Society after being sent there in a sending ritual. After they left their bodies due to death.

I mean there are people born (?) in SS, very rarely, but this is clearly not one of them. Rukia is dead not because of a technique of some kind but because she has been dead this whole series. And the fact Kubo can forget this is just another example of how he only cares about thinking up a "cool" english language title each week to then engrave into his furniture.