"Ban-kai!"

I may not have been watching a lot of English language animation but I have been watching a lot of Japanese animation, or anime. Like Dreamwork’s How to Train a Dragon, you can see vast improvements in the works of recent animes. In the past few months, I’ve reconnected with Bleach, which I started to watch in 2006 but stopped after they started showing fillers. Now that the series has run a few hundred episodes, I can easily filter the non-filler episodes from the fillers.

Bleach is about a high-school boy’s involvement with Shinigamis, or soul reapers who control the underworld and keep the spiritual balance of the real world intact. In a moment of desperation, Rukia, a Shinigami on duty in Ichigo’s town, transferred her Shinigami powers to him even though she knew it was forbidden. Due to his spiritual strength, Ichigo unwittingly drains most of Rukia’s powers. From that day onwards, the two of them work together as Ichigo takes over Rukia’s duties while Rukia acts as his guide or mentor, all the while hoping to delay the day Soul Society finds out about the illegal transfer of power. Rukia, although a girl, talks like a boy and thinks in an extremely logical and tactical way, unlike us girls who tend to think emotionally :P. She could well be one of the most unique female characters in anime history. It’s the repartee between Ichigo and Rukia that I feel is one of the strong points of this anime. She gets to annoy Ichigo a lot and Ichigo, with his devil-may-care attitude, doesn’t treat her that much differently just because she’s a girl.

I guess there’s been many stories about soul reapers but what I feel distinguishes Bleach from others is its distinct Japanese flavour. The Shinigamis in the story reside in the underworld, called Soul Society, in which the architecture strongly resembles Japan during the Kamakura period. Thus, the Shinigamis are dressed in black hakama, a Japanese garb, traditionally worn by male.

As a very action driven shonen (guy) anime, there are a lot of fighting scenes. The good thing though is that the animation is very fluid and the fights (most of them) don’t drag on too long. The animation is top notch and detailed, they even illustrate the pink area within a character’s eyes!

As Ichigo and Rukia fight Hollows, a type of creature that eats human souls and try to conceal from Soul Society Rukia's illegal power transfer, they meet a lot of interesting characters, from Ishida, Ichigo’s so-called nemesis at school right up to the squad leaders of Soul Society.

One of the strong points of this anime, besides the action sequences are the characters. You feel like you want to know the background of Ichigo’s friends as well as the people he meets in Soul Society.

Shinigamis there are divided into 13 squads which are each lead by a captain. Within each squad, the members are ranked based on their strength or special powers. The captains, naturally, are the strongest among the Shinigamis. Each Shinigami has a living sword, called Zanpakutou, which they must work together with in order to be skilled in using their powers. It’s interesting to see each Shinigami’s power as their Zanpakutou, which could be a reflection of themselves, varies from one to another. All Zanpakutous look like a normal Japanese sword, or katana, unless released by their Shinigami. The first release, called shikai, is an ability all Shinigamis can do. The second level of release, called bankai, elevates a Shinigami’s power and can usually be performed only by the squads’ captains and vice-captains.

The only problem I have with the series are the filler episodes! It’s not just one or two spread in between they even have full seasons which are actually fillers. If I were the animation studio, I would wait until the manga artist finishes the following chapters and then start production. But I understand they probably need to keep the interest among fans going and probably can’t afford to not show anything while the artist works on the next chapters. I understand but I don't agree.
Picture courtesy of Bleach Exile.