For as long as he can remember, Ichigo Kurosaki has been able to see ghosts. But when he meets Rukia, a Soul Reaper who battles evil spirits known as Hollows, he finds his life is changed forever. Now, with a newfound wealth of spiritual energy, Ichigo discovers his true calling: to protect the living and the dead from evil. And when he vows to defend Rukia from the ruthless justice of Soul Society, he and his friends must cross over and do battle in the spirit world.
In the past I've used Bleach, and other series of its kind, to accentuate points in other reviews. Generally these tend to cast it in a negative light, so I've decided I might as well explain why I feel the way I do, and what better way to do that then by reviewing the Season 1 boxset.
To Bleach's credit, it does have a fairly interesting premise. A story about a boy tasked with the responsibility of sending corrupt spirits to the Underworld and guiding good spirits to Bleach's version of Heaven gives it great potential to at least be simple-minded fun. All it would need are some good fight scenes, some interesting monster designs and it would be passable entertainment. Unfortunately Bleach tends to fall flat in that area. Far too many fights consist of Ichigo taking enemies down with a single swing of his sword, a single swing that sometimes isn't even animated. Bleach uses more still-shots than a series about fighting should, sometimes making it seem like someone just coloured a manga page and played some totally kickin' music in the background. And as far as monster designs go, for the most part it seems like all the Hollows are just giant demonic lizards. There isn't much real creativity shown in the design, and they all seem very generic.
There isn't really much plot to speak of in this set.. This boxset contains the first 20 episodes, and the plot really doesn't show up until the last few episodes. Most of the episodes follow the formula of a Hollow showing up and then Ichigo killing it, and this gets boring quite quickly. We do get the occasional break from the boredom to explore a character's backstory, and this is one area where this particular season excels. We're introduced to all the major characters, and slowly start to explore their pasts. By the last episode you've been given the chance to grow attached to the characters, so that when the plot does start to take off you can really feel invested in it. In that sense this season accomplishes what it set out to do, though still feels pretty uninteresting overall.
Though, the way some of these characters and their back-stories are handled leaves something to be desired. Ichigo's back-story would be quite tragic if it wasn't handled the way it was. His mother was killed when he was young, and he was there when it happened, but he didn't actually see it happen. This is where the problem stems from, Ichigo will say that he knows nothing of the circumstances behind his mother's death, and then in the same breath say how it's completely his fault she died. It really doesn't make any sense, and it seems like he's made to blame himself just so he can seem like the tragic hero of the story.
Orihime's back-story is equally as tragic, but handled much better. Her parents died when she was young, and so she was raised by her older brother until he eventually died in an accident and she was left all alone. Her brother's spirit starts to think that Orihime has forgotten about him because she stopped praying for him, and he ends up getting turned into a Hollow and attacking her. This event culminates in what is an honest to god touching, emotional moment between the two, which is more than I would have expected from something like Bleach.
Bleach does have its fair share of silly and ridiculous moments, though not always in the way the creators intended. Being a shounen series it of course has to make attempts at comedy, which it accomplishes to greatly varying results. There are a few moments in the series that are genuinely funny, but for the most part the gags range from kind of amusing to just bad. There's a running gag in the episode previews in which something always happens to prevent the characters from actually doing the preview, and it gets old by the second episode.
The moments you'll really be laughing at the show are moments you weren't intended to. Such as a scene where Chad breaks a telephone pole and uses it as a weapon, which wouldn't seem half as silly if the series acknowledged how ridiculous the idea is. But no, it takes it completely seriously, as if this is a perfectly reasonable thing for the character to do. And it's not like Bleach is above acknowledging how silly it can be at times. When Uryu straps Ichigo's zanpakuto to his head in order to tap into its spiritual power, the show willingly points out how silly Uryu looks. If nothing else you'll at least get a laugh at how the series can manage to take itself seriously at times when it shouldn't.
The dub for Bleach is fairly well done, with perhaps a few minor hiccups, but in the long run those don't really matter. Bleach is the sort of show where no real amount of effort needs to be put into acting it in either language. There's no subtly or nuance to the emotion expressed in the show, so really you don't have to worry about something getting lost in the translation or anything like that. Even so, it's a dub cast comprised of people who are really good at what they do being really good at what they do. With actors like Johnny Yong Bosch, Michelle Ruff, or Stephanie Sheh who have been doing this for a long time, you already know what to expect, and they easily deliver on those expectations. The only noticeable problem with the dub is that they leave in a bit too many Japanese terms, though this doesn't become too much of an issue until later on the series.
Although, there are a few scripting issues to be found in the dub. There's one scene in the first episode where Ichigo flashes back to things that happened not even five minutes ago, and for whatever reason the lines in the flashback are different that what was actually said. Either Ichigo has really poor short term memory, or whoever was writing the script wasn't paying attention. The flashback lines and ones from the actual scene are the same in Japanese, so clearly someone dropped the ball. This isn't the only instance of this either, as it happens again in a later episode. Other than that it's a fairly solid dub overall.
Extras for this season include a textless closing, but strangely there's no textless opening on any of the discs in the set. It's a pretty standard extra so it seems odd that it isn't here. Each disc contains a gallery of production art, as well as manga previews and trailers for other Shonen Jump series. The last disc also contains a behind the scenes feature that includes interviews with the dub cast and ADR Director. It's a nice little set of extras and is more than what we've come to expect lately, except for the missing textless opening.
As I've already mentioned, the real plot of the series doesn't show up here until the last few episodes. This season does do a good job of introducing the characters, but it still suffers from being pretty dull over all. Most of the fight scenes aren't very exciting or entertaining due to the lack of real animation, which is a major flaw in a show that primarily focuses on fighting. The only reason to get this season would be so you can watch seasons 2 and 3, where the show actually gets good, and understand what's going on.
The Packaging
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