sahugani's Bleach Review 299

sahugani · Nov 10, 2007

Sahugani’s Bleach Review 299

I can't wait to see the awesomeness of Senbonzakura again

How goes it, everyone? With the last couple chapters being as awesome as they were, I’m sure most of you were just like me waiting on the edge of your seats for this week’s RAW day to arrive. I guess that waiting impatiently is not really much of a change from the norm, but we were all waiting a bit more intensely I guess. Also, I have some great news. My favorite One Piece AMV maker, JuniZorofan has blessed us with a Bleach AMV, Tears Don’t Fall. The pics in this review come from the MangaShare Edited Manga and the title pic is a stellar piece by rave8259 over at DeviantArt, so swing on by his gallery when you’re done here.

Start With a Bang

put on a happy face

I know it’s really tiny and insignificant in the context of the rest of the chapter, but I think Zaraki and Noitora at least deserve a mention even if their presence doesn’t take up a full page. I will say that they do seem to be enjoying themselves. It has been a damn long while since either has been able to fight another person with the same direct damage style as their own. It looks like their fights presence in the manga will be minimal for a while until the other captains have finished up in their respective rescues. I mean even if we did get regular views of this fight, at the moment, they are having too much fun trying to simply hack each other up to actually advance the fight into something more. Eventually though, Noitora will start to get fed up and will want to actually finish off Kenpachi, so he’ll release. However, we won’t have to concern ourselves with that for a while.

Understanding

COWARDS!!!

After the extremely brief glimpse into the berserker duel, the scene shifts to Unohana and the Exequias. After two chapters of awesomeness, finally a real disappointment I’m sad to say. The Exequias simply admit their defeat and leave before the shinigami even lifts her blade. I was really hoping to see some battle potential out of those two 4th division heads, but Kubo has decided to keep us in the dark. Instead, the opponents leave and the Isane is ready to go after them. However, Unohana tells her to back down, which even though I REALLY would have liked to have seen Itegumo’s abilities, it is the logical command. Their reason for coming was not to slay arrancar but to heal the wounded members of the first invasion force. I guess this makes sense in another way as well. Both Rukia and Chad have massive injuries compared to anyone else and Orihime is not near either to help. Since it doesn’t seem that Byakuya has any 4th division people with him, it would make sense for Unohana to make quick work of healing Chad and then move on to heal Rukia after Byakuya finishes beating Zomari. I know it has a damn good chance of being mere wishful thinking, but I highly doubt that arrancar under Aizen would simply cede a fight that easily. I think it is likely that they will return later on probably after Unohana has left to help Rukia. I doubt a medical specialist would promote the idea of moving patients right after healing, so she’ll probably go to Rukia on her own and leave Chad and Gantenbien under Isane’s care. As I said, this has a good chance of being mere fanboy dreams, but if it is the case, we will at least get to see Itegumo’s abilities as well as the awesomeness of Chad’s arms and Gantenbien’s orange afro.

Disregarded

hehehe! he does look kind dopey here

With Chad’s area seemingly wrapped up for the moment, the attention now shifts to Zaerapollo, who is now face to face with Mayuri. Given the history between this particular shinigami captain and Ishida, it is only natural that the Quincy would express his shock at the identity of his rescuer. However, the mad scientist denies knowing the battered Ishida and seems that he could care less about their previous quarrel. It seems that while Mayuri can lose his temper and become vengeful when an intended specimen fights back in a fight, in the long run, he is not the type to hold grudges. His entire personality is built around finding the next test subject. At the time of his fight with Ishida, Orihime was the initial target until Uryuu pulled out the rare Quincy techniques, which piqued the scientist’s interests. Even though the fight ended in Ishida beating and humiliating him, he has since moved on to more interesting subjects and thus would rather not concern himself with the old matter of the Quincys.

Bad Science

i hope he liquifies Zaerapollo for the bottling so i can sing "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead"

After Ishida is put aside as a mere nuisance by both Mayuri and Zaerapollo, they finally get down to the real matter at hand…or at least to the talking that precedes it. Neither has yet revealed their names to the other and each has a different take on the matter. For Zaerapollo, he does not really care to hear Mayuri’s name as he is under the impression that it will be another quick victory and learning the name of another victim will be pointless. For him the entire role of his scientific analysis is to create preventative measures for their attacks and then torture them just to watch them write in pain. Mayuri though is a true scientist. While his comment about bottling Zaerapollo might be seen as mostly trash talk, the fact that it is Mayuri puts a whole lot of truth behind it. As I said last week, to him there is no real point to the scientific study other than to gain more knowledge. Each of the Soul Society captains is here for their own reasons other than Yamamoto’s orders and his is quite obviously for the chance at obtaining a new toy to dissect. The only concern he might have is if Zaerapollo pisses him off to the same point Ishida did in Soul Society, in which case he may get angry enough to kill the specimen rather than try to capture it. However, I doubt he will be driven to that state. If you look at the other captains he came with, you see that they are probably the three captains in all of the Gotei 13 least likely to get flustered in battle. Unohana’s opponents left, Byakuya is always calm and collected, and Kenpachi starts out fully psychotic so it’s not like he can get more so later on. The basic premise of the captains arriving is to offer relatively quick victories against these opponents who are picking on the already battered forms of Ichigo’s crew. This fight will not last long enough for Mayuri to get that angry and so I’m betting in the end he will end up bottling Zaerapollo.

Mirage

I go that way, you go this way

Before we actually get to see any combat between Zaerapollo and Mayuri, the scene shifts over to Byakuya and Zomari standing over Rukia’s body. Unlike the scientists, they decide to get right down to showing off their strength. Apparently, Zomari’s sonido is the fastest of all the Espada and he has perfected the technique to the point that in moving, he leaves behind an image of himself. He is a specialist in the same way that Neliel was. Outside of their released forms, the arrancar have a very limited and basic set of skills to work from. Though they have great power, they do not have the ability to use the shinigami’s very diverse art of kido nor do they have the history of research to develop their own equivalent. Instead, they apply their heightened reiatsus mostly for physical attack, defense and speed in normal combat. These are enhanced by the use of the basic cero, bala, and sonido. There are a few exceptions who can use certain unique abilities outside of their released forms such as Ulquiorra’s holographic eye or Aaroniero’s use of Kaien’s techniques, but for the most part the arrancar are limited to those three techniques. Neliel was a cero specialist who in her unreleased form developed the ability to absorb other’s ceros and add them to her own. Zomari is the same way with his sonido as he has found a way to manipulate it for an extra effect while still unreleased. When we do see his release though, I doubt it will be related to this ability though. The manipulations of their basic arrancar skills have absolutely nothing to do with their abilities in their released forms as Nel quite clearly demonstrated.

Forced Hand

the only thing better would be Yoruichi herself

Byakuya seems to be having some trouble at first dealing with this Espada’s sonido technique as every time he makes a strike, the victim turns out to be merely one of Zomari’s copies. Eventually, Zomari decides to end it and with his maximum number of copies unleashed he apparently stabs Byakuya through the chest. However, it turns out that Byakuya used a technique taught to him by Yoruichi to make his own speedy escape and left behind a momentary image of himself being killed. It figures that a technique that would be equal or superior to that of the Espada’s sonido specialist would be one devised by the shinigami’s former shunpo specialist. While he clearly wanted to avoid using the move if at all possible, there is a question of where he learned it in the first place. Since he hasn’t used it up till now, it is easy to think that during the preparations for the winter battle, he had trained with the shunpo specialist, but I doubt that. I believe he learned it when he was young and used to play tag with Yoruichi. The first reason is that I highly doubt that the present Byakuya would train with a sparring partner let alone a person who pisses him off nowadays like Yoruichi. Also there is the matter that she has been shown to be with Urahara off and on throughout the timespan, so it is unclear how much time she actually would have spent in Soul Society if any. I think Byakuya most likely learned this in his younger days with her because that was the time period in which they were actually on friendly terms and we know for a fact that at that time, the “tag” was a form of training shunpo. If they were training their skill in regular shunpo together, I expect Yoruichi would have also shown off one of her family’s special variations of it as well. This does bring up the matter of why Byakuya never used this technique against the much faster Yoruichi or Ichigo during the Soul Society arc. First of all, I believe that Yoruichi only showed Byakuya the basics of it but at the time he learned it, he was too immature in his abilities to actually use it effectively. After Yoruichi left Soul Society and her family’s name was disgraced, Byakuya did not like the idea of bearing a traitor’s technique in his repertoire and stopped trying to increase his proficiency with it. After Aizen’s betrayal, Yoruichi’s name became somewhat cleared and a need to get stronger fast became highly evident. Due to those two factors, the technique no longer bore shame and was now deemed necessary for strength, so as he already knew the basics of how to perform it, these past few months he has been training himself in perfecting it.

Overall

While the chapter was not quite as spaz inducing as the last couple, it seems to me that with the appearance of the captains, Bleach is still looking good at this point. While the Kenpachi fight is being put off till last and Unohana’s fight seems to be cancelled, the duels of the other two captains still look to be quite interesting. I can’t wait to see what other tricks Byakuya has up his sleeve and it will be extremely gratifying to see Mayuri finally take down Zaerapollo and humiliate him by turning him into a science project.

Raijatsu · Nov 10, 2007