This episode marks the start of The Fullbring Arc!
Finally! After what seems like forever, we return to canon material and making our way through the Fullbring Arc. Although, I'm not quite sure when we will fall back into fillers because this episode used almost three chapters of manga... And seeming the manga takes more breaks over the Christmas and New Year period than the anime, it's kind of worrying... But nonetheless Bleach is back to canon material!
The episode started off just as the manga, reintroducing Ichigo as it did at the end of episode one of Bleach but he has aged by two years since the beginning. This episode takes place 17 months after the events and defeat of Aizen Sousuke, whom was the main antagonist of Bleach.
After the reintroducing of our orange haired protagonist we were graced with a new opening showing us teasers of the events to come in the new arc. The opening theme song was preformed by "SCANDAL" and the song was titled "HARUKAZE." This is the fifteenth opening theme for the Bleach anime series. "SCANDAL" had previous done the tenth opening theme titled "SHOJO S."
Throughout the episode we were shown old faces with their new appearance since the time skip. The episode also gave us a few flashbacks of the final fight against Aizen and Ichigo as Ichigo spoke that he never once felt superior to others because of his gift. Half way through the episode we were greeted by a new character who is yet to introduce himself. (If you read the manga you will know his name.) The new character also has a Substitute Shinigami Pass like Ichigo setting up a few twists. Running toward the end of the episode after more high school drama, we return to our new character who seems to be entering a block of flats using a card with the words, "Welcome to our Xcution." Written on it. He arrives in a room with three other people; an old man at the bar, a young male playing on a Playstation Portable and a coloured female on a sofa. As he sits down, a young red haired girl walks up to our mysterious new character and asks "Did you find him?" and he replies with "The next Substitute Shinigami seems like an interesting fellow."
The episode then ends with a new ending preformed by "Aimer" the song titled "Re:Pray." The ending is a very smooth and very quite sad but very catchy. The episode finally sums up with the preview for the next episode and the tale of Keigo Asano's hair styles during the time skip which was quite funny and received a good chuckle from me.
Overall, the animators don't seem to be messing around, like they usually do where they have about 30 seconds of Ichigo spacing and having a three minute flashback. They seem to realise that the beginning of this arc didn't going down well in the manga, Bleach was at the bottom of Shonen Jump's rankings... I am happy about the fast pace of things but I don't want them to rush it too much that we instantly fall back into fillers. As for the new opening and ending themes, I thoroughly enjoyed them especially the opening as I am a fan of "SCANDAL" not just because they are attractive to look at but because they are very talented and delivered a fitting opening.
SCANDAL [HARUKAZE]
No comments:
Post a Comment