Bleach
volumes 35-48 (White Invasion/Battle of Karakura Town)
Art/story
by Tite Kubo
Published
in English by Viz Manga/Shonen Jump
The
plot continues to show the fight between Soul Society's group of Soul
Reapers against Sōsuke
Aizen's army of Arrancar, with the former defending Karakura Town,
and the latter planning to use Karakura to invade and destroy Soul
Society. The story
will continue the fight between Soul Society's Soul Reapers and
Sōsuke Aizen's
Arrancar army as the former defends Karakura Town from the latter's
invasion, while Ichigo and his group fight the arrancars in Hueco
Mundo to rescue Orihime Inoue.
(Source: Wikipedia)
Spoiler
warning: Post
contains spoilers for pretty much all volumes following the Soul
Society arc. Read with caution!
Having
recently finished the 50th volume of the Bleach manga with The Lost
Agent story, I thought it apropos to reminisce about the latest story
arc in the series, which covers the showdown between shinigami and
Arrancar in Karakura Town, both fake and real. There was a lot of
fighting and a lot of screaming and a lot of shiny bone masks, and in
the end the good guys saved the day. Err, right?
A
lot - okay, 95% - of this arc was fights. Either fights between a
Soul Society shinigami and an Arrancar or between Ichigo Kurosaki and
someone from Hueco Mundo, whether it be Ulquiorra or Grimmjow or
Aizen Sosuke, the man who seemed to be set up as the final boss of
the series. And if you get super jazzed about reading battles and
seeing characters' various abilities and powers on display, than this
arc was totally up your alley.
For
me, this stuff kind of bored me. Except for seeing everyone's ban
kais, which was awesome. Hitsugaya's icy Hyorinmaru continues to be my favorite ban kai, while Soi Fon's missile-like Jakuho Raikoben has become a close second. But an arc that's nothing but a series of
battles without break? Yawn.
Having said that, seeing the various members of Soul
Society's factions interact with each other under great duress
brought a surprising amount of depth to their characters. This makes sense, considering that the life of a Soul Society shinigami is by the sword; their truest nature is revealed in the heat of a fight. It's the kind of thinking that characters like Yumechika and Ikkaku live by.
Plus, this has been a good arc for highlighting characters who have up to this point not been in the story's focus. Like,
for instance, Head Captain Yamamoto, the old man of Soul Society who
is also its strongest shinigami. We don't often see him fighting, and
for good reason. If Yamamoto has to thrown himself into the battle,
it must be serious. And he's no stranger to the sword; his body is
absolutely covered in crisscrossed scars that have been there for
years. Plus, the man is barely bothered by the lack of a limb. Kubo, please, I desperately want to know Yamamoto's back story!
I
found it interesting that when it came to Hinamori and Rangiku, two
women whose narratives directly tie into those of Aizen and Gin, only
one actually reached a satisfactory conclusion with their respective
ex-captain. Rangiku is given the chance to confront Gin and learn the
truth of his character, and she is given closure over his apparent
betrayal.
On the other hand, Hinamori does not ever seem to get
closure over her captain turning on her. She isn't even around to see
Aizen's downfall; only a select few get that honor. Hinamori is left to deal with the truth of her captain by herself, having spent so much time being thoroughly manipulated by him physically and emotionally.
Of
course, in the end Aizen Sosuke is utterly non-redeemable and a
villain through and through while Ichimaru Gin actually redeems
himself as he turns on his old friend. For Aizen, there is no happy
ending. He doesn't get the benefit of atonement in the eleventh hour,
his back story does not save him. Ex-Captain Aizen gets to spend the
rest of his life locked away in the very institution he fought to
destroy. He may not be dead but he has been destroyed.
The
real star of the Karakura arc has been Ichigo Kurosaki. It is his
story that drives everything, and we find out that every moment in
his life, from becoming a substitute shinigami to coming to Soul
Society has been manipulated from the beginning.
At the end of this story arc, he has brought the very man responsible for this to his
knees, but at a terrible cost: Ichigo Kurosaki has lost his shinigami
powers. Not only that, he can no longer see or interact with the
spirit world, including Rukia and the other people he had grown to
consider close friends. The very abilities that had first set him apart from everyone else then drawn him into his current world have now left him, all because he had to sacrifice them in order to win and save the people he can no longer see.
If,
like all good shonen heroes, Ichigo Kurosaki is following the Hero's
Journey to the letter, then he is now in the abyss, on the verge of rebirth and
transformation. Having loss his shinigami status, relegated back to
the world of humans, the Ichigo we once knew is dead and waiting for
rebirth, however that may come. Ichigo is literally in the darkness, having lost his special sight. He needs a revelation, a realization of his true self,
and that may come in the form of the 'Lost Agent' who promises the
return of Ichigo's abilities. One thing is for certain: his victory
against Aizen cost him everything, so he will certainly do anything
to get them back.
Consider,
of course, that by the time Ichigo Kurosaki battles Aizen Sosuke, he
has already sacrificed much of his humanity in order to win. The
farther he goes down the hole – fighting Grimmjow, fighting
Ulquiorra, tackling the spirit of his sword – the more of Ichigo
the human disappears and Ichigo the shinigami/Hollow hybrid emerges.
Which is his true face: the one he wears as he fights Aizen? The one
he wears behind a mask of bone that frightens Orihime? The one that
actually looks the most human, his 'normal' face? It's another
question that goes unanswered as Ichigo continues to struggle to
understand his true nature. The person who emerges at the other end of this next story arc won't look like the same person who started this series, the cocksure arrogant man who beat up three teen delinquents because they knocked over a dead girl's flower vase.
Overall,
if you are a Bleach fan who is heavily invested in the Soul Society
dynamics, Ichigo Kurosaki's transformation, and seeing shinigami beat
the crap out of Arrancar, the Karakura Town story arc is best story
arc. If you were wishing that Ichigo would be delivering Aizen's
charred corpse to Seireitei or that certain characters would survive
the onslaught, then you were disappointed.
Honestly, if the Lost
Agent arc doesn't build upon the loss of Ichigo's powers in a
satisfactory way then perhaps it would have been best if Kubo had
just ended it with saying goodbye to a very human Ichigo Kurosaki.
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