BLEACH – THE BOUNT (VOLUME 21)
April 9th 2010 08:45
Category: Videos, Television
Based on the original Bleach manga by: Tite Kubo
Director: Noriyuki Abe
Screenplay by: Masahi Sogo et al
Producers: Shunji Aoki (TV Tokyo), Yukio Yoshimura & Ken Hagino
Starring: Johnny Yong Bosch (Ichigo Kurosaki), Michelle Ruff (Rukia Kuchiki), Stephanie Sheh (Orihime), Jamieson Price (Chad), Grant George (Izuru Kira), Brian Beacock (Yumichika Ayesagawa) Derek Stephen Price (Uryu), Michael Lindsay (Kisuke Urahara), Wendee Lee (Ururu), Terrence Stone (Captain Mayuri), Steve Staley (Shuhei Hisagi), David Lodge (Kenpachi Zaraki), Vic Mignonga (Ikkaku Madarame), Dan Woren (Byakuya Kuchiki), Megan Hollingshead (Rangiku/Nemu), Kyle Herbert (Ganju), David Lodge (Kenpachi Zaraki), Spike Spencer (Hanataro), Michael McConnohie (Kurodo), Julie Ann Talyor (Lirin), Roger Craig Smith (Noba), Karen Strassman (Dalk), Troy Baker (Jin Kariya), Sam Riegel (Maki Ichinose) & Richard Epcar (Koga)
English Version produced by: VIZ Media LLC
Released by: Madman Entertainment
Running Time: 100 minutes Rating: PG
Wandering around the local mall in my home town I took a brief detour into an outlet of a major music chain store and perusing the small anime section I managed to snag this volume, Bleach Volume 21. Rather serendipitous as I was hoping to pick something up in the anime field to view and watch, lucky that it was Bleach as I am a fan of this particular anime series and have been enjoying its unfolding drama. Of course this particular story arc within the series deviates away from the manga which spawned the series, you won’t find the antics of the Bount or the various mod souls created by Kisuke Urahara gracing the pages of the manga they’re anime only. It’s an interesting phenomenon that seems to be unique to anime and even one of the seminal anime series of Japanese making, Dragonball experienced what has been known as filler. This usually occurs when the television series is moving ahead faster than the actual manga on which it’s based. In the case of the Bount arc though it was probably a move by the studio to put in filler at a key point and allow things to occur even though they still at the time probably could move with some degree of elasticity in their schedule.
Back in the halcyon days of when I was heavily active in the whole role playing scene, which is kind of like cosplaying except you didn’t have to worry about a costume and it was more likely you could drink a few glasses of fine amber fluid; the one thing a game master hated was when a group split up. Having a group split up into several smaller sub groups meant dealing with each in turn and sometime the resolution was not so crash hot, in fact sometimes it was just downright woeful and I speak from both the game master and player perspective here, I’ve given some woeful rulings in order to just keep the thing rolling along. It seems that something similar is happening in this particular incarnation of Bleach, the core characters have split up, found themselves confronted by their foes who are now more powerful than they expected and now have to have their bacon saved.
Enter four lieutenants from the various Court Guard Squads of the Soul Society…Now in some instances this plot device of having someone external save the protagonists from a sticky situation would be seen as something of a cop out. Still as things have been panning out overall it was bound to happen sooner or later, the foreshadowing that the various Court Guard squads would intervene was being well and truly implemented. What is disappointing is that for all that effort it doesn’t have the oomph and impact that it should have. Ok Ichigo is badly beaten up by Dalk, the doll of the Bount; Koga, and only the intervention of Squad 3 lieutenant Izuru Kira prevents him getting killed. But it’s a bit lightweight; it doesn’t gel as much as it should. Ditto for the sudden appearance of Shuhei Hisagi, lieutenant of Squad 9, he shows up at a key moment but he might as well as not have bothered as in the end it’s the core characters, specifically Orihime who resolve things.
It’s only the character of Rangiku Matsumoto whose appearance lands a major contribution to the struggle of Chad, Noba and Ururu in their confrontation. A case of one out of three being ok? And that is the thing four officers are dispatched to the world of the living from the Soul Society yet we only get to see three, the fourth Yumichika Ayesagawa has no real impact in the events unfolding, in fact one wonders if he hasn’t gone to a nightclub or fashion salon whilst everyone else is doing the hard yards. For fans of the Bleach series this is a bit of a letdown, I suspect that it’s done so like me you’ll go out and buy the next volume of the series in DVD format. But the thing is doing it this way may bring in the spenduli for the production company but the audience loses any kind of plot cohesion. Episodic stories may have worked well in the thirties in cinemas, but that was back in the days when it was relatively cheap.
My main beef with this volume is that it is a volume that is nowhere; the plot relies too much on what has gone on previously and what will occur for it to have any real significant impact on an audience. This would be fine if it was part of a set that included the other parts of the saga, but as a standalone it just doesn’t work. Perhaps this is also an inherent flaw within the story arc itself, although I have found that pervious volumes of Bleach namely the Rescue and Entry arcs worked fabulously as standalone entities. There is nothing more frustrating than having to rely on the vagaries of release dates in order to pick up on an unfolding story; it can really ruin the moment. Of course I do feel that the pacing of the story within this arc has a major contributing factor, if they tweaked things a little bit better I suspect that there would be no problem. This is one for hardcore Bleach fans who want their fix of all things Bleachy…getsuga tenshou!
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