English Dub Review: Bleach Episode 343

Bleach now gets the Bubbleblabber treatment! Let’s see how good Ichigo is without his Soul Reaper abilities.

If you’re just getting into Bleach, or you’ve been here for a while, this is a good time to pick up Bleach. Why? This is the final season!  Luckily, we’re here to make sure your time isn’t wasted.

17 months have passed since Ichigo defeated Sosuke Aizen, and lost his powers, including his ability to see ghosts. So, it’s back to everyday life. After causing a stir not noticing Yuzu (his sister) in her new school uniform.  Karin, his other sister, is sitting there poking a ghost in the eye. Of course, the powerless Ichigo can’t see this. After more family dilemmas, Ichigo gets out of the house for class. At school, his frenemy, Keigo, ambushes him, only to get caught in a headlock. When in class, Ichigo is spending a lot of time staring into his substitute Shinigami badge. Ichigo sees his replacement substitute, Uryu Ishida run past, and Ichigo notices that the Shinigami posted to his town, Zennosuke Kurumadani, is even more useless than he thought. He then sulks about not seeing Rukia since she bailed on the town.

After class, Ichigo and his friends walk past a sprinting thief, with the owner running after him. Ichigo hands off his bag, and sprints after the thief. He blows past the first guy, and knocks the thief on the ground. He tries to pull a knife, but Ichigo knocks him out. He hands the bag off, and goes on his way. the guy knows who Ichigo is, and talks about Ichigo’s cautious nature. Then his badge falls from his bag. Ichigo is dreaming about his former comrades when he is woken up by his father. He almost falls out the window, and Ichigo almost makes him. Back in school, Ichigo is trying to get each sport to pay up for his services. He lands on the soccer team. Tatsuki Arisawa arrives, getting mocked by Ichigo for becoming the head of her dojo. Orihime Inoue notices Ichigo and Tatsuki, and slides down the drain pipe. They’re horrified, mainly because they can see up her skirt. After a conversation about Orihime’s theme music that leads to nowhere, Ichigo goes off to practice. That is, until the gang of the guy he beat up the day before, shows up looking for him. Uryu shows up, which makes the gang thing he’s Ichigo. This pisses off Uryu, who punches one of the gang members into a pole.

That guy that Ichigo helped the day before is walking into an apartment complex, where he goes into his super-secret hideout. When he puts in the right passcode, the words “Welcome to our Xcution” pops up. A middle aged man, a young guy, and a female teenage all sit at a bar. The girl asks the guy if he found “him.” He replies, saying that Uryu is an interesting fellow.

Man, oh, man was this boring. I know the season premiere was supposed to be just clean up and set up, but this was just bad. I blame part this to the fact that Tite Kubo can’t draw backgrounds to save his god damn life. All of the walls and buildings are nondescript, and the sky is just blue with white squiggly lines. Actually, everything except the characters have the bare minimum of detail. So, there’s that. Now we get into a problem that most Shonen main characters have, and that is “Oh man! The powers we just got won’t do anything to these guys! We need to get more powerful!” So, they get the deus ex machina technique, use it, and the world rejoices. With Bleach, it seems that Ichigo loses his powers as often as I eat. I’m a fatty, so that’s a lot of eating.

The episode is the requisite Shonen time jump, but luckily, it’s 17 months last year. I’ve tried to not say this, but what this show boils down to the fact that, “This is just DBZ with swords.” I hate to say it, because that kind of insults Dragon Ball Z. How the show has lasted 343 episodes, and the manga is still ongoing, baffles my mind. Maybe the show gets better towards the end? Who knows. At this point, these final 22 episodes feel tacked on, and make me feel like the show should have ended after Aizen.