Back to von2001's Profile von2001's Profile

Vinland Saga season 2 is a prime example as to not every anime (looking at you Shonen) needs to have action. I'm a Shonen fan myself but I've seen so many toxic average Naruto, JJK, and demon slayer fans downplay this season because simply put: "it has no action." I see people calling this season "farming simulator." Average Shonen fanboys loves their mind-blowing action every 5 seconds huh, but they can't acknowledge the great storytelling and character development of almost every single mainline character. In season 2, they can no longer see their one-dimensional killing machine Thorfinn wrecking shit up. Instead they see a depressed ... slave who ends up having one of the best character developments I ever seen from a show in general.

Somebody get Kubo out the damn kitchen. As if cour 1 wasn't a banger, this cour really exceeded my expectations. Just the new anime exclusive scenes and extended fights that weren't in the manga was so amazing. I think I said this in my cour 1 review but it's one of the understatements of the decade to say the anime did the manga justice. I think I also said this whole new season is way better than og bleach even though I love og bleach.

Story:

The wandenreich launches another invasion on the soul society during the gotei 13's recovery from the previous invasion. Meanwhile ichigo trains ... with the leader of squad zero ichibe hyosube after learning about the origins of his mother and who "zangetsu" truly is. Uryu joins the sternwritters and aims to learn more about his heritage.

Art:

I don't think there's a whole lot to say about the art. It's just beautiful in every shape and form just like cour 1. Obviously the art in this entire new season so far is the best bleach has looked. The red sky is pretty controversial especially for manga readers, but I thought it fit the tone of this arc. In the manga, it's a dark gray sky with a couple clouds. Just by looking at the art, it makes me want a remake of the original anime despite the the original being great as it is.

Fights and Animation:

Great animation and fights overall. Even the minor fights like toshiro vs bazz b had solid animation but nothing groundbreaking. I've seen this minor trend of people call bleach's animation a "slideshow" which I find delusional. I will admit there are parts of the animation that looks like a "slideshow" but the character's power up effects and the colors overall make up for it just like cour 1. Don't know what exactly what anime they're watching. Anyway my personal fav fight in this cour is rukia vs as nodt. The squad zero fight in the last 3 episodes were phenomenal but personally my favorite is definitely rukia's iconic fight with nodt.

Characters:

Also not a whole not to say about the characters. Both the good and bad side are still the same characters from the last cour fighting for the fate of the world.

Conclusion:

Just overall a fantastic anime adaption of this cour from the Pierrot staff team. So far this might be the best work the studio has ever done. Cour 3 finna be a banger next year. Such a pleasure to have Tite Goatbo part of the production crew so he can fix his issues that he had in the thousand year blood war manga. Not only is this my favorite anime season of 2023, but my favorite season of any anime I've watched. COOK KUBO COOK!!

In all honestly I think from what I saw so far, I think this first season alone is way better than the entirety of the original bleach. I love original bleach but the more I rewatch this season, the more I praise it. The overall quality when it comes to the characters, animation, soundtrack, and the artstyle is just too damn perfect. I was never around at the time the manga ended in 2016 but I remember people back then said that the anime wasn't coming back, bleach is dead, the final arc won't get animated. During winter of 2021 , we get our first ... new trailer for the new thousand year blood war anime and my gosh does it look so damn good. It was announced it that the new season was coming out in October 2022. I've heard that Tite Kubo is behind the production of the this new bleach anime. Now I'm reviewing this amazing season and boy was it tasty. I've been drinking the hell out of bleach for 2 years and to this day I'll never get tired of it.

Art:

It's such a huge understatement to say that the art was a massive improvement over the original 2004 anime. Not saying the original was bad by any means but the new art completely clears the original. It makes me appecirtate kubo's valiant efforts even more to give us bleach fans what we deserve. We've been thirsty for more bleach for years after all.

Characters:

We still have our same and good ol' karakura gang we've known for years fighting to protect each other for the sake of the human world. Our beloved substitute soul reaper Ichigo, our beautiful orange-haired orihime, chad, and uryu. The iconic gotei 13 also still remain what they were for 20 years and that's fight to protect the soul society. In this arc we get introduced to a new faction called the wandenreich army, who are next-level quincy's with new abilities we've never seen before that are infinitely stronger than uryu.

Story:

Our new antagoinst Yhwach and his quincy army known as the wandenreich quickly storms in the head captain's office sending a message that they were going to declare war on the soul society and to set a example, they killed the head captain yammamoto's lieutenant and killed numerous other shinigami. They even set an example by killing many hollows in Hueco Mundo. Basically the rivals of the shinigami and quincy never get along because of shinigami killing hollow so the souls can be sent to the soul society but the quincy decides to kill the hollows because it's kind of like a disease to them. The karakura gang except for Uryu, who is the fishy one of the show, travels across the garganta to hueco mundo to save the remaining surviving hollows. Yhwach takes advantage of that by sending his sternritter crew to invade the soul society but the gotei 13 are not down for the count yet. Ichigo eventually heads to the soul society to protect his comrades from the destruction of the Seritei.

Animation:

Not only is the animation an improvement over the original, but also it's very gory compared to the original. If I had one special early Christmas present, I would love for a remake of original bleach. Me speaking as a bleach fan, I do wish that the original was as gory as the new season. Even the manga is way gory than the original anime it's not even close. The color effects of both the quincy and the gotei 13 are so damn beautiful. There are still some stiff shots just like the original but the colors and special effect in general do make up for it.

Conclusion:

This is easily the best this show has ever looked. I really do love the war setting of this show. It's dark, gory, serious most of the time, and there's insane plot twists as the series goes on. Any die hard bleach fan that watches this will have an amazing time. I will say the pacing is sorta fast towards the beginning which people won't be a fan of, but kubo did state he was going to be cutting most of the comedic moments and others that he thinks, I thought the pacing was fine. He did say as well that he's adding new anime exclusives and extending plot points that wasn't explained enough in the manga which is a massive w. I have very high expectations that the thousand year blood war arc will do justice for the manga.

This is my first review, so please forgive me for my errors.

Where do I begin with this show huh? First off I want to start by saying that this show is damn near flawless. I say damn near flawless even though I'm giving this show a 10 excluding the fillers with some being an exception. This show is both a popular Shonen and at the same time I feel like it's criminally underrated. Me speaking as a massive bleach fan who's been drinking bleach for 2 years, like others we consider this show to be the worst of the big three. Ngl this show is ... my favorite of the big three

Shinigami Arc,

Some people like me consider this the worst arc in the bleach anime but I don't think this arc wasn't that bad.

Ichigo is just your average teenage student school in high school born with a power to see ghosts. Rukia shows up and hands ichigo her soul reaper powers and Ichigo vows to protect his friends and family. Later on we get to know about the likes of uryu, orihime, and chad as the arc progresses. Rukia eventually forces herself to get captured by her childhood friend renji and her brother byakuya for the crimes of giving a human soul reaper abilities, and of course it's up to ichigo and his friends to save her from being executed after their training with kisuke.

Soul Society Arc:

Honestly as much as I kinda get annoyed this take that people like to say when it comes to this show, I do think that the Soul Society Arc is the best arc and one of the best arcs in Shonen. I say that because everytime I come across a take about this show, they say that "Bleach falls off after soul society" or "Bleach takes a nosedive after the first 63 episodes." I find those kind of takes very delusional.

So during this arc, Ichigo learns how to maintain his soul reaper powers as he meets yoruichi and makes contact with his sword spirit zangetsu. The karakura gang rushes to the Soul society on their way to save rukia. In order to do that, they must encounter countless shinigami including the captains and lieutenants. A huge plot twist gets revealed during this arc that no one expected was gonna happen.

Arrancar Arc:

Like I said I find this take delusional as I see many people even on this site say this show falls off after ichigo saves rukia. I do kind of see it but I still disagree nonetheless. If you want to say because of the fillers ruin the pacing of this show then sure. LIsten no one is forcing you to watch the garbage known as the bount and the new captain arc. I'll admit I did make the mistake of watching those bs fillers myself thinking they were canon because I personally never heard of fillers. That's my only bad thing I'll say about this show. However I do think the second half of the filler arcs are better and even the animation I found to way better most of the time than the mainline story arcs as crazy as that sounds.

We start off the arc with ichigo and friends returning to their high school days until ichigo encounters with shinji, who just like ichigo is a soul reaper has a strange hollow mask that grants him hollow powers. Shinji wants ichigo to join his vizard crew to train him on how to master his hollow powers. After that we get introduced to these new level of hollows called arrancars, who are basically hollows that look like humans and they also have swords. So pretty much they're soul reaper captain level. As the arc goes on Ichigo learns to control his hollow powers as he continues to fight to save his friends.

Fullbring Arc:

This arc is very controversial because of it taking place after ichigo defeats Aizen, the main antagonist of Bleach and people consider it canon filler. Personally while it isn't one pf my favorite arcs in the show, I still enjoyed it nonetheless.

After ichigo loses his soul reaper powers from his battle with aizen, he spends his normal life as a high school student as a full year flows by. Out of nowhere a fullbringer name ginjo see ichigo and tells him that he'll be able to get his powers back if he joins his crew of fullbrings, who are basically regular humans who uses normal objects to release out their soul abilities.

Conclusion:

This is honestly my second favorite anime of all time behind dragon ball (mainly Z). Tite Kubo's character art style is my favorite of any anime I've seen. The art style in the manga is better but the anime version is still great. I will do a review on the first and second cour of the new thousand year blood war anime. Like I said it's not a perfect show despite me giving it a high score but my biggest reason of liking the hell out of this show is because of it's drip and it's fights. I do like the story as well. Kubo is known to have the most sauciest characters in anime. I will forever drink bleach until the ends of the earth.