I talked to somebody who loved Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu so much that he hasn’t watched anything else after watching ShnY. He said that everything else just loses its luster when compared to an anime like that. Of course, being your resident Haruhi Suzumiya devil’s advocate, I disagree with him. I do, however, know of the feeling and totally understand it. And of course, you know of the anime I’m talking about: Honey and Clover.
Simply put, everything else just exudes a dim light compared to the radiance of that show. About a year ago, I loved Bleach for its sheer action and the exhilaration it brought me, because every episode has fights accompanying it. Then, fast forward to about two months ago, I discovered Honey and Clover, and I have re-watched it two times already and will do so for about three more times.
Is it because Honey and Clover is just a really good anime, or has Bleach deteriorated with its storyline? The answer, I think, is a combination of both. A lot of people who have watched H&C (except for Hinano, perhaps) have loved it. I love it very much as well. Human nature, the goodness of man, the responsibilities and trials of love and friendship – this is the visual romance novel that puts a lot of emphasis with the passage of time, and deals with something not normally dealt with in anime: unrequited love. Among the best parts of being a romantic is reading or experiencing visually the phenomenon of unrequited love. Both the pain and suffering is often tempered with an unswerving hope for the best that one is just amazed with the people enduring this – and a lot are, everyday. How the characters evolve through time and how their flux of relationships with one another shows their dynamism with one another is simply a joy to watch.
Bleach, however, with the start of the filler arc, did some self-flagellation. The inventive story that was once there on souls and spirits, and the copiousness of action often invited a lot of viewers. Right now, however, it has become only a money-making merchandise, and the magic of the story has been slowly lost because they’ve concentrated on the fighting and only on the fighting that they’ve forgotten the very important part of character development. Though shounen may be formulaic, it doesn’t give them the power to throw character development out of the window or is it an excuse for them not to develop their characters. Adachi’s works are often shounen, but I can assure you that if somebody told you Touch or Hiatari Ryoukou didn’t develop its characters, that someone deserves a kick in the ass. Although lacking in visual whoop-ass animation, these hone and make the characters evolve into something anthropomorphically believable – that is, the actions of the main characters in this series aren’t necessarily smart or wise, but they’re totally believable in the real world context. This character development is what I was looking for when I downloaded and watched the 89th episode of Bleach.
My expectations fell really flat. I mean really flat.
One of the reasons why I kept watching Bleach for some time after the 45th episode was that I was half-expecting Nemu, as a character, to be developed as the pair of Ishida. Although it may seem to be over-reading (and it most definitely is), I was touched with their interaction in the short moments that they talked to one another. I was really hoping for Nemu this time around to stop being a doormat and express what she feels towards Ishida. (I really did see her becoming infatuated with Ishida. It must have been the look on her face.) Instead, we see her speak a few lines that deserve to be linked with words like ‘automaton,’ ‘robot,’ or ‘doormat.’ This is just an example; there are a lot of other instances where a minor character could at least be developed a little further, make him or her at least a little more human, but I guess with the way Kubo Tite doesn’t even develop his main characters much, I’m just going to dream of a day where Nemu would say that she likes Ishida. I guess that is a far-fetched possibility, however, because there’s Yoshino. Still, I hope that Nemu could at least console Ishida or at least talk about something other than Quincies and powers.
I’m still hoping for good things to happen next week, but I don’t expect much. There’s always a good episode of Honey and Clover hanging around to launder the dirt away.
July 22, 2006 at 11:59 am
Lol. That’s the problem with people who have a smaller range of tastes. It just destroys your own anime career.
It actually depends on your own personality, so your friend is pretty unlucky.
Even if I watch Last Exile and think it’s the greatest thing since .. Gatekeepers, I can just switch over to Inukami and still utterly enjoy it. Or Bokura ga Ita, or Chevalier or anyone other genre. I don’t have the habit of making too much comparison so even if I watch something amazing, my enjoyment of the other shows won’t really decrease. I’ll just feel a lot happier to have caught the great show.
July 22, 2006 at 8:01 pm
I’m with TJ, if you’re always comparing, you’ll never appreciate something on its own merits.
The whole Nemu thing is just your imagination. Her role is to emphasis how deranged her father is, not to have a love affair with Ishida.
July 22, 2006 at 8:15 pm
I enjoy Kamisama Kazoku. Don’t get me wrong, I think H&C’s beyond comprehension, but I watch a lot of other anime. I don’t have a small range of tastes – that should be obvious with me watching Ergo Proxy. I appreciated Bleach once, but seriously – is character development something too much to hope for? I believe I am not the only IshidaxNemu shipper, especially back at ep44-45. (But I have a very simple reason why I don’t view too much anime – my HD space is dwindling at a breakneck pace.)
Believe me, I thought she was going to be something more than a doormat. Silent waters run deep, and that was what I believed in. Her silence was very effective in convincing me what may not have been there. In no way, however, as you suppose it to be, is it absurd.
July 22, 2006 at 10:46 pm
Nemu… XD
Well, your thoughts are kinda cute, but don’t forget that there have been much more than 150 characters introduced by name (!). Including those from the Anime it’s probably around 200 already.
With that many, there will always be characters who are underdeveloped and will stay like that forever. Just look at Hinata in Naruto, she’s just a constantly neglected side-show, even though she’s definitely in love with Naruto for years now ;_;
The greatness of Bleach lies in the complex and well-thought-out story (In the Manga, at least) and the fact that, even though Kubo Tite invented a lot more characters in a very very short amount of time than other mangaka do in their whole life, every character has enough depth that the readers can really feel with them. Nemu, for example
July 23, 2006 at 5:33 am
>>I talked to somebody who loved Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu so much that he hasn’t watched anything else after watching ShnY.
Try living with people who’ll have your uts if you say one bad thing about Haruhi. Thankfully, I know enough self-defense skills to protect myself (the trick is to forget about defending yourself and start thinking about killing your foe).
July 23, 2006 at 5:19 pm
I think the problem with SHnY lies in the way it was set up. The disjointed storyline was, at times, almost unbearably confusing. Now, after I’ve seen the series and read some of the novel, I can understand the cleverness in what they were trying to do there. But ultimately I think it lost some people because of that.
As for Bleach, I have to agree about the fillers. They’re horribly formula and it’s been a shame to watch a series that was so out of the box fall into one. But I think you’re blaming the wrong person here. Kubo Tite does the manga, he’s not responsible for the anime except for the character design. The filler scripts are all Pierrot’s doing.
I think it’s worse for the people who are reading the manga, that later half after the Soul Society arc is the best in the series. So watching the anime week after week (or in this case week after every other week) is just soul killing with all the things they’ve added in and taken out. It’s for that reason and that reason alone that I really don’t want any character development to happen during the filler episodes–it’s too dangerous. To play around with the plot like that will just soil the future progression of the story that Kubo had already planned out.
July 24, 2006 at 2:53 am
Alas, that is the one reason why I hate fillers. They’re perfect for extra character insight that may not have made it into the original story or manga. However, but Bleach and Naruto have none of that in their fillers, and that’s the main reason why they fall flat, as you’ve said. I myself don’t read the manga for either Bleach or Naruto (because I’m the type of person that wouldn’t watch the anime anymore if I did, and I’ve come to prefer watching action rather than sifting through still pictures), but even I can see from a mile away that the show is falling apart and breaking people’s hearts.
The biggest problem is the fact that in shounen shows, you either have power development, or character development. However, you can’t have the characters gain more powers or you’ll deviate from the main story (unless it’s a one time use power) and you can’t have character development as it may ruin the original flow of the story. So then the problem lies in the fact that you can’t have filler in the middle of any story and have it be enjoyable.
Now I realize I’ve been repeating myself a number of times. I’m just so frustrated with both shows that I can go on and on and on about it without thinking.
July 24, 2006 at 10:51 am
Damn Guys! i would like to say a good word for fillers!
!)
-)
Yeah – do not predent to hard misheard! Reallers are really cool! and i explain why-
My first anime was Hellsing and it was cool.
Then i was out of the stream but after sometime i thought that it was time look for something new and DAMN! the things by what i was caught like a mosquito on the trap or a mouse on the f*** cheese was naruto. well….there were something other then was bleach – bleach was a little better but then – God bless that day – fillers in Naruto came out and fillers in Bleach too and i finally realized how much crappy was the whole serial (both of them ) just only because i began to watch for other anime and found something really priceless — well like H&C ergo proxy or some othe older stuff.
Even an insight on Manga (Blame! rulez!
so thank to fillers in naruto and bleach i got free from thier greedly grasp and began a surf on more.. well not all good anime is intellectual at any rate of course but at least a more prof made – music/desing/drawing etc.
that’s my half joke story
P/S the first thing that i did when i really understood everything about that thing was to delete all anime and manga series of naruto and bleach (well.. bleach manga is still worth to be alive — sometimes it is even pretty hehehe)
Have a Good day )
August 4, 2006 at 2:51 pm
Well, yes, the fillers really are pathetic, but I suppose it could have been done better, but then again, it had to be done anyways. No one notices that the anime has about 2-4 manga episodes in it, so they have to make the manga go forward so that it doesn’t catch up. Same with naruto. But putting all that aside, ill make 2 statements.
1. They could’ve made the fillers more interesting.
2. The anime is worth watching because it has alot of upcoming twists, such as, regarding hollow ichigo from episode 59 and from the lame filler where he fought the fat bounto, he finds out that there is a group called viazards (army of mask) with like 8 ppl trying to recruit him and so forth, you learn about Aizen’s plan (i will not kid you here, this is a great part, he has like an army of half hollow, half shinigami) and in the last manga chapter, while ichigo is in bed from injuries in a battle, aizen had one of his guys visit inoue, and put a time bomb sort of thing on her and she has 12 hours to say bye to 1 person, and she goes to ichigo while he’s asleep and says she loves him, almost kisses him and cries. (Im waiting tomorrow and saturday for the next chapter, cant wait to see). But really, download the manga at bleachportal.net or bleach7.com and you will see its worth the wait.
September 27, 2006 at 12:25 pm
Hi everybody i want to know when the fillers of bleach will be over >.
May 12, 2007 at 7:42 pm
Fillers at episode 40? GAAA! I thought they started at 26 when they arrived in the Soul Society. The nice plot before when we were learning about the other world was replaced by fight after fight, lasteing an episode and where there was lame-banter lame-banter lame-banter, swing, then more lame-banter. The story got sooooooooooo slloooooooow.
We also lost those wonderfully quirkly characters from the Earth world, to be replaced with a army of 1 dimensional guys with bad haircuts.
I though Bleach would be a great series, but in the end it really screwed the pooch. They’ll still make money though. It’s so popular they can get away with it.
Meanwhile check out ‘Claymore’. In 1 episodes they covered more than 10 episodes of Bleach. And I’m not exaggerating!!!
April 24, 2008 at 7:58 pm
personally romance is only a small part of the mangas and animes i watch, it really doesn’t bother me. i watch animes for action and imagination and romance genrally takes away those aspects. Bleach isnt designed for adult readers thats why its in shounen therefore romance would be wasted on the majority of readers, i think you just get to carried away, especially with nemu. you do realise she has poison coaresing through her body?
May 15, 2008 at 6:13 am
The reason that bleach goes from awesome to boring, awesome to boring, awesome to boring, is because the episodes start catching up with the manga so they throw fillers in to give the manga a good gap in time and get back to the good parts.