Kubo Tite - Bleach, vol. 14 (Eng. trans.)

[oyceter]

Y'know, despite the obvious gender problems of the Soul Society arc, I'm still greatly enjoying it.

As a minor note, I have no qualms with Rukia's name, despite naming a (male) rat after her, largely because I call the rat Ruki all the time to avoid mental confusion.

However, I named Bya-chan and Renren before really getting a grip on Byakuya and Renji's characters in Bleach, so now every time I read "Byakuya" or "Renji," I think of my rats first.

This will make reading very interesting.

Also: Yoruichi!

Yoruichi is a girl!

Yoruichi is a dark-skinned girl!

EEEEEEEEE!

Of course, I don't quite understand why Yoruichi whisks Ichigo away to train him instead of just fighting Byakuya herself, but... oh well. I guess it would be out of the question to not let Ichigo fight the Great Dramatic Battle with the Heroine's Brother.

Thankfully, having Ichigo and Rukia together again meant some spark of life in Rukia. I loved the bickering about the rescue.

And... it's not really an "official" part of the manga, but the little sketches Kubo puts in about everyday life totally crack me up. Especially the ones with Karin's classmate doing her thing and interacting with Ichigo's insane friends and insane family.

Yay to Orihime doing cool fighty things! I really like her.

And the creepy captin of 12th (?) squad who experiments on people is... creepy. He reminds me of the sand guy in Hellboy.

Also, Ichigo is getting another power-up to his zanpaku-to? Hee! Why am I not surprised?

Comments

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I love Yoruichi! I think there is some vague mention that she can't fight Byakuya because her power is at a low level after being on vacation as a cat for years, while Ichigo has massive amounts of untapped power, but really it's that Ichigo is the hero, so Ichigo must personally fight Byakuya. Yoruichi gets a really great solo fight later on, though.

Ichigo's reunion with Rukia was indeed wonderful.

I am enjoying the Soul Society arc more as I re-read it than when I read it the first time, because I'm braced for the stuff I didn't like rather than having ti come as an unpleasant surprise. Also, I'm tracking the characters more on the second go-round.

[oyceter]

It's really weird, I don't actually have a hard time tracking the new characters (so far), unlike Naruto. rilina had a really good point in another comment, saying that Naruto has more distinctive character outfits, whereas Bleach has more distinctive character hairstyles/faces. Apparently, I pay much more attention to hairstyles/faces and don't get confused by the fact that everyone's in black gi and hakama.

[rilina.livejournal.com]

My Yoruichi icon is sadly out of season, but I'm using it anyway. Isn't she awesome?

I always had the impression that Yoruichi's particular skill set don't match up very well with Byakuya's attacks--and she would know what those were--and that's why she trained Ichigo to fight nstead. But honestly, I do think it's just shounen plot logic at work again.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Icon love!

[oyceter]

Eeeeee! Yoruichi!

I so need to make more Bleach icons.

[rilina.livejournal.com]

This icon's from a December color spread where characters from the recent popularity poll are dressed up for the winter. Four of them look like refugees from Dr Zhivago. It is awesome!

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

Yoruichi is SO AWESOME. Not as awesome as Rukia, although more awesome than Rukia in this plotline, but still SO AWESOME. And you haven't even gotten to the best Yoruichi bit yet.

AWESOME!

[oyceter]

I love Yoruichi SO MUCH! And eeeeeeee, more to look forward to!