One Perfect Moment: Hanataro Yamada

[morgana006]

I gave up on Bleach volumes ago. I get tired of the shonen habit of continually escalating power levels and length of battles.

I feel Bleach in particular lost its steam sometime during the Soul Society arc, and the repeating of the same basic plot ("must rescue the damsel in distress in alternate dimension from really powerful beings") is what made me abandon the title.

I'm saying this so that maybe you'll understand when I say that despite all this, this comic produced one of my favorite characters of all time.

His name is Hanataro Yamada.

I think, in order for you to understand his One Perfect Moment, I have to give you a couple of Not So Perfect Moments. First: his introductory scene (from volume 11).





That's right: Hanataro is a total wimp. In a series full of overpowered characters, Hanataro is one of the weakest. There is a definite possibility that he is the weakest Soul Reaper period.

Also of note is that Hanataro's Zanpaku-to (magic sword) is 1) the size of a spactula and 2) not with him.


Now compare and contrast with one of the introductory scenes of a certain Soul Reaper captain... (from volume 7)







....

Sorry, got distracted by the pretty art. Anyway, the man with the strange hair is Byakuya Kuchiki, and he's stronger and faster than you.


Do you see the level of competence I'm getting at here? This is necessary for you to truly understand the One Perfect Moment for Hanataro Yamada.

This is from Volume 14 chapter 116 (52 pages long, btw - I'm only posting 6)

So Ichigo, the main character had been running around with Ganju and Hanataro to rescue Rukia Kuchiki, and getting caught in a fight he sent them on ahead of them. But it turns out that Ganju recognizes Rukia... and not very pleased. They're interrupted by the arrival of the guy who captured Rukia in the first place - Byakuya.


_{Uh, the text in the bottom right looks more cut off than it is. "Byakuya Kuchiki... so he's..."}






There's going up against impossible odds that smug Hans Solo-esque protagonists gleefully run into, and there's going up against something that terrifies the weakest character in the cast, who continues anyway because it's the right thing to do.

That is why Hanataro is one of my favorite characters in anything.

_{By the way, Ganju shoves Hanataro out of the way and takes the beating, in possibly his perfect moment that I felt very guilty about cutting.}

Comments

[mullon]

For the days when Bleach still had credibility.

[btravage]

I'm sorry but a One Perfect Moment for Hanataro has to involve a maid uniform.

[morgana006]

What is this maid uniform you speak of?

[btravage]

Oh nothing, just my imagination.

[arilou_skiff]

Yes. Yes indeed.

"True courage does not mean not being afraid, but doing what you have to do regardless."

Spoiler warning for recent chapters.

[platedlizard]

You might be pleased to know that the Karakura Crew are back, including Don Kanoji and Afro-san (the Shinigami who took over Karakura after Rukia and Ichigo), as well as Ichigo's high school friends. Last week Mizuiro threw a Molotov cocktail at Aizen. It did nothing of course, but it was still pretty badass.

Re: Spoiler warning for recent chapters.

[morgana006]

Nice.

I've been absentmindedly spoiling myself for Bleach for a while, not like, looking for spoilers or anything but mostly just ignoring spoiler warnings if I run into them, in the hope that maybe it's gotten better.

Major spoilers. Delete this notification if you don't want to read them!

[platedlizard]

I think it got better in the last three chapters, simply because the Battle of Fake-Karakura is fiiiiiinaly over. Ichigo's training (well, duh) with Isshin helping him. Aizen broke through to the real Karakura where he encountered Tatsuki and Keigo, whom we haven't see in, like, three or four years. Keigo is saved by Tatsuki, Tatsuki is saved by Don Kanoji, Don Kanoji is saved by Matsumoto. Matsumoto has a fight with Gin which is over quickly as she's still injured from the Battle of Fake-Karakura. She may or may not be dead (IMO Gin put her down temporarily because she's too injured to really challenge him and Aizen and he didn't want her killed. But other fans think she looks dead-ish, so yeah). While that happened Aizen pursued the humans. They run into Mizurio who took the opportunity of almost everyone in town being unconscious to do some survival-looting. Aizen appears and yeah, Molotov cocktail FTW. (I'm hung up on that one because that's the first time in a loooong time we've seen a real world weapon deployed in this series. It didn't hurt Aizen but it did distract him for, like, a second or two) At some point before that Keigo steals Afro-san's zanpaku-to. Afro-san finds them when they're cornered by Aizen again and takes his sword back before using his shikai to distract Aizen for a whole three seconds this time so everyone can runaway and then Gin shows up looking really unhappy.

Basically we have the weakest and most ordinary characters in the series vs. the strongest character and they aren't being killed outright. Which is amazing, especially after this series's continual powerupping of all the other major characters. Aizen is basically almost god-level now, and he still hasn't caught them. (mind, he's probably toying with them for the hell of it)

Re: Major spoilers. Delete this notification if you don't want to read them!

[morgana006]

Okay, do want?

At the same time, I'm thinking "Bleach is so fubar".

Re: Major spoilers. Delete this notification if you don't want to read them!

[platedlizard]

Trust me, I am waiting for it to start sucking again. That'll probably be about the time Ichigo finishes training. But right now Tatsuki! Keigo! Mizurio! Don Freakin' Kanoji! It's almost as good as pre-Soul Society.

Re: Major spoilers. Delete this notification if you don't want to read them!

[nefrekeptah]

Oh, I wouldn't go that far. See, Matsumodo and Gin don't fight; there's been a subplot building for a while now about the history those two apparently share; it's even been hinted that Matsumodo has feelings for Gin. So the two finally confront each other face to face and we finally see what several years of vague hints and foreshadowing were leading to - and he stabs her. Off-panel. And then he leaves. Off-panel.

Yeah, it may have gotten a little better, but some parts are still kinda sucky. Oh, and Aizen continues to be an all-powerful, all-knowing cardboard cutout.

Re: Major spoilers. Delete this notification if you don't want to read them!

[platedlizard]

Well, to be honest I never really cared about that subplot so seeing it go kaput wasn't a big deal for me. I suspect its not over though. Gin aways seemed like such a huge dick to me that I never understood why Matsumoto and Kira looked up to him so much. Him stabbing her was like yeah, that's Gin. At least Aizen and Tousen you could see where people were coming from.

What made me really happy was that little speach by Kanoji about hoe heros shouldn't riun away (and sacrifice someone else in doing so) because little kids looked up to them. Minor character developement FTW!

I agree 100% about Aizen, he's really starting to piss me off.

Art style.

[nefrekeptah]

Is it just me, or has Bleach's art style gotten more - "same-y" as it's gone on?

You look at Ichigo and Byakuya here, and they look nothing alike, but it seems like more recently, they look much more similar.

Re: Art style.

[platedlizard]

It's not just you. Their noses have all but disappeared too. On capslock_bleach they talk about how 'anorexic' a lot of the characters look now, especially Ichigo and Aizen. No bulk to them at all.

Re: Art style.

[morgana006]

That's a shame. Early Bleach is one of my favorite manga art styles. (Then again, I like CLAMP's "noodle people" so...)

[persoconchii]

ahhh Bleach...
remember when Orihime was actually ditzy but awesome, instead of just lame?

the "battle that takes up 4+ volumes" is pure shounen manga syndrome, but ya know what? "Swing the Pendulum Back" chapters were A+! (and then I dropped the series again)

[silverzeo]

Why is almost everyone in the soul society is a douche and only a 10th of them are respectably good?