Bleach Series Finale

[informationgeek]

It's weird but... it's time to say goodbye to another big manga series that's been running for years now. Time to say goodbye to Bleach!


Here's some key moments from the last two chapters that are work looking at.



We look at Bleach 685: The End of Flawlessness...








Onto to Bleach 686: Death & Strawberry.







Ichigo: Orihime, it's starting!






There's more, including meeting both of the kids, but that's for another time.

And so my friends, Bleach has ended... what did you think?

Comments

[locuatico]

It must really stink to bleach fans that it got cancelled like this. But honestly, the dead set passing it had developed had really hurt it. That being said: [insert boruto joke here]

[lbd_nytetrayn]

Oh, really? It was cancelled? I thought the author was just done with it.

[locuatico]

See, the odd thing about that is... He could have ended the series a few chapters before the sudden wrap-up happened by simply having ichigo win that fight with yhwach... But he didn't.
Chapter 685 actually begins with a character saying "some people can't deal with my passing".
To that you count bleach's decrease in sales and the fact the ending of bleach had been announced 4 years and 200 chapters ago (for comparison sake, One piece's dress Rosa arc, the longest One piece arc to date, took 100 chapters to develop in it's entirety) and I think it is not unreasonable to assume Kubo was told by jump that he was taking too long and he did not have the sales to back him anymore.

[mizerous]

Who is the Soul King?
What happened to quite a few characters: Urahara, Yourichi, Nelliel, Grimmjow, and Harribel.
Why is the world fine without the Soul King?

[locuatico]

I heard a theory that says they may have allowed Aizen to take the position.
I would assume Urahara and the rest survived and Harribel is still chained slowly starving to death.

[sarahnewlin]

Its just......blah. Like Naruto.

Rangiku deserves better

[locuatico]

Naruto at least had Boruto taking over and continuing the story. as far as we know, this is supposed to be the definitive final chapter for reals of the series.

[informationgeek]

Rangiku is alright (which is good, since she was one of my favorite female characters in the series with Rukia being my favorite). She popped up briefly in the second to last chapter alive and well. So there is that.

[sindra]

Yeeeeeeah, we were discussing this a few days ago. It's painfully obvious either Shonen Jump told Kubo "wrap it the hell up" or Kubo hit the fatigue wall hard and just needed to throw an ending together. To have such a truncated ending to something built up like this last arc was....I still have no idea what the heck went down.

Too many unanswered questions and loose ends for my liking. It'd be nice if we got some supplemental material. Maybe the anime will expand on things a bit more? Blah.

[thehood]

Didn't the anime end years ago?

[zechs80]

Yeah the anime ended years ago. Though I think they're going the live-action movie route with the series now. ... Oh dear there's gonna be A LOT of material cut.

[sindra]

Ugggh....shows what I know. I just saw stuff coming out and assumed the series was still going.

So basically a proper ending is a no-go either way. =/

[locuatico]

I think it may have been a combination of sales going down and... Well... Me assuming when he was told "take your time" it was done with the understandng it wasn't supposed to take over 200 chapters to actually finish.

[speedingtortoise]

I had always hoped that Rukia and Inchigo would end up together. Bummer.

[sindra]

It would have been a bit odd if they had. They both ended up with their besties, which is a lot more believable. (Though I always did sway back and forth if I wanted Orihime to go with Ichigo or Ishida.....in the end it made the most sense she go with Ichigo as he's the one she wanted to protect the most)

[speedingtortoise]

See, I always thought that Ichigo and Orihime actually didn't seem to have that great of chemistry. To me, she was always the planned love interest who was destined to be with the hero but who didn't actually click with him that well. However, I'll admit that it's been a few years since I last read Bleach, so I could be forgetting some key details or there could have been later arcs that better developed the Ichigo and Orihime relationship.

[zechs80]

I am so glad I jumped ship when Aizen was FINALLY beaten and consider "Fade to Black" the best sort of ending. If I had continued reading this I would so have been SEVERELY ticked off at this ending the way it did.

I can only imagine what any fans who endured felt like after reading this. I'd assume a huge rage was unleashed.

I wonder what happened to Mayuri? I'm guessing he didn't survive?

[locuatico]

He survived

[sindra]

Yeah he's in the last chapter.

[bj_l]

Because of course he did. *rolls eyes* How many characters were actually killed off in this series (excluding the ultimately disposable villains)?

[locuatico]

In the last arc? 4. One of whom no-one gave a crap about.

[janegray]

I used to really, really enjoy Bleach when it started.

Then it ditched half the cast to introduce like 20 new characters. Then, just as some of them were starting to undergo some genuine character development, Kubo ditches half of them again and introduces 20 more characters. Then he does it again, and again and again.

Massively huge and ever increasing cast with increasingly shallow characterization. I ended up dropping the series when I realized that I didn't care about 99% of the cast anymore because they were hardly more than cameos.

For old times' sake though, I'd like to know what happened to Kon.

[locuatico]

Mayuri kidnapped him, did some experiments to give him the ability to make his body bigger (as in, he gets muscles) and... that's it... didn't die, didn't suffer anything he just... appeared again, was completely inconsequential to everything going on and then he just... did not appear again. I would complain but honestly? he got more screentime than some supposedly "important" characters.

[jaybee3]

Mayuri's really became a creator's pet. He's never damaged in any fight, Nemu gives her life for him, and despite the fact the tortured people (like Ishida's grandfather), killed his own men (the first time he appears) for the EVULZ, he gets off in the end like a karma houdini. Another sign of Kubo's flaws as a writer.

[locuatico]

I don't personally think Mayuri is a Creator's pet (i think that is Aizen, but that's another story). I think Mayuri is supposed to have changed throughout the series from an evil guy to still being morally disgusting, but now trying to help soul society. the real problem ,i think, is that Kubo has problems actually showing character development and instead he has the characters going "you have changed"... without actually showing HOW they have changed.
If i were to compare, Orochimaru's arc in Naruto was handled a lot better (even though it is still headscratching how much he gets away with in the end), his character development after he re-appeared again did seem to imply he had a change in his views (and Boruto further shows this)

[deepspaceartist]

With Orochimaru, he did play a pretty important role in saving the world as well as saved the lives of the five Kage. I always figured that doing that buys you a lot of forgiveness, as long as you don't go right back to your evil ways.

[lb_lee]

I only read the first few volumes of this, and remember virtually nothing except I liked Chad.

I'm glad that he survived the whole series, at least! *waves little Chad flag* Yay Chad!