Bleach is so damn cool
Been so long since the last pregame that Barbenheimer came and went. I watched 1982's Deathtrap recently though! Fantastic little thriller-comedy, highly recommended. All about Hickman and Checchetto Miracleman-ing Spidey, and I'm not familiar with Momoko's writing but giving her free reign to make X-Men whatever she wants is the exact right move for this type of thing. And This Is How You Lose The Time War finally arrived from the library, so at last I can get back to reading novels.
It's bizarre how long it's taken me to get going with this particular essay - it's not that the subject matter is obtuse or I have some particular idiosyncratic take on it. A malaise of sorts seems to have overtaken me of late, leaving me out of practice...which is why YOU should head over to Patreon to vote in my first poll on my next essay, outsourcing my executive dysfunction and forcing my continued effort and evolution lest I transform from sparsely-seen intellectual to shiftless asshole not making good on the money I'm making!
Anyway Bleach is cool as shit. I hear it goes way up its own ass but lemme tell ya: I do not see myself having a problem with that.
An important distinction: I was a Dragon Ball kid, not a general manga kid. I've picked up significantly more as of late; Ayashimon is gone too soon, I'm giving Choujin X a bit to see if it grows on me, and Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou is every bit the classic I'd heard. But while I have a most profound love of the basic concept of two people with incredible skill yelling at each other so hard the surroundings begin to explode, I missed out growing up on the big three of Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece. I gave Naruto six volumes several years ago and concluded 'this is good but not so good I wanna read 60+ more', only to watch its fortunes begin to fade with the coming of Boruto while the subject of today's essay began its own popular reassessment. One Piece I have accepted will ultimately crash upon the shores of my life like a pitiless storm - too many people I know refuse me any alternative - but that day isn't today, friends. Today was long in the making, mostly thanks to conversations with friend of Primary Color Horizons Ritesh Babu, and the occasions they would mention Bleach, whereas I would bring up this:
...and each would inevitably reply to the other 'wait that's just like that bit from Kingdom Hearts/Bleach!' Each revolves around someone gifted a magical sword that is personalized to the wielder but requires one dive within to the depths of themselves, so as to battle increasingly-anthropomorphic creatures born from the remains of the metaphysical components of lost humans, though the real threats turn out to be other sword folks. They also debuted within months of one another, like two-dudes-and-a-girl trios, love to intersperse kinda-poetry with only the vaguest connections to the narrative, Bleach I understand turns out to be fighting God while the in-development sequel arc is apparently about fighting the Devil whereas Kingdom Hearts has you fight what amounts to the Devil and seems to be gearing up to have you fight God in the next series, and they're both PROFOUNDLY products of a '00s aesthetic for what being a cool teen going on cool mythic anime adventures looks like. Just as Ritesh is one of the only people on the planet I would recommend Kingdom Hearts to, I realized Bleach was in my future. I needed to understand what was in the air in the early 00s.
For those who haven't read: the series stars Ichigo Kurosaki, a delinquent high schooler who by wild chance becomes a 'substitute' Soul Reaper. Able to detach his spirt from his body and enter a world where he can use a special, personal blade known as a Zanpakutō, he battles Hollows, husks of souls unable to move on from the mortal world who prey on the living. From there are familial shenanigans, emotional breakthroughs, a turf war with a rival breed of Hollow-hunter, and the series' inaugural mega-arc involving a perilous journey and series of high-stakes battles through the Soul Society, home of the Soul Reapers, for the life of a friend.
I'll admit I'm like Ichigo giving folks nicknames because he can't remember their names; past a certain point I can't really keep up with who's who in this beyond the core handful of him, Rukia, Orihime (one of my favorite character debuts in anything ever), Chad, and...Quincy guy, who isn't named Quincy, see there you go right there. I know for instance white hair guy is mad about the betrayal of glasses guy and is gonna do a crazy attack but then glasses guy casually counters with a MEGA-crazy attack and it's the sickest thing I've ever seen. And you know what? I'm okay with that.
That's not to say there's no emotional heft to anything happening here! Moment-to-moment I'm deeply engrossed, these folks are endearing and they get properly put through the wringer; it doesn't to continue the previous comparison have the raw overemotive punch of Kingdom Hearts, but without the need to service a corporate master it can go way further in on its own tone and pet concerns. There's struggle and betrayal and triumph and tragedy and all the good stuff. But the macroscale 'where's everybody going' matters less, moment-to-moment, than how cool this is.
Now in this day and age, that sounds like a petty compliment at best. 'Cool' is passable. 'Cool' is an aesthetic. 'Cool' is the minimum asking price. And that Bleach's idea of cool is from 20 years ago - this pulls MULTIPLE 'I'm on my last legs and can't win...but I made a promise for a friend' victories in a row - means it pulls narrative devices with a straight face you'd never get away with in a million years now, even if it has some 'this was back before we started poking self-aware holes in those' tonal shielding keeping it from making a mockery of itself. Even Kenpachi, the coolest character in here, would be a complete gag if introduced today (he can't unlock his soul to harness his true power like the other fighters...BECAUSE HIS SOUL RAGES TOO FIERCELY).
But what Bleach serves to remind us all is that cool isn't a device. You can't sprinkle laser guitars and one-liners and ultimate attacks on a narrative and have something worth a damn. Cool is effort, and cool is craft.
A lot of that effort is indeed on the surface; creator Tite Kubo putting everybody in slick as hell outfits, making the title pages showstoppers in their own right, the poses and attacks and speeches (you better BELIEVE heated adversaries in here Respect one another) and aesthetic and even the chapter titles. But what collectively puts that over is the considered, consistent application of his talent. The framing above contrasting sedate nature and its delicacy with the thundering speed and power of the battle between Yoruichi and Soi Fon, even as in the midst of the clash we zoom in to contrast Soi Fon's focus with a more glazed, vaguely melancholy gleam in Yoruichi's eye. The control of pacing that not only make the aforementioned title pages critical parts in controlling the flow of the chapters, but can even make an exposition sequence pop by parceling out twists, sudden interventions, and further turnarounds such that it doesn't register 'this has been exposition for like five chapters now' until after the fact. And the control of momentum and composition that gives us this after an extended chase sequence leading up to it:
The Z-pattern to reading comics is well-understood; for right-to-left manga, this is reversed. We initially follow main character Ichigo and his panicked reaction, which feels frenzied thanks to Kubo's facial work and shading but in fact renders the turn a clean 1-2-3 beat, so that when we see that his attacker has darted far back in the space of a single movement, we viscerally understand just how fast he is. And as the two characters' relative left/right position remains in place and we've been 'trained' to follow one over the other, the reversed Z layout given a third tier causes us to feel as if we're being whipped around in the final panel now that we're suddenly centering the antagonist (even as this is us still essentially following Ichigo's POV), the flapping of his robe as if against a dragging wind accentuating the sense of the whole composition being pulled towards his rightward position.
And at last, Kenpachi. He wears an eyepatch to restrict his vision and bells to give away his position to try and manage a fair fight, which never works because he's so badass that unless you attack him with maximum spiritual force, your sword will bounce off his skin. Also as previously mentioned he can't use the ultimate powerup of the series, Bankai, because that involves taming your inner spirit and his is simply too horrifyingly powerful. No one could make a character this sick today with a straight face, and that is a chilling societal indictment.
...only for that left/right placement to return with a VENGEANCE culminating in a zoom-in on Ichigo being matched by Kenpachi flipping the visual script, to move the stakes from 'oh no, this is gonna be bad' to 'already doomed'. It did a dang Heh...nothing personal, kid. and reminded me why that's supposed to work.
That's what it means for a comic to be cool. Not a beloved blorbo coming back in a cool new variant suit for Todd McFarlane to make an action figure out of in a couple years - much as we may love it - or a wild set of adjectives stapled onto a normal plot twist or a tone unto itself you can casually write within. Cool wouldn't be cool if it was easy, even if cool often by its nature seems effortless. Cool is perspective and thoughtful style and labor. And THEN you can have a giant firebird attack with the power of one thousand magic swords but then the protag casually blocks it with one arm facing away from it.
Because you've EARNED it.