Kingdom Hearts the most awesome game that should've sucked

First off, let me clear up any confusion form the title, I liked Kingdom Hearts, it was an awesome game, this is not about hating Kingdom Hearts, it's about loving it, but also taking a step back, looking at it objectively and admitting that this should've been pure garbage but they made it good in spite of the fact that it could have sucked. It is literally greater than the sum of it's parts: You have a good beginning for a Final Fantasy game, a good ending to go with it, and in between, the plot is padded with Disney movies. Not counting the Heartless, there are only four original characters in the original game around which the entire game revolves and the rest is just Disney and recycled Final Fantasy. If you knew nothing else about the game besides these basic elements, would you actually believe this was a good game or would you think it was a cheap gimmick to market two successful franchises and crossover the fanbase? When I saw the first screen grabs I thought for sure this would be doomed. I was pleasantly surprised to be proven wrong.

Let's start at the beginning, three of the original characters are introduced, Sora, Riku and Kairi. They live on Destiny Island, a paradise very reminiscent of Besaid Island in Final Fantasy X. If you don't get the reference right away, don't worry it will be shoved down your throat by Tidus and Wakka as well as the whole flood followed by a monster swallowing your homeworld and leaving you alone in a new world theme that is soon to follow. FFX was the last game Square had made before KH so that was their paragon at the time. Anyway, Sora is the typical anime/video game kid hero who is completely average in every way and shows no particualr special potential to be a hero or anything for that matter. Of course, his best friend and rival Riku does seem to show some potential, and that brings out a spark in Sora. Then there's Kairi who is the typical anime/video game girl who loves the hero but never says anything because she just so happy the way things are. Riku isn't as oblivious as Sora and wants to prove himself to Kairi, who of course won't be swayed because she is inexplicably in love with a guy who just thinks they are three friends hanging out and doesn't realize what the other two are up to. After the exposition explains the three characters well enough, the darkness swallows the island, Sora looks for his friends but he can onl find Riku who embraces the darkness and ecourages Sora to join him.

Next thing Sora knows he's in Traverse Town and he's holding on to a key large enough to be wielded as a sword. As he looks around this new town for his friends but only finds shadowy monsters and as he's fighting them off, Donald Duck and Goofy show up for the assist. This is where Disney takes over the controls for a while. What concerned me was thinking the kid was going to be starstruck by Disney characters, but instead, Sora is focused on finding Riku and Kairi, and Donald and Goofy are just a wizard and a knight who happen to also be an anthropomorphic duck and dog who join him because their King told them to stay with the wielder of the Keyblade. The brilliant thing that made Kingdom Hearts work is that while the player may be familiar with everything that is happening, Sora is not, he is part of the story, and every character has their role to play. To the player it is a tour of Disney, to Sora it's just an adventure that happens to go through a vast world he knows as little about as any other world Square could have thrown him in. Even the King that Donald and Goofy are looking for, throughout the game is kept a mystery, never referred to by name, but we know the Queen is Minnie Mouse and we've seen the restof the royal court, so we know it's Mickey, but they never reveal the name and only give us a silhouette until the very end when Mickey finally reveals himself. It's ridiculous because we know damn well who he is but they actually play it off as a secret, becuase despite the fact that Sora is a kid, he's a kid from world that doesn't have Mickey Mouse cartoons. They do the opposite of breaking the fourth wall, they keep it fully intact as Sora interacts with all of these characters as if they are just fellow travelers in this crazy mixed up world.  Even the Heartless are an impressive element; mechanically they are just random encounters that fill the gaps between the sparse scripted battles with actual Disney villains, but why they even exist proves to be the reason the entire game's story is even happening at all. While most of the game is simply playing through Disney movies by the book, we eventually discover the truth behind what's happening when the party is swallowed by Monstro the whale between worlds and we catch up with Riku and Kairi...well, mostly Riku. Kairi is catatonic and Riku thinks he can fix her with the help of Maleficent-yes, that Maleficent, from Sleeping Beauty. If the movie didn't make you realize how bad this fairy/witch/queen can be, this game kicks her up big time. The Heartless the shadow monsters that hound you throughout the game are what happens when you remove someone's heart and leave behind the shadow. They seek to devour other hearts and create more Heartless and eventually devour the heart of the world, which can only be locked away from the Heartless by the Keyblade, which is incidentally also the only way to unlock a Heartless, meaning that while Sora can dispatch them easily enough with his Keyblade, they are an unstoppable menace to everyone else. Maleficent is trying to control these creepy little things and has taken Riku as her apprentice and he is on the verge of becoming Heartless too, except that he is accepting the darkness in such a way that he may not have a heart to remove anyway. Then they depart and our heroes go after them, leading us through the other half of the Disney worlds the game offers.

Finally, Sora, Donald, and Goofy end up in Hollow Bastion, the world where the Final Fantasy characters the party met in Traverse Town originally came from, and is also the source of the Heartless because of the King of this world, Ansem. Ansem is the fourth and final original character for the first Kingdom Hearts game. He was the King of the world once known as the Radiant Garden, but he became fascinated with darkness and sought to find it within a person's heart and his experiments yielded the Heartless which have torn apart the boundaries separating the worlds. Ansem now seeks the beginning and ending of all wordls, Kingdom Hearts, and believes the Heartless are the key. Meanhile Maleficent seems to have an alternative method for the same ends using seven princesses. The first six are quite obviously Disney princesses, including Aurora from Maleficent's Sleeping Beauty home world that we never see, Alice who was taken from Wonderland early on in the game, Jasmine who was taken from Agrabah midway, and Belle who's Beast helps Sora for most of Hollow Bastion trying tio find his love. The surprise is that the seventh princess is none other than Kairi herself, finally tying the group to the whole crazy mess. Things take a turn for the wierd as Sora has to turn the Keyblade on himself and become a Hearless himself to save Kairi, which works, but you actually have to play as a Heartless Shadow for a while and you can't fight, fortunately, the Heartless mean no harm to one of their own and since nobody has the Keybalde, anybody can hurt you, so it's just a matter fo finding your way back to the party and hope they can fix you. Kairi restoes Sora and gives him a starfruit to remind him of Destiny Island and it allows him to upgrade the Keyblade to Oathkeeper. It's actually among the last of the Keyblade upgrades, but it's the only one you actually get to see in the cutscenes, which makes it special in my opinion. Finally you go to the last stage for the final battle with Ansem, which plays out like...pretty much every final boss in every RPG, or at least all the Final Fantasy series. The ending is epic but it also leaves a cliffhanger that leads into the sequel, Kingdom Hearts II.

Since the original, the Kingdom Hearts franchise has grown and Square has become more comfortable making their own story out of it, subsequent games include more original characters and push the limits of the story farther. What makes it succeed most though is that they don't just keep adding more Disney to hide a lack of plot, they continue to develop the plot and make us more intereste in the original characters, and everybody else compliments them rather than distracting from them. Maleficent comes back as a royal badass, Final Fantasy characters go to war, the Heartless and those who would dare to call themselves their masters drag all into their conflict without distinction. Ultimately Kingdom Hearts is a seamless masterpiece sewn from seemingly random parts that somehow manage to fit together perfectly in the grand scheme of things.

Now, if only Square could put this back into their independent projects...

DRAGON BALL Z IS BACK ON TOONAMI!

OH YEAH! Tomorrow night Dragon Ball Z is back on Toonami with Cooler's Revenge! All is right with the universe because DBZ is back on on Toonami for the first time since the April Fool's prank of 2012. Yes this is huge, it must be celebrated all must recognize the awesomeness that is Dragon Ball Z on Toonami. For those of you who don't understand, Dragon Ball Z was the headliner when Toonami started, the only reason it stopped was because they ran out of episodes, and unfortunately Toonami's popularity went down with the loss of DBZ. They tried, man, they even ran the original Dragon Ball and GT, the series that followed Z and was much maligned, but was still better than nothing so we watched anyway. Dragon Ball Z was what brought the vast majority of fans for anime in general out in America, and without this show, we probably wouldn't have any of the other good stuff that followed. Many anime creators admit they were influenced by Dragon Ball Z, including all of the Big 3, Bleach, One Piece and Naruto. Naruto has obvious superficial resemblances to DBZ and One Piece even had a crossover. Of course, my own story, 7th Moon is influenced by DBZ, in particular, Kichiku and Douji who were directly influenced by Android 16 and Gohan during the Cell Games as mentioned in an earlier blog post. Since my dream is to make it on Toonami, none of what I've done with this project would have even begun without Dragon Ball Z.

The one thing that kinda sucks is that it's a movie for just one night. It's not just that it's only one night, it's that movies are non-canon. In America, when a cartoon is popular, Hollywood makes a live-action movie where they try to make it better but instead change it entirely beyond recognition and alienate the fan base. In Japan when a cartoon is popular they create an original story that involves the cast from the series and does their best to avoid contradicting anything from the series, but most importantly, it's all done by the same cast and crew who do the series so it looks like it's part of the series and retains the awesome factor of the parent series. However, in  many cases, the movies do have a critical contradiction in that they happen within timeframes that make them impossible to fit in to the time line of the canon series. For Dragon Ball Z the only exception is Dead Zone, which took place between Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z and was later retconned in a filler arc known as the Garlic Jr. Saga. This means that the incredibly popular Broly the Legendary Super Saiyan doesn't fit in the series either. Consider the characters that are present in the movie, and the fact that all of the Saiyans can go Super Saiyan and that all of them are alive. Since Gohan doesn't go Super Saiyan until he trains for the Cell Games and Goku dies during the Cell Games, Broly happens within those ten days between trianing in the Time Chamber and the Cell Games. But Goku and Gohan aren't in constant Super Saiyan, so that doesn't quite work either. What really happened was Broly was made at about the same time as Cell Games so they gave everybody full powers and glossed over the fact that Goku was dead in the canon timeline. Now I haven't seen Cooler's Revenge, so I don't know where this fits, perhaps it fits within those three years between Trunks warning about the Androids and the Androids actual arrival, but mostly this is just niot going to fit, something is going to be off. Having said all that,it's still DBZ on Toonami, so it's still every kind of awesome.

Now, if you don't know what's going on in the story (possibly because you haven't watched this show since it ended it's American run on Toonami about a decade ago) let me remind you and get you caught up. The main character of Dragon Ball Z is Goku, one of the last Saiyans in the universe. The Saiyans were a powerful race of warriors used by a tyrant named Frieza to clear out planets so he could take them over and claim them for his empire. However, the Saiyans grew too strong too fast, and Frieza got scared, particularly because of one Saiyan in particular, Bardock, the father of Goku. Bardock had a freak accident on one mission that caused him to see a vision of the future when Frieza destroyed the planet Vegeta, home of the Saiyans. Bardock dared to fight Frieza in an attempt to stop this but instead he made Frieza lose trust in the Saiyans and blew up the planet. As it happens, four Saiyans survived this disaster, Prince Vegeta, his care taker Nappa, Bardock's other Son Radditz, all of whom were on a mission, and finally Bradock's two day old son Kakarott. Kakarott was relatively weak for a Saiyan so they decided to send him to Earth because Earth was decidedly weak and even for a weak Saiyan, Kakarott would be able to kill everyone on planet Earth by the time he was in his twenties. Around that time Radditz goes to check on his brother expecting that Earth will be the new seat of the Saiyan Empire that they can rebuild after the destruction they have wrought on the local populace. Instead Radditz finds that his brother has settled down wth a human family. When he landed on Earth he bumped his head and got amnesia and was found by Son Gohan, one of the rare few humans who was actually stronger than a baby Saiyan and he adopted Kakarott. The whole amneisa thing as a non-issue, he never figured an infant had any memory of where he was from in the first place. He named the baby Goku and raised him as his own, and Goku grew up to be a martial artist and go on amazing adventures, fighting the entire Red Ribbon Army single handedly and fighting the demon king Piccolo. Radditz is incredibly pissed off to find that the mighty destroyer has married Princess Chichi and has a half-breed son with her. Goku fights to save his son with the help of Piccolo, the demon king who was the only other being strong enough to get Radditz's attention while he scanned for his brother. Piccolo wanted to kill Goku and take ove the world, but if Radditz beats him to it, that's a problem so he needs to get Radditz out of the way. Piccolo manages a twofer, but Radditz leaves him with the ominous bad news that the other two Saiyans will be coming in a year to finish what he started. Piccolo then trains Gohan, Goku's son that he named after the man who raised him and Goku is wished back with the Dragon Balls. Nappa is defeated and killed for his dishonor and Vegeta is defeated as well, but comes up with a plan for revenge that involves crawling back to Frieza to recover then go afte the Dragon Balls on planet Namek. As it turns out, Piccolo isn't really a demon, he's actually from the planet Namek as is his other half Kami, guardian of the Earth and creator of the Dragon Balls. Piccolo was killed in battle with Nappa and Vegeta and with uim went Kami and the Dragon Balls, so everybody has to go to Namek where they have their own Dragon Balls that can also grant wishes and can bring back all of Goku's friends who died fighting the Saiyans, or grant immortality to Vegeta or Frieza whoever finds them first. Fortunately, Gohan finds he Dragon Balls and uses the wishes to bring bac Piccolo and the Dragon Balls of Earth which in turn saves everybody and leaves Frieza behind to fight Goku one-on-one. Now the battle on Namek is a big one, Frieza's right and left hand men, Dodoria and Zarbon as well as the elite Ginyu Force all fight Gohan, Vegeta, Piccolo, Goku and Goku's friend Krillin a dwarf who is surprisingly the strongest human on Earth when you don't count any of the aliens, and Frieza goes through four or five transformations before Goku finally kills him, at last avenging the entire Saiyan race. Or least it would seem Frieza was dead, somehow the bastard survived in space, got picked up by his father King Cold, and was cybernetically restored so he could seek revenge on the Saiyans on Earth. Then this other guy Trunks shows up out of nowhere and finishes off Frieza and Kng Cold once and for all. As it turns out Trunks is actually the son of Vegeta from the future, but that's a whole other story. The point is, Cooler is Frieza's brother and now he wants revenge for Frieza and comes to Earth for Goku. Trunks isn't actually in this one, and from what I just checked on Wikipedia, apparenly neither is Vegeta. Oh well, doesn't matter, the rest of the story is still relevant, Frieza's dead because of Goku, Cooler wants revenge, tune in tomorrow to find out how it goes down!

Final Fantasy 8, Junctions, Guardian Forces, the Sorceress and game theories

I have read a lot of hate for this particular installment of Final Fantasy and in my opinion, a lot of that hate has to do with the Junction system and how much pressure was put on it which made the entire game harder to enjoy. For the most part, I think this game is about as solid as any other in the franchise, so I don't want to hear any complaints about the story. The story is just fine, and if you actually think 7 did a better job you're just lying to yourself. I loved the Junction system in theory, the ability to have spells like Fira and get use out of them without actually using them is awesome in a way I just can not explain, you either get it or you don't. My problem is that it should have been a bonus system, like espers in Final Fantasy 6, but it ends up being the primary method of boosting your characters. In most Final Fantasy games, in fact, in most RPGs characters power up using experience levels and equipment, and Final Fantasy in particular has mastered the art of a third system of customization that practically defines the game(jobs in 3 & 5, espers and relics  in 6, materia in 7, spheres in 10, license grid in 12) but the Junction system in 8 virtually replaces the main system. The problem comes from two very good ideas that should not have been implemented simultaneously with the Junction system. First, they reduced equipment to just weapons. In theory his actually makes sense, because superficially, the character sprites never change, so adding armor and helmets doesn't make sense because the characters are never seen wearing them. In practice in a game, however, you find yourself only being able to increase physical attack, with no way to affect any other stat, leaving you quite literally defenseless. Second is leveling, you do still level in this game, unfortunately, so do the monsters, which means they cancel out your party's level. One really annoying aspect of this is that Squall can never leave your party, so he is always there to level up, so if you fall behind leveling any character they get screwed royally in the end because they are too weak to catch up and it's impossible to level down the monsters with Squall always wrecking the average. This leveling system made sense on paper because it meant that certain rewards, such as magic draws and item drops, increased with certain monsters leveling up, but it also meant that leveling up really meant nothing for your character.With all other methods of power increase removed, you were left reliant entirely on the Junction system, which if you know how to use it can make you a god, and if you don't know how to use it you're as good as dead. It was obvious enough to someone on the development team because just before any difficult battle , the game prompted you to make sure everyone was Junctioned, if you know that it's that important you imbalanced the game. And just why do I have to junction to use the item command? I get that this means I can switch out Item with a more useful command, but seriously, should item use have been SEED training 101? Why can't four graduates of Balamb Gardens be unable to use a potion without a Guardian Force?

Speaking of Guardian Forces, I wanted to share a game theory, the Guardian Forces are time travellers from the future. When you meet Laguna at the end of the game he talks about remembering in the past when Ellone sent Squall back to experience the events through him. His description makes it seem like Squall and co. were like Guardian Forces. Ultimecia returns to the past using a machine that mimics Ellone's abilities. Machines like that probably don't work right the first time, so perhaps there were a few test runs that went arwy resulting in the Guardian Forces who made it back in time but then got stuck in a state where they exist inside a person from the present and now have no way of returning to their true times and forms. One could argue that this should have then caused a time compression if they were from the future and Ellone sent them in the past with Squall, but since they remain with the party for the duration, that means that they can not return to the future and lost their connection to it and thus the past-present-future dynamic remains incomplete. This might also explain why memories are lost, a side effect of the temporal distortion that allows GFs to exist in the first place.

Another game theory, there is only one Sorceress at any given time and Ultimecia and Edea are the last. The only time we ever hear of multiple Sorceresses is when Adell and Edea exist at the same time, but Edea gets her power from Ultimecia from the future. Edea passes her power to Rinoa who also absorbs Adell's power to become the only Sorceress of her time. This means Ultimecia gets her power from Rinoa, or else she is Rinoa. When she goes back to give her power to Edea, it closes the loop, meaning that whenever in time Ultimecia is from, after her there are no Sorceresses because she gave the last of her power to the past.

And one last thing I have to say before I leave you this week, what the hell was with promoting Rinoa and Squall as the first Final Fantasy romance? What about Cloud, Aerith and Tifa in 7? Or Locke and Celes in 6? Or Cecil and Rosa in 4? Are they all chopped liver?

IGPX WTF?

IGPX was Toonami's first, and, to date, only original series. It was an original animated series on Toonami made by a top Japanese animation studio Production I.G. This should have been a hit, but it wasn't. I didn't watch it the first time around, so maybe it was my fault, but I did watch it last year on the new Toonami because IGPX had achieved my dream and I needed to know because the future of 7th Moon depends on how IGPX fared. After watching the full series with the dedication only a true Toonami Faithful can muster, I figured out what went wrong, it didn't have enough action. I mean, the racing scenes themselves are spectacular, the best animation of it's time, but the majority of the show was exposition and the characters fell flat. I don't want to blame the voice actors, it's not their fault, they have all proven themselves on other projects, but the only one who really seems to bring his A-game is Tom "Spongebob" Kenny as the announcer. I blame the writers and directors who lowered the intensity in non-racing scenes. For starters, the entire series is simply about a sport and what good sportsmen all of the competitors are off the track. I have seen other anime series and they generally up the ante every time, Prince of Tennis treated a simple backhand like it was Kamehameha, even Yu-Gi-Oh turned a card game into a life or death battle to save the world, the first episode where grampa trains Joey had more intensity than any episode of IGPX. Toonami says it's more about action than anime, but they went and got an anime company to work with them on this and kind of failed on both counts. At the time, IGPX aired during the afternoon and was aimed at kids, so the message of good sportsmanship was probably important, but compared to what Toonami fans were expecting, this was weak, no war, no end of the world, no maniacal evil villains, just plain old sports, even the athletes don't always seem to care. There were some interesting story seeds that popped up, but ultimately nothing grew.

Cat vs Dog - Quite possibly the most interesting sub plot that never amounts to anything is the fact that pilots can use an animal co-pilot who connects cybernetically to form an artificial telepathic connection with their human. The reason this doesn't amount to anything is only two pilots in the entire scope of the series ever take advantage of this ability and the only reason we actually care at all is that one of these pairings is Amy and her cat Luca on Team Satomi, the team of the main characters. The other is Bjorn and Sola the dog of Team Edgeraid, who aren't on very often and are only memorable because the network that allows Luca nad Sola to communicate with their humans also allows them to communicate with eachother and they have more inensity than any other rivalry shown in the entire series. If there had been another season, I would have liked to focus on them, and most importantly, explain exactly how the hell anyone ever came up with this technology in the first place and most importantly, who was the genius who decided it was a good idea to use this technology specifically for pets to co-pilot racing mechs.

Takeshi and Fantine - Main character Takeshi dates Fantine from rival Team Skylark. It seems an interseting Romeo and Juliet on paper, but plays out pretty boring. Fantine is too focused on being a racer and tries not to let her relationship with Takeshi get in the way, and eventually dumps Takeshi because she needs to focus on racing. The whole thing is especially lame because neither of them even seems to care, they just get back to racing. What is interesting is how Takeshi's other female team mate Liz gets jealous and finally steps up for her man Takeshi, but it takes them the rest of the series to finally address it. Still, as half-assed as it is, the last-minute romance of Takeshi and Liz is probably the most believable thing that happens in the entire series.

Takeshi vs Cunningham - from the very beginning this is the rivalry to watch, the reigning champ from Team Velshtein vs our main hero for the title. They know it, we know it, and after they say it in the first episode, nothing really happens. Takeshi pulls out his victory over Cunningham, but it's pretty anticlimactic. Cunningham vows to get his title back, but he gets overshadowed by Team White Snow and they are such good sportsmen, Takeshi and Cunningham just do not have the heat of true rivals.

Satomi vs Sledgemama - Sledgemama are the de facto bad guys,the team you want to see lose because they are jerks. The best moment for them is when River leaves Satomi and joins Sledgemama. River is a second string pilot, the only one ever mentioned in the entire series. River is better than Takeshi on paper, but for some reason he doesn't get to race and that pisses him off so he quits and joins Sledgemama so he can race against Takeshi. This is probably the most intense rivalry among human characters in the entire series, but again, sportsmanship and underuse of the characters involved takes the wind out of it. Then Sledgemama blows their badass reputation by defending Takeshi and his team from rabid fans claiming that they save their dirty ticks for the race and the fans should respect all racers. With that, Team Sledgemama are nobodies again.

Max Erlich of Team White Snow - This character is the definitive supervillain of the series, but only shows up halfway through. White Snow replaces Team Black Egg, who are not particularly noteworthy and deserved to be replaced. White Snow turns out to really be just Max. She has two other team mates who race for official reasons, but Max does everything, and does it well, until Team Satomi figures her out and Luca the cat hacks her back and sets up Team Satomi for a nail-biting finish. Sadly, despite Max's technical potential, there's no real malice, just a simple selfish childish desire to win.

Okay, so towards the end, things pick up, but it's too little too late, the story of good sportsmanship works in the real world, but in Toonami, wedged between Dragon Ball Z and Gundam, IGPX just wasn't up to snuff. Now, tell me the nation that backs the IGPX winner rules the world or that the losers die and their nations suffer in slavery, that would have gotten me interested. I promise 7th Moon will bring what IGPX did not, and become the series that it should have been.

Note to Jason DeMarco and the rest of the people at Toonami who made IGPX, I know you guys know a lot more about what you are doing than I do, and I don't pretend to know better, this is just a viewer's opinion.

Bleach the best and worst anime

I have to love Bleach, it has all the action elements I love in an anime, they even have swords, I even got so into it, I thought of a fanfic featuring the cast of 7th Moon (I think they would fit in Squad 12). However, some fans thik it went on way too long, and a it reaches the end of it's US run, I look back and realize, they went way off track very early on, but it was so enthralling, you forget just how bad it really is. To make my point, I am going to do my usual synopsis, but I'm going to break it up ino sections by story arc, or more to the point, parts where it made sense and parts where writer Tite Kubo was clearly not even payng attention to himself. For starters, Bleach is the only major anime in recent years where the title is entirely irrelevant, but that's not even the tip of the iceberg.

First let's start at the beginning where things make sense. The premise of the series focuses on the fate of the soul after death. We all know good people go to Heaven(orin this case Soul Society), bad people go to Hell(mentioned, but irrelevant except for a non-canon movie) or linger as a ghost to resolve unfinished business, but Bleach adds a fourth fate, becoming a Hollow. Hollows are ghosts that have lost their humanity and have become hollow, both figuratively and literally, each Hollow has a hole, usually in their chest, representing their emptiness which they fill by devouring souls of both living and dead. Hollows are often the result of ghosts that finally let it sink in that while they linger to deal with unfinished business, they can't interact with the world and therefore can not resolve unfinished business and this disconnect forces the transformation. Sometimes those who are bound for Hell become Hollows to avoid Hell, but the worst part of Hollow nature is that when they feed on other souls, the trauma of being a Hollow's victim automatically causes one to become a Hollow themself. Obviously, the world will be nothing but Hollows if they aren't kept in check, enter the Soul Reapers, elite warriors from Soul Society who return to the world of the living to help ghosts crossover before they become Hollows and to destroy Hollows that are already here. The key tool for both of these is the Zanpakto, standard issue katana that are used in konso ritual by touching a ghost's forehead with the pommel to peacefully send them to the other side, and the blade is used to "cleanse" Hollows by destroying the outer shell and releasing the human soul to peacefully going to the other side. All of this is unseen by the living usually, but there are exceptions, among them the Kurosaki family, in particular Ichigo. He's a pretty average teenager who likes to help both the living and the dead, and one night he gets in over his head when he witnesses a Soul Reaper named Rukia fighting a Hollow and tries to help, but only manages to get Rukia hurt in the process and in a move of desperation, she grants him Soul Reaper powers to finish the fight by letting him skewer himself with her Zanpakto. It works, but Ichigo somehow gets all of Rukia's powers and has to be her substitute until she can get her power back. The series then proceeds to introduce the main cast of ghost busters and is very promising. Ichigo saves his friends Orohime and Chad from Hollows, Chad in particular has some impressive foreshadowing because in his first moments oncreen a steel girder drops on him and the steel girder bends around him, while Chad himself his unharmed, WTF?! That is definitely not normal! Anyway, after saving his friends from different Hollows on separate occasions, it occurs to Rukia that when Ichigo is acting as a Soul Reaper, his body appears to be dead, so she gets a substitute soul to handle his body so nobody gets suspicious. The substitute soul ends up being a modsoul, a soul that has been modified to have superior combat abilities and use the bodies of the recently deceased to aid in the war on Hollows, but after managing to create them, Soul Society decided it was unethical to desecrate bodies by forcing them into posthumous combat and the modsouls were ordered destroyed. In the canon series, this is apparently the very last one, given superhuman leg strength to jump and kick, and just managed to avoid destruction having accidentally ended up in the stock of Kisuke Uruhara, a candy shop owner who provides supplies to Soul Reapers on the down low, which is generally easy to keep secret considering the only ones who can even interact with his secret wares are the intended recipients. The modsoul comes in the form of candy from a pez dispenser and he is a pervert who is also afraid of being destroyed like his brethren and holds all life as very precious. Ichigo takes pity on him, names him Kon, and decides that when he's not using Kon to take care of his body, he'll put him in a stuffed lion plushie which actually comes to life. Poor Kon, he's so grateful to have a body that even though he realizes it's a joke, he still prefers it to being destroyed. Next comes Grand Fisher, the Hollow that killed Ichigo's mother, revealing that he's been connected to all of this for longer than he realized and appears to be potentially the series main adversary, but that fizzles out, more on that later. Now the team gets it's final member, Uryu Ishida, the last of the Quincy. The Quincy are living humans who developed powers to hunt Hollows in response to losing their families to Hollow attacks, primarily they use bows and arrows that exist only in the spirit world. The problem is that Quincy powers utterly destroy Hollows instead of cleansing their souls as Soul Reapers do, so the two factions went to war. Uryu's grandfather came up with a compromise, Quincy could trap and weaken Hollows, then allow Soul Reapers to finish the job. Unfortunately, one day the Soul Reapers never showed up and let Ishida die, leaving Uryu vengeful and untrusting, to the point where he challenges Ichigo. Surprisingly, rather than making this challenge direct combat, he summons Hollows and makes a contest of who can kill more. Ichigo's power ends up drawing more Hollows than Uryu intended and Orohime and Chad develop their own unique powers to help, apparently because Ichigo's powers triggered them. Chad's arm becomes a force of destruction he calls "brazo del diablo" and Orohime gets the kun kun rikku, a group of fairies that can reject what she doesn't want, three can reject that which will be by creating a triangular shield, two can reject that which was by creating a field of restoration, and one rejects that which currently is, a potentially powerful attack which can tear an enemy in half, though the last one really only works once against a Hollow during the invasion, though her defensive abilities become key to the plot later on. Ichigo and Uryu have to work tgether to stop the Hollow invasion and everything seems to be settled except for Rukia still not having her powers, which will soon be remedied...and the series takes it's first left turn. Yeah, that's right, so far I've only touched on the stuff that actually makes sense, we haven't even gotten to the REALLY wierd parts yet.

The second story arc is wierd for two reasons, one is something that confuses you right away, and then later makes sense, the other you overlook until it's over and then you go WTF?! The first reason is the Zanpakto releases, we discover that a Soul Reaper's Zanpakto can transform twice. The first release is called Shikai and simply changes the form of the sword to something unique to each Soul Reaper, sometimes a different weapon such as a spear or mace, and sometimes a more subtle change that allows for a special power, such as control of ice or fire. The second release is Bankai, which can be just about anything including manifesting as a distinct entity. Both are supposed to be rare, but just as soon as we learn about them, we see Soul Reapers release them in rather large numbers suggesting they may not be so rare after all. It happens so fast, it's not until after that I realized all of those released Zanpakto belonged to the 13 Captains and their lieutenants and seated officers, and while it's easy to get shikai and bankai mixed up, only three characters who are below the rank of captain actually achieve bankai and the others are all shikai, and their probaly aren't any other released Zanpakto besides the ones revealed in this arc. Now for confusion number two, Soul Society is supposed to be where good people go, and yet the Soul Reapers are antagonists and four are particularly questionable as to how they made ever made it into Soul Society in the first place. Rukia is considered a criminal for bringing Ichigo into the world of the dead in the first place and the gang has to fight through the Soul Reapers to get her back before she is executed for her crimes. Ichigo crosses paths with Kenpachi Zaraki, a bloodthirsty warrior who is the only captain who achieved his rank by killing his predecessor, and considering how much he likes fighting and killing, I really wonder what sort of circumstances caused the powers that be to decide it was a good idea to let him into heaven. Then there's Mayuri Kurotsuchi, the amoral captain of squad 12 who sees everyone as specimens and test subjects and as if his general ambivalence wasn't enough, Uryu finds out he was responsible for his grandfather's demise, not just allowing Hollows to kill him, but actually captured Ishida and dissected him because he was curious what made a Quincy tick, seriously he is one sick bastard, and yet, still not number one. Gin Ichimaru is...just plain creepy. It seems all to obvious he is a bad guy, although nobody seems to see it. Number one bad guy though is Sosuke Aizen. Aizen at first appears to be the only one keeping calm when Soul Society is invaded and may be our heroes best ally, and then he appears tob be impaled on a wall and everyone goes crazy trying to figure out who killed him. Then comes the big reveal, Aizen's Bankai has the power of perfect, all-encompassing illusion over anyone who has seen his shikai, and the whole murder scene was faked, and he has been manipulating Soul Society since the beginning of the series so he can get the Hogyoku from Rukia who unknowningly has possessed the item of immense power inside her body all along. After retrieving the item he and Gin and Kaname Tossen, another Captain who he roped in for no other reason than that he was blind and immune to Aizen's power and was given the choice to cooperate or die, all make a dramatic exit escorted by Hollows. The next question I have to ask is, why is everybody concerned about the deaths of Rukia and Aizen when THEY'RE ALREADY DEAD? They keep using terminology referring to these characters as "dead" or "alive" even thought they are already dead, because that'swhat Soul Society is. Maybe that's just a translation error, but then they mention families which sometimes suggest individuals are actually born into Soul Society, but that's most during non-canon filler.

Now the Hogyoku allows for the boundaries between Soul Reaper and Hollow to be broken down so that one can get both sets of powers, which is a promising subject, which both delivers and disappoints. The better end is in regards to Hollows getting Soul Reaper powers, known as Arrancar. An Arrancar is a Hollow who regains their humanity and seals their Hollow form into a Zanpakto which allows them to take on a human form and wield a sword which means they can now fight Soul Reapers on more equal footing, except that they still have Hollow powers, which supposedly makes them more powerful. However the only Hollow power any Arrancar exhibits without releasing their Zanpakto is cero, which I argue can easily be countered by Hado 31 Shakaho, which is a spell Soul Reapers can use which at least superficially has the same effect. Even when the Arrancar release their Zanpakto, which is called Resurrecion, and trade their swords for the most advantageous aspects of their Hollow anatomy, the most that they achieve is still not much better than Bankai. Still, the fact that we got back to the Soul Reaper vs Hollow dynamic was worth introducing Arrancar. The confusing part has to do with my favorite Arrancar, Nel, who actually becomes an ally. Nel is so cool, I'm going to forgive that she manages to become a good guy, but her backstory says that she used to be an elite Espada years ago... wait a minute, didn't Aizen just get the Hogyoku? If the Hogyoku is the key to making Arrancar, then where the hell did Nel and the other former espada come from? Apparently, Arrancar can sometimes happen by themselves, but Aizen's are superior. Still, even at their worst, the Arrancar are still far more interesting than their counterparts, the Visored. The Visored are eight Soul Reapers who were subject to Aizen's experiments with the Hogyoku one hundred years earlier before Kisuke hid it in Rukia and now they have Hollow powers. That sounds so cool...until you realize all they do is put on masks(which are also marks of Hollows along with the hole) and his makes them faster and stronger than everybody else...zzz...sorry I got so bored I fell asleep writing that. The only reason they actually exist for the purpose of the greater story is that ichigo becomes the ninth Visored...which doesn't mean much more than that he is now on equal footing with the Arrancar, he looks badass, but really doesn't add anything new. Ultimately, the whole story arc leads to a battle of the gods between Aizen who is neither Hollow, nor Soul Reaper, niether Arrancar, nor Visored, but something new and transcendant, and of course Ichigo with his new ultimate power...zzz...sorry, fell asleep again.

Honestly, for all my complaints, Bleach really is one of the best anime ever shown, it is visually impressive, usually the storyline is satisfactory, an awesome soundtrack especially "Number One" which has several iterations but always deliver on accompanying the most badass moments and the voice cast kicked ass even when the script was subpar. this weekend the final arc begins on Toonami, make sure you watch. Ichigo lost his Soul Reaper powers, but someone claims they can get his powers back.