Bleach Movie 3: Fade to Black - Kimi no Na wo Yobu

After a mysterious pair attack Rukia Kuchiki and erase her memories while she is in Seireitei, Ichigo Kurosaki, a substitute Soul Reaper, briefly forgets Rukia, until he is reminded of her by Kon, an Underpod Mod-Soul. Confused, he seeks his town's candy-shop owner, Kisuke Urahara, who opens the pathway to Seireitei for them. Ichigo is then shocked to find that his allies in Seireitei, the Shinigami of the Soul Society, have forgotten him.

Filled with action, Kimi no Na wo Yobu follows Ichigo and Kon as they fight against their former comrades while searching for the missing Rukia and discovering her assailants before they strike again.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kurosaki, Ichigo Main

Morita, Masakazu Japanese

Kuchiki, Rukia Main

Orikasa, Fumiko Japanese

Shizuku Main

Kamiya, Hiroshi Japanese

Homura Main

Hirano, Aya Japanese

Zaraki, Kenpachi Supporting

Tachiki, Fumihiko Japanese

Urahara, Kisuke Supporting

Miki, Shinichiro Japanese

Hitsugaya, Toushirou Supporting

Park, Romi Japanese

Kuchiki, Byakuya Supporting

Okiayu, Ryoutarou Japanese

Shihouin, Yoruichi Supporting

Yukino, Satsuki Japanese

Kyouraku, Jirou Souzousuke Shunsui Supporting

Ootsuka, Akio Japanese

Simone, Jamie Producer

Hagino, Ken Producer

Aoki, Shunji Producer

Abe, Noriyuki Director, Storyboard

Reviews

Jul 5, 2023

UltraReviewShow

Recommended

Maybe it's just from hollywood dragging standards down, but I'm shocked this movie understands making people forget about someone doesn't erase physical records. They even have things tied to Rukia forgotten, like Renji's bankai. It's a nice touch. The soul reapers are dumbasses though, so it's accurate to the show. It's like the soul society arc. The only one with any intelligence is Byakuya, because he unlocked his brain after the soul society arc.

The fight at the end is paced well, you can tell what's going on, as opposed to The Diamond Dust Rebellion that kind of became a mess toward the end. Overall I'd ... say Fade to Black is the best bleach movie. Also as far as certain plot holes people have mentioned, they should rewatch the ending where certain powers are explained. I'm not going to put spoilers in the review, but it's outright stated in the movie, and shown.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Feb 21, 2024

Drakestalker

Mixed Feelings

Fade to Black is essentially DiamondDust Rebellion all over again. Does that mean it’s worse? Better? Which is it?

Both.

Fade to Black is executed much better than DiamondDust, and feels more engaging from a narrative structure point of view, but the concept is much weaker.

We are once again introduced to a MacGuffin. It is an apparently dangerous creation of Mayuri’s and the villains steal it. Why is it dangerous? I don’t know. What does it do? I have no idea. I don’t even think it’s ever given an actual name in the movie, which makes calling it a MacGuffin somehow even more appropriate. Alas, the main ... reason for me calling it that is because it seems to just, uh, do whatever the plot needs it to do at any given time. You wanna attach it to yourself and make yourself stronger? Sure. You wanna use it to do the Dragon Ball Fusion Dance? Go ahead. You wanna put it in this other nondescript contraption and bring about the apocalypse? Why not? It can do fucking anything.

Accordingly, we once again receive an apocryphal backstory for a beloved character. This time it was Rukia, however, and that’s where the problems start. Toushiro is a sidecharacter with no backstory to speak of. As such, giving him one doesn’t feel grating. Rukia, on the other hand, by virtue of being the literal deuteragonist of the franchise, has backstory coming out of her ass. I at no point thought to myself: “Man, of all the Bleach cast, you know whose past I’d like to know more about? Rukia’s! Tell you hwhat, the main series sure did leave me wanting.” Whom does this serve? Who asked for this?

She did not need any more previously-unknown backstory to be revealed in a surprising twist that doesn’t make any sense. Honestly, it just comes off as unnecessary fat. Besides, even if it didn’t serve to convolute Rukia’s origin story, the timeline doesn’t add up. The canonical information we have about Rukia’s past growing up in the Rukongai leaves no opportunity for the events suggested by the movie to take place.

Regardless, the movie effectively begins with the villains erasing Rukia from everyone’s memories. Cue drama.

I will reiterate that even though the concept of Fade to Black is weaker, the execution is much better. At the very minimum, we are given a good reason for Ichigo to be the protagonist – not a great reason, mind you, but a good one. Due to his spiritual connection to Rukia, what with his powers coming from her, he is the only one who is able to eventually remember her existence.

This is neither here, nor there, but I got the distinct impression that, at this point in the Bleach story, Pierrot did not yet know Kubo intended to ultimately make Ichigo hook up with Orihime, so they were laboring under the delusion that Orange Naruto would eventually end up with Rukia. A lot of scenes in this movie felt as though they were ever so subtly laying the foundations for that.

Naturally, the plot once again revolves around manufacturing conflict between Ichigo and the Soul Society, except that rather than a vague rip-off of the Rukia rescue arc, given that we’re actually trying to rescue Rukia this time, it’s explicitly the same arc all over again. The crux of the conflict is that everyone in SS has also forgotten who Ichigo is and once again call him “ryoka”. I was mildly entertained by the concept of him trying to make these people, who are his friends and allies, remember who he is. Even more engaging was watching the Soul Reapers themselves cope with the inconsistencies in their memories.

Update on the Supreme Commander: Still useless? Yes. Still creating pointless friction just to be an asshole? Yes. Funnily enough, upon being informed that Ichigo received his powers from another Soul Reaper sharing hers with him, he immediately exclaimed that such a transgression constitutes a capital crime. I burst out laughing at that point. Oh, yes, please, by all means, let us dredge up that old drama all over again. I’m on pins and needles.

Your enjoyment of Fade to Black will be largely contingent of how you feel about amnesia (and the like) being used as a plot device. If you like it, you will have a good time. If you don’t, you won’t.

Speaking of memories, though, take this as a public service announcement. If you are an action story writer, you might be tempted to write a big climactic fight between your protagonist and one of their friends or loved ones. The reason said friend or loved one is fighting the MC can be anything from amnesia, to magical corruption, to mind control, to any other some such contrivance. If you then make the entire fight boil down to the protagonist not actually fighting back, because they don’t want to hurt this person, so your main character is just on the defensive the whole time periodically saying lines like “Remember who you are! Wake up! This isn’t you! You’re better than this! Come back to your senses! Fight it! Resist it! Remember [insert piece of backstory trivia here]!”, then stop. Just stop right now. Get some help. Put down the pen and go get a day job, because this gig isn’t for you.

As a not-at-all insignificant aside, something that was somewhat of a minor cosmetic problem in Memories of Nobody, becomes full-blown kink wish-fulfillment in Fade to Black. The main threat the villains pose to the Soul Society is by way of using some gizmo to activate a doo-hickey that makes mountainous amounts of uncontrolled spiritual energy run amok in Seireitei. Now, that part is... fine. The problem is that this wild spiritual energy takes the form of giant snakes made up of white goo, which break, crash, and splash all over the place covering everything and everyone in white goo... It looks like... Ok, come on, bro, you know exactly what it looks like. We’ve all seen enough hentai to know exactly how that sort of thing is animated, and this is just... fucking identical.

It looks so much like cum, I refuse to believe it’s mere coincidence. Pierrot tried to be funny and get away with something cheeky here. During the second act, you get to see the aftermath of the initial outburst. There are loads of smatterings of puddles and ropes of hardened white goo all over the rooftops and walls and shit. It is such an insanely evocative image, that I am almost convinced that one of the animators literally jerked off on a table or a wall, and unironically used that visual as a basis for the background art. I’d be willing to bet money on it. There’s just no way. I mean, get real, the snakes don’t even look like snakes anymore during the 3rd act. They straight up look like gross dickheads – I’m not joking – and they spit out white goo... The honest-to-God climax (no pun intended) of the movie is the main cast literally fighting against giant dicks shooting cum!

This isn’t my fault! Miss me with the projection shit. I’m not taking responsibility for this. My mind is not in the gutter. Studio Pierrot are just a bunch of degenerates.

One of the villains also annoyed me something fierce. I’m talking about the kind of villain who has every expectation to get their way, and acts incredibly callous when it comes to causing death and suffering to others, but otherwise behaves in the most genuinely cutesy and innocent way imaginable. The moment, the second anything even remotely threatens their peace and happiness, they will instantly drop to their knees and cry tears of deep personal tragedy, as though they’re the victims of some great injustice. It calls to mind the image of a petulant old child. The most recent example of a similar villain that I can think of off the top of my head is Jack the Ripper from Fate/Apocrypha.

In all fairness, villains like these can be used to great effect for an extremely cathartic pay-off moment when they get righteous comeuppance for their extreme levels of hypocrisy and for the pain they’ve caused others. Where this type of villain loses me is when the narrative expects me to sympathize with them. Fade to Black not only presents them as pitiable and sympathetic, but goes a step further and even grants its villains undeserved redemption at the end. “Oh, they’re just kids who didn’t know any better!” It’s your fucking job to know better before you start a genocide.

Easily my favorite part of the movie was the fact that, for the first time since his introduction and character arc resolution in episodes 6 and 7, Kon is given something to do. For some reason that is never explained, he is the only one who retained his memories of Rukia and never lost them, not even temporarily. Why? How? Couldn’t tell you. This is straight up just a plot conceit. The fact that he is a mod soul does not satisfactorily explain anything, because Ururu and Jinta, the 2 kids from Urahara’s shop, who are also mod souls, forgot about Rukia and Ichigo just like everybody else.

Kon doesn’t play a huge part in the plot, but he sticks around for the duration of the film as a mascot. I enjoyed that. He’s a fun character to spend time with.

All in all, I am hard-pressed to say that there’s any reason for anyone but the most hardcore Bleach fans to watch Fade to Black. It won’t add anything to your enjoyment of the setting or its characters. Rukia’s extra backstory doesn’t change or enrich her in any way, just adds convolution, and the final fight between Ichigo and the main antagonist is probably the most pathetic, most disappointing display of a superpowered battle I’ve ever seen.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Jun 21, 2016

StephanieNicole

Not Recommended

I honestly don't know what I was expected with this movie, but I was highly disappointed nonetheless. Fade to Black was actually highly boring to me. Now, I don't know if it's because I watched The DiamondDust Rebellion right before I watched this one but I can honestly say that this movie wasn't entertaining at at all. To be honest, the storyline didn't really make any sense.

Now I don't want to get into any spoilers for the movie because that's not allowed, but the ending was terrible (along with the rest of it). The explanation for why the bad guy(s) of film did what ... they did honestly made no sense to me. Their entire motivation was actually kind of stupid.

I really want to know who though this (filler) movie was actually a good idea. I fully stand by the 3 that I gave this movie. Now if you want to watch this, go right ahead. I won't stop you. But I really wouldn't recommend this to anyone.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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	Poll: Bleach - Fade to Black: Kimi no Na wo Yobu Episode 1 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 ) ShanaFlame - Sep 30, 2009	197 replies	by CrazyButNot4U »» Nov 10, 12:32 PM
	Are you guys going to re-watch this movie and cheerish ichiruki moment? R_TF - Aug 24, 2016	2 replies	by connier10011 »» Jul 27, 2023 12:07 AM
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	That was one giant cumshot llxwarbirdxll - Oct 4, 2009	8 replies	by Becloud »» Sep 20, 2010 10:41 AM