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The main themes and story in Blue Gender are grim and handled with more maturity than most anime, and that alone is enough to give it praise. Unfortunately the pacing is also very slow and mostly episodic, thus it’s hard for most to go through it, especially today when most anime fans prefer shameless fantasy isekai over depressing sci-fi.

The art quality ain’t bad at all. The animators went for realism instead of flash thus the weaponry feels fairly realistic despite including bulky mecha. That tends to make most battles to feel slow or simple, although the goal was always a down to earth approach instead ... of spectacle. It depicts better themes of survival and existential horror when the heroes can’t solo armies using broken powers. And boy, does this anime excel at atmosphere.

The setting is post-apocalyptic, with most of mankind having been exterminated by grotesque monsters and their corpses having been turned into big green meatballs, sort of food storages for the monsters. Most cities now look like giant bee hives and the streets are filled with said meatballs, full of faces writhing in agony on them. It will give you the chills. The surviving humans are actually affected by all this. Have you noticed how in most anime the characters act happy-go-lucky no matter how grim their world looks like? Like, there is always a high school and cosplayers and beach episodes even if the whole world has gone to hell? They have no touch with reality. Blue Gender is not one of those anime because all its characters are cynical, pessimistic and do not act like typical harem leads in some school comedy. Their faces are expressionless, devoid of hope, and they even have sex in random moments with random people just to feel they are alive.

Obviously, the number one reason for that is because the demographic the show is aiming for is seinen (adult males) instead of children who still like Naruto and Spy Family. But there is more to that, since most moe anime are also seinen and they are nothing like Blue Gender. There are erotic scenes and numerous gruesome deaths of major characters, and they don’t feel like they are done just for edgy schlock entertainment in the likes of Akame Ga Kill or Mirai Nikki. They mostly respect the viewer and exist to serve the narrative instead of destroying it with crap like fan service or comic relief.

With that said, the grim atmosphere of the setting overlaps most of the appeal of the characters, since the latter are almost average people with no broken superpowers. Even the special ones with the blue cells aren’t supermen. So it can be hard to bond with the cast, especially when they seem to have stopped caring anymore and turned into cynical materialists who just eat, fuck, and die. There is character growth for the major characters, by the way. One learns to deal with reality, another finds hope by falling in love, a third one embraces who he is meant to be, and so on. It’s just that they will be mostly overshadowed by the imposing sceneries of the bug-infested world.

There is also a bit of mystery concerning the origin of the bugs and how they correlate with the once-sick main characters, although the answers will be mostly for the heck of having a twist near the end than for developing the themes any further. The pro-ecology angle of Blue Gender is one of its weakest aspects.

The biggest issue is the run-down budget on animation which makes a lot of scenes to feel stiff and dull to look at for long. It is not something you can’t excuse if you have accepted it’s mostly about the atmosphere than the action, but newer anime watchers who were spoiled by shows like Demon Slayer will have a hard time staying focused for long. That aside, Blue Gender is a good anime that was unfortunately never given much attention because it came out at a time when Cowboy Bebop and Trigun were the gold standards. The industry moving away from dark sci-fi in favor of silly school romcoms and isekai made it even harder to recommend, especially when the plot is slow and semi-fillerish, while the characters are mostly un-relatable. If, though, you are in a mood for super slow and super depressing anime, this one is one of the best B-grade series of the 90s.

Ahhh... A series with artwork by the guy who made Dragon Ball. What can go wrong? ... Surprise! Everything did. It got some fame because of the hype behind the illustrator and then lost it all in a few episodes because it’s a show for children. If you thought Dragonball’s plot and characters were simple, they are Shakespear next to this one. The show was obviously a callback to old JRPGs which were by default simple and cheerful, but that is not enough to make an interesting show out of them. Not even the similar in tone Dragon Quest anime adaptation managed to do that, ... despite being the most famous title all fantasy and isekai anime were inspired from.

Without much of a source material to work with, the result was a dull fantasy adventure any 10 year old can think of. Not that a good source is enough to have an amazing adaptation, since as we all know by now, they suck as a whole. Classics like Final Fantasy, Persona, Shadow Hearts, Xenogears or Chrono Trigger don’t translate to series well. They are meant to be played, not turned into a story you sit back and do nothing. As good as the plot may be, it will feel very weird if you don’t interact with it. So imagine how worse it will feel when it’s just a fairy tale that lasts ten times more than most people would stand.

The characters are not even fun to follow. They are the most cliché stereotypes you can imagine. As simple as Mahoujin Guruguru was, it had fun characters. Blue Dragon has white noise. You will struggle to remember their name, much less their personality or looks. And no, simply using the Toriyama artstyle doesn’t make them stand out.

Seriously, there are thousands of better series to watch or things to do in general than wasting your time with this thing that is nothing more than a lazy advertisement of a subpar videogame. Blue Dragon only managed to blue ball anyone who expected something more.

Blood-C is the remake of Blood+, which is a remake of Blood the Last Vampire, which was a rehash of the old chicks with swords routine in half an hour. I have nothing against remakes, if they are done once every 20 years and try to offer something new to the table. Yet look at this; three iterations of the same premise in less than a decade? This is plain overkill and on top of that it was becoming worse with each new entry.

The bait of the show is that the drawings are done by CLAMP, the team of women who are famous for their ... spicy premises, taboo relations, and skinny tall pretty characters. It is present here as well, making the series 300% more kawai and anorectic than before. Everybody looks so cute and all; they even included a pair of identical twin girls, like those in xxxHolic in an attempt to sell more. Down to it, it’s a visual gimmick that does not add anything important besides a weak lure of the sort ‘Oh, hey, CLAMP artstyle with twins’. Another bait is that they named it Blood just to attract the fans of the previous versions, which is another cheap trick since all three entries have close to no relation with each other.

These baits ended up backfiring, since most of said fans were disappointed by the very loose relation. They ended up comparing it all the time with the previous versions and other CLAMP works, instead of just seeing it as an individual show. Which is a bad thing since a show must be able to stand on its own two feet instead of needing earlier works for support. But it’s ok since it still managed to find a way to be remembered for something. Blood the Last Vampire is a cult movie for its weird animation. Blood+ is famous for its dark themes. Blood-C will forever be remembered as THE MOST RIDICULOUSLY GORE FINALE OF ALL TIMES. Further analysis on that later on, let’s focus on some other aspects first.

The first thing that made an impression on me is the heroine’s looks. In this version, besides looking as a typical anorectic CLAMP character, she also has very long hair and glasses as extra accessories. Both combined with her being absent-minded and you have an excuse to make fun of her silliness. She is also a miko priestess assigned to kill monsters from the very start. And if we are to take something out, NO RED LIPS, a detail that made her previous iteration annoying to look at.

Besides that, there definitely is a lot more moe in here, as well as a far better feel of physics. Blood+ was notorious for its serious looking characters and the badly done visual effects that made motions and backgrounds to feel artificial. Blood-C did far better in terms of fluid animation and a setting that feels alive instead of artificial (although in-story it’s actually the other way around). Production I.G. definitely improved the visual appeal and also turned Saya into a walking collection of fetishes, like klutz, athletic, wearing glasses and miko uniform on top of an already school uniform. The otakus are going to huff and puff heavily with her, unlike the one in Blood+ who looked and acted in a very plain way, and it was easy to get bored of her. On the other hand, her beginning as a normal girl and progressively turning into a monster slayer had a charm of its own. Too bad it took dozens of episodes and had numerous resets of progress because she was very indecisive.

So this new Saya is now a klutz, like any typical shojo character, yet during sports or battle scenes she kicks ass. Is this even possible? No it isn’t, it’s just there to make her look silly; later on a revelation proves that all that are just moe smokescreen for her real persona. So the core idea is still the same, as she again has no clue who she really is, she has a sort of amnesia, and the whole thing is finding out about it and dealing with it. In a way it improved her version from Blood+ where she was boring for being very passive and indecisive for a long period of time. She is not a crybaby anymore, who needs dozens of episodes to realize who she was, what her dark persona was, and to find the courage to start fighting.

This does not mean that the story moves faster because it is only a 12 episode series. Despite removing the slow build-up and beginning as an already full-fledged monster buster, most of the episodes are filler. And despite trying to make you think she is not passive and indecisive this time, she still freezes whenever a monster attacks her friends, a thing which results to a huge death toll that could have easily been avoided if she WASN’T FREEZING for no apparent reason. Thus, believe it or not, the old Saya, yes the boring one, made more sense since it was in her character to be inactive. This version has her freezing for no in-story reason and it’s done just so the monsters can kill people first, for easily avoided gore. Aka, it’s mindless entertainment.

The character roster is far smaller in this version, which doesn’t affect the plot since none of them were doing anything, but also make her far more isolated as a character. In the previous version she had several relatives, allies, enemies, even renegades, and all of them played an important role in her development, as slow as it was. It also did wonders in fleshing out of the setting. Here most of the characters are nothing but minor schoolmates and monsters with no personality, thus there is almost no fleshing out. The former are just doing silly cute stuff and the latter just kill people, thus you are not given enough reason to care about them.

The action part of the show is a hundred times more exciting that any battle in the previous version, which was simple and sluggish to the point of yawning. Here, the choreography is damn detailed and well played out… although hardly plausible. Saya’s veeery long hair doesn’t seem to hinder her at all. I mean at one point she is fighting in a lake where her hair must have absorbed water equal to a small pool. And her glasses never seem to fall off despite the very violent shakes and strikes. Are they sown on her ears or something? Does she even need glasses with those Chiropteran evil eyes of hers?

The action is also very inconsistent, since despite having some cool choreography, the power scaling is all over the place. Sometimes the heroine is faster than light, sometimes she freezes when the monsters attack and butcher people. Sometimes the monsters attack only at night, then for no reason they can attack at daytime. It is supposed to surprise you, although there is very little effort placed on fleshing out the characters, thus the result is hardly as shocking as the director may have intended. Hey man, I don’t know these people, why should I be shocked?

The show goes for a major plot twist in the end, in a last attempt to amaze us with a last moment revelation. Besides being far-fetched as hell, it also pretty much turned the whole show into a farce, not only mocking the heroine for being so oblivious all this time, but also the audience who expected something more serious from all that. Out of nowhere we get this huge exposition dump that feels like you were being trolled the whole time. And they made it as farfetched as they could, as if they wanted you to facepalm every 2 minutes. If the plot twist had taken place sooner and was presented in a slower manner instead of all at once, while bothering to flesh out the people involved, it could have been amazing. Instead of that you mostly get a monster of the week formula with dull plot and a rushed and messy revelation in the end. Yet, as sloppy as it was in this aspect, it definitely wins in a different one. I officially consider the final episode THE MOST RIDICULOUSLY GORE FINALE OF ALL TIMES. And that will probably be the only thing people will remember this show for. It made even Elfen Lied to look like a papercut.

Other than that, yeah it was pretty shit. It’s like the writers got bored of their own nonsense and like disinterested children they destroyed the sand castles they had spend hours in building. Cartoony characters, mindless violence, and trollish ending is all you get. Despite its numerous problems, Blood+ is the better series.

So some dudes made this short horror film titled Blood the Last Vampire which was instantly labeled cult. I don’t know why; it was probably the weird presentation of an otherwise simplistic premise. Some years later, some other dudes decide to make a series out of this and the result is Blood+. The tale of an apparently normal high school girl forced to take part in a sinister conspiracy that aims to make humanity food for vampire-like freaks.

To make a long story short, the series has a very good concept and interesting characters but its presentation lacks the stuff that would make it great. Here ... are the reasons:

1) Long duration / Slow pacing. The show lasts twice as it should; it is 50 episodes long yet it might as well be only 26. The reason is simple, many episodes feel like minor side quests or filler missions that in the longrun only manage to hinder the progress of the main story with characters and storylines that lack excitement and tire the viewer.

2) Passive crybaby main character. Very few like such protagonists. A dynamic character would have done the same things in half the time instead of constantly doubting and holding back or crying in a corner. Although the basic motto of the series is to portrait a normal girl as she steadily becomes more decisive and active, it doesn’t change the fact that the main heroine is going around in circles. One moment she is trembling in fear, then she suddenly finds the strength to fight, then she reverts back to how she was… 20 times in a row. It gets REALLY bothersome. It is excused the first few times but when it keeps happening over and over, then it pisses you off.

3) Lack of focus on secondary characters. Saya and her nemesis get all the spotlight, leaving all the rest as almost unneeded background decorations. Although it is true that a great deal of characters are fleshed out throughout the series, none of them does something overly important to affect the story. Imagine an entire secret organization of supposed elite agents who in the entirety of the series didn’t manage to beat the weakest monster, while Saya an otherwise simple-minded schoolgirl has slain a mountain of brutes. Why were they in the story then? Just to pay her traveling tickets and giving her a quest list? Nice NPCs they were… Her family ain’t better either. Her step brothers keep interacting with her and are even willing to fight for her, but eventually don’t do anything to affect the battles or the result of all this mess. Do you know how irritating it is to have epic level fighters who do nothing while the rookie squire kills the dragon?

4) Boring battles. Although there is a lot of action in the anime and most problems end up being resolved through fighting, almost none of the numerous duels and spars are exiting. Saya will just use her super blood to instant-kill any monster she cuts with her sword, after a simplistic battle choreography. And if she gets injured in the progress? Big deal; she immediately heals like Wolverine. In the meantime, all the rest of the supernatural people around her will be flying and shooting and blowing stuff up, usually with zero importance to the plot. And as I said, elite agents are completely useless at beating even the weakest of foes. Where is the interest in all this?

5) Huge mystery build up / disappointing revelation. For most of the show Saya will have amnesia (which is a bad trope on its own but I felt generous enough not to make a different topic about it). She will keep traveling and fighting and investigating and having flashbacks in order to remember what had happened in her past. And we are kept teased with these vague images and hints and weird stuff, making us expect an amazing revelation. And when the revelation finally comes, you go all “WTF, after all this waiting that was all of it???” Seriously, the explanation of the grand mystery behind her past is simple as frakk, yet they make you think it will be something unimaginably epic.

6) Clean CGI. Although the animation is quite good and the sceneries are great to stare, the anime just doesn’t feel “dirty” enough. The textures on objects like clothing or rocks will look sparkling clean, even when they should be worn-out from weather, bloodshed, dust, mud or generally affected by their surrounds. Even the wind blowing on the characters’ faces will feel more like a fan. It is as if the entire thing was shot with a blue screen and thus feels fake. 3D effects weren’t as well developed back then, so everything feels more artificial than hand-drawn.

7) Ever-present school uniform. Saya wears one most of the times, even when she is not going to school. Pander the otakus too much and you end up making it look too ridiculous to care about her personal drama.

8) Red lips. Saya has them. ALL THE TIME! They stand out. She is the only one with so much RED. They are annoying…

That’s pretty much all of it. The finale may also feel corny as frakk, but I am generous again and leave that alone. Corny doesn’t mean bad; just unimaginative. It is otherwise good corn quality.

And now the few things I can praise:

1) Gore. Buckets of blood and some deviant things here and there.
2) Shadows. Good use of lighting by … not using it. Makes things pitch black and scary by being just black silhouettes with glowing red eyes.
3) Soundtrack. Exceptional use of violin and musical instruments; very good in building atmosphere. Too bad most of it gets wasted on a boring plot and silly story. And the lyrics are pop shitz. What in blazes is pop doing in a semi-horror anime? … Oh, right, it has a schoolgirl in it.

The story is about two uninteresting (ordinary) high school students becoming mages by a half naked witch and try to avenge the killers of a girl they liked before evil mages rewrite reality. It’s cheesy and convoluted, trying to combine a typical revenge story with some really confusing hocus pocus terminology. The presentation will constantly be attempting to make it appear like it’s the most awesome thing ever by throwing in complicating terms, pretentious pseudo-intelligent dialogues, and weird visuals. The execution is as lazy as it gets.

The plot is very hard to follow. It begins with the hero returning home and meeting his SWITCH a ... half naked girl is thrown at an island where she can’t cast magic through SWITCH the hero is bullied at school and his girlfriend tells him to SWITCH they are on the grave of their family where they say someone SWITCH a sexy agent is after the protagonist until he SWITCH a mysterious disease turns people to statues and the heroes go to SWITCH and then a huge cocoon hatches and the world is about to end.

Oh, wow, best teaser of a half season series I have seen in awhile. Let’s see if the actual show is as good…
What??? This was not a teaser but the pilot episode??? Jesus, why is the plot all over the place? They barely show something before they switch to something else. And don’t give me this whole “it is not wasting time in needless events” excuse. If you don’t invest time in the setting and the characters, then how do you expect the viewers to care?

Ok, maybe they just rushed the beginning so we can go straight to the point. Maybe the rest of the episodes will have good pacing and worthy plot… NOT! The pacing in the rest of the episodes suffers from the exact opposite issue. It is EXTREMELY slow, filled with useless dialogues and pointless action scenes. The prize easily goes at the point where the characters are doing nothing but TALKING FOR 5 EPISODES WITHOUT DOING ANYTHING ELSE! I mean, really, all they had to do is press a simple trigger that would save the world and instead of that, they began talking non-stop. And do you think the whole thing ended when they finally reached to a conclusion? Hell no, a magic tree appears out of nowhere and saves the world regardless of what any character wanted. TOTAL BULLSHIT!

The above example is also proof of a major flaw in the script. IT IS FATALISTIC. Nothing the characters do seems to matter if all the action scenes and the dialogues are irrelevant to the progress of the plot. And the plot is literally controlled by a bunch of magic trees that appear anytime they feel like it and regardless of what the characters do. There is a scene where thousands of people are fighting each other with magic, and tanks, and missiles, and everything becomes a huge battlefield. The outcome was irrelevant to what they did; a magic tree appeared on its own and it just trashed everything. People are simply decorations when it comes to the plot! It should be the other away around, with the trees being a pretty background.

Not even its internal logic makes any sense. Despite its numerous attempts to make sense of magic, offer limitations and balance, and to present a worldview that can logically stand on its own feet, it comes down to magic and teleportation! Anything can happen just because the scriptwriter thought it would be cool. So despite wasting half the show in talking and explanations, NOTHING MAKES SENSE much less being serious in its themes.

Exposition is boring as heck. They are talking for whole episodes about how magic works in this world, as if it’s complicating and hard to understand. In practice you just wear magic jewellery and gain superpowers without any training; anything further that that is unnecessary complication. It is ridiculous how much time they spent on explaining something so unimportant with such detail.

And even after all the explaining, the logic of this goddamn show is still contradicted in the second half. They say for example that you need to use something man-made in order to cast magic. Later on, that is no longer necessary since mages are introduced. They spend a lot of time showing the rivalry between the mages, the rebel mages, and the army. Countless people died because of their actions. In the second half and out of screen, they are now best friends, as if all the disastrous things they did to each other in the first half weren’t even important! The series literally turns from a dark action/survival/drama into a fluffy school comedy!

As if that wasn’t enough of a mess, the creators keep trying to fool you into believing this shit of a show is gritty and serious. The most glaring example is how the characters constantly quote Shakespearean works. Is this supposed to add depth to the plot? It adds nothing, makes the show pretentious, and the characters only manage to talk in a completely artificial way. It’s like they decorate an empty box with a hundred fancy ribbons.

Furthermore, if you REALLY think about it, the main two dudes would have no reason to do anything in this show, if any of the villains had told them the truth right away. Yet instead of just saying “Well, heh, you know, the witch can’t really help you and your plan will fail no matter what you do” they just chase them around and fight for no reason. Even when they get ready to achieve their goals by pressing a SIMPLE TRIGGER they instead start talking for 5 EPISODES while the world around them is being destroyed. And eventually what happens? Nature does what they should have done 5 EPISODES AGO, thus rendering their whole mission pointless yet again. The whole plot is one big troll.

Even when the show tries to flesh out the characters with numerous flashbacks, it still fails to make them interesting. They are blunt and simplistic, they have no control over the events, their goals are petty, and to the most part they are just walking around and talk. And they also don’t seem to give a damn; everything is in ruins and all their loved ones are dead, yet they act like nothing much has happened. How can you feel any sympathy for these uncaring assholes? Occasionally they fight but even that is boring as hell and could very easily be avoided altogether. Here is the roster so you know what you get.

We have the Pussy Boy, someone who is following the Bad Boy for not much of a reason. He loved his sister and they are buddies but other than that he can’t do anything right SO WHY DOES HE TAG ALONG?
- At one point he is fighting Slutty Spy for a whole episode. He defeats her all the time and instead of talking with her or finishing her off, HE RUNS AWAY! As a result she keeps attacking him with more and more powerful weapons, until he gets fed up to kick her around and asks for a truce… And he gets it. Damn, a whole episode was wasted on these useless spars before they form a truce that could have been achieved right away.
- He then starts arguing with Bad Boy for some misunderstanding that lasts for 5 WHOLE EPISODES the result of which is zero since that tree they were trying to destroy gets destroyed by some superpower from the planet itself.

Then we have Bad Boy, who leans magic in order to avenge his family and NOT to save the world; great motivation there fellow.
- He fights a much stronger opponent and the whole episode is wasted on spars with no tactics or even a resolution. And the lolz part is how the enemy could teleport anywhere he likes, yet the injured hero outruns him and escapes by running in plain sight. DERP!
- He then creates a super weapon that can destroy the bad guys’ magic tree and he is willing to use it right away, but then just talks for 5 EPISODES while pointing the gun. Planet Namek blowing up was at least thrilling. This was shit.

We also have Naked Witch, who doesn’t do anything besides sitting all day long on an island and stuffing items between her boobs. She is there only as an excuse for infodumping and fan service. She constantly tries to offer a logical explanation to everything that is going on in the series. Too bad it’s about MAGIC and after awhile it’s just random crap where logic has no place being there.
- She later falls in love with Pussy Boy for no bloody reason at all and completely turns from a dynamic super woman in command of a huge clan of mages into a 10 year old girl who can’t even express her feelings for him and acts like a complete klutz. Deep … character … development! Or perhaps plain misogyny?

Slutty Bitch, the girl they are trying to avenge. We get to know nothing about her besides being constantly naked, talking about sex, and seducing boys for fun. And she is as good as dead, we only learn about her in flashbacks which fail to make her any more interesting. And apparently, this slut is far more important to be avenged instead of saving the world.
- Later on she is revealed to be alive all along and the whole thing was actually a prank to make the world be destroyed for the lulz. But by then nobody cares anymore and she is just a troll that is dealt with in 2 episodes.

Evil Boss, who plans to save the world… by destroying it. Okay… He is constantly trying to pass as mature, wise, and always prepared, plus he is supposed to be a master swordsman. Yet as soon as he meets the main characters, he totally flips and acts like a complete loser who cries, panics, crawls on four, and just bangs the sheath of his sword on the ground instead of pulling out the sword and fighting them. LOSER!
- In the second half he turns into a comic relief who has no real goal or dignity anymore. All his cool image gets completely ruined and becomes yet another lame idiot.

Gay Blondie, a boy with super martial arts. He can beat anyone is a fraction of a second, yet instead of joining the other two main heroes, he stays home and talks to himself without offering anything to the plot. I mean, seriously, he could beat the evil boss in less than a second, thus saving the world. He has nothing important to do in his home, and the world is about to be destroyed, and all he does is TALKING TO THIN AIR! Obviously done as an excuse for more infodump, but it could have easily been avoided if he had internal monologues and a good excuse to stay behind. In the meantime, the world is about to be destroyed and he is doing nothing to prevent that.
- Oh wait, later on he eventually joins the battle against the bad guys! The problem is, instead of going to beat the evil boss and destroy the tree, he only fights his underling. Why? Because there was Slutty Spy with her huge boobs near by and he wanted to show off so he can fuck her! What a responsible and mature guy!

Slutty Spy, a completely worthless woman who walks around half-naked and gets herself beaten by men with ten times her strength. I mean, seriously, she clearly has no fighting skills and constantly challenges males who are clearly more powerful. TOTAL BIMBO! And more misogyny.

Fail Idiot, a guy who acts like he can’t even walk without tripping and who can use magic without a material component JUST BECAUSE. He pretends to be a brave superhero that protects the world, as if he couldn’t be bipolar enough as he was. He is just a Power Ranger parody and completely useless to the plot.

So just imagine how less interesting is everybody else in this show.
- We see thousands of people tuning to statues. Should we feel anything when the series only bothers to show them for three seconds and then forgets they exist?
- There is a scene where the army destroys the exits to the town so nobody can come in or out, plus they hide the fact from the rest of the world. It is supposed to prove the army exists and cares to intervene, plus a lot of world shaking events are kept hidden from the public. That sounds so serious, right? Well, in practice all you see is a few helicopters throwing missiles without a single soldier inside or around them, and then some woman talking and saying “we will hide that from the world”. Great presentation you guys; we really see the grave importance of all these events… NOT! Where are the military officers talking about it? Where is the media cover up? Where is anything else in general besides the main two characters? THEY SHOW ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! You can somewhat excuse it by saying the plot is presented only through their eyes, and many events are revealed only through dialogues. That still doesn’t save said events from being impersonal, distant, and eventually makes you feel or think absolutely nothing about the show.
- Later on, the army tries to save the day by attacking the evil tree and again it fails to achieve anything because another magic tree does all the work for them… And also kills them despite the fact they were its allies. How nice; all the struggles and the battles ARE RENDERED USELESS! The moral of the story is “Do nothing and let the world be magically saved by hax powers. If you try to help, YOU WILL DIE BY THE VERY PLANET YOU ARE TRYING TO SAVE!”
- This show also has the privilege of taking phallocracy to new heights. Remember how women in shonen shows are completely useless? Well, this anime takes it further by killing all the main heroines right away and leaving them there only as annoying memories and sidekicks. LAME!

TL;DR: A total fail of a story with interesting themes, and shit plot and cast. The production values are ok but who cares if nothing is important?

The movie is supposed to take place in a timeline where the Fake Karakura battle never happened and Ichigo didn’t lose his powers. It starts with a flashy opening where Inner Hollow Mark 3 and Super Demon Clown Release Mark 2 are fighting over a pair of breasts called The Kurosaki-kun bimbo. If any of you are Ulqi fans and expect a rematch later on, SUCKEEERS NO MORE ULQI THEREAFTER. In reality this entire introduction scene is completely irrelevant to what follows next. Introductions are meant to foreshadow what comes next, but this is Bleach we are talking about so we might as well say ... it was very fitting after all. The really intelligent viewer will realize that THIS WILL BE RANDOM SHIT AS USUAL! ARE YOU REALLY EXPECTING SOME PLOT IN THIS MOVIE AND NOT COOL ACTION?

Anyways, after the flashy opening, the filler plot kicks in and we see Ichigo having a normal day in his life. Kicking random bullies, being kind hearted to dead kids, fighting with his father… Hey wait a second, why do all that seem so familiar? HEY, IT’S THE EXACT SAME THING THAT HAPPENED IN THE PILOT EPISODE! Damn Kubo, you ran out of ideas to the point you are repeating THE EXACT SAME PLOT from the series? … TWICE? … IN JUST TEN MINUTES?

Anyways, after that he goes to school where the only thing that is not happening is studying and learning. Such concepts do not exist in the Bleachverse and schools are places young people gather just for lame humor and piss poor romance that never leads anywhere waiting to happen. And indeed, random stuff start dropping and nobody suspects a thing. Yeah, some students almost got killed by the debris and the whole incident went by like nothing much happened. That makes sense, especially since the whole town has always been oblivious to all the mass destruction and murders that take place every three days.

Anyways, the school eventually blows up and these evil dudes attack, so Ichigo and his gang go to stop them… Hey, wait a second, why didn’t his sword fire that laser beam when he went bankai? Damn, more inconsistencies! Well whatever, it’s not like there are rules or restrictions in this show and as expected a flashy but completely random battle follows. For some reason the villains want Ichigo’s sisters but blow up his school instead. And when one of them is defeated he is taken to hell by that gate we haven’t seen since episode 5. Yeah, I guess every single Hollow that was defeated after that episode was not evil enough to deserve the gate… or Kubo just forgot about it until he decided to make this movie, which is nothing but a rehash of scenes from the main series. THIRD SCENE THAT REPEATS!

Ah Rukia is in this film too. Is she going to be kidnapped for the nth time so Ichigo can have something to do? … Nah, it can’t be, this time it’s his sister that needs saving, so we already have the same old objective. Rukia’s role is to kindly explain what happens in hell with her amazing drawing skills. Oh, and as usual she is useless in battle and thus she had to be saved by Sado… who appeared on that roof out of nowhere despite the fact he can’t fly with the speed of light like everybody else and was in the other side of the city ten seconds ago. Lovely consistency.

After that they are taken to hell by a guy from that place who claims he wants to help them get her back. They get to fight all the goons there and once again we see Kubo repeating scenes from the main series (*cough* Rukia defeats Espada 9) before it is revealed he is the big bad of the film and all that was a trick for Ichigo to go berserk and destroy the gate permanently so there will be no chains to keep them there. Surprisingly Ichigo’s sister is saved but Rukia gets captured in her stead, and now is all naked in chains and tortured by the big bad. Oh I see she finally got her real place in this movie and once again ICHIGO NEEDS TO SAVE HER! He goes to fight the villain and gets yet another power up just when he is about to be killed (yeah Kubo, that is the only thing you do to save your protagonist), and with it he magically beats the big bad and fixes the gate in a minute. The end. Isn’t it lovely when the main villain goes through all the trouble of setting up an elaborate plan against a complete idiot hero, who just storms in and never thinks anything, yet loses because the hero has plot armor? Doesn’t than make all efforts pointless if you are not the main lead who wins no matter what even with no brains or strategy? Am I overthinking this for a show called Bleach?

I must say this movie had by far the least amount of context. While the other three had some sparks of drama by focusing on a secondary character, over here we get squat. The main villain tries to offer some sort of drama over his grim existence in hell but who cares; he is a generic Big Bad for the sake of having something to fight. Plus it was as I described a collection of scenes from the series, thus not even the plot was anything new. So ok, they showed how hell looks like and gave Ichigo his SSJ4 form, all of which will be rendered useless when the main story will ACTUALLY be about hell.

The best part is of course the action scenes and only in terms of hollow (lol) entertainment. I can’t say I was thrilled with the coloring or the animation as they felt too blobby at times and less detailed and with less cinematics in shading than the previous movies. The soundtrack also felt weak this time as it was too much pop and too less cool in the sense it doesn’t make you feel anxiety and unrest.

There are still the usual clichés you find in any fighting shounen movie, it is still to the most part a parade of special attacks. Surprisingly, for the first time ever it was not about “Let’s save Soul Society for the millionth time” theme but “Let’s close the gates of hell” for a change. It even fooled us for awhile to think it was about saving a girl other than Rukia or Inoue before it finally returned to the good old Rukia… Plus now she was naked and chained; so double the service (and lol, she is the only one naked when the other captured males are still dressed; phallocracy ftw). Even the big bad’s identity is deceiving. The final showdown though was rushed and a cop-out; extremely disappointing even for the few remaining Bleachtards. Even this new form he gets looks rather lame; I was misled to think I was watching Saint Seya for a few seconds… Hey wait a second… Hell? Golden armor transformation? A rescue mission to save a chick? DAMN KUBO; LEAVE POOR SAINT SEYA ALONE!

Value and enjoyment ain’t much, and this time are even lower than usual because of the complete lack of personal drama. In all, Bleach went to hell with this movie (not that it was that far away from there the way it went under after the SS arc). If only there were Blanks and Sheena in the main series, which Aizen was going after in order to make the key, if only the Fake Karakura war was depicted like in Diamond Dust Rebellion and if only there was an Espada like those two kids in Fade to Black to give Rukia further role in the series, before hell breaks loose...
...if only...

The guys who made this movie combined the best elements of the previous 2. The good part of the first movie was the twist about memories and the good of the second was the focus on a character from the series instead of a filler one. So, expect another theme about the importance of memories and lots of centering on the characters. The second movie was about a tragic event in Hitsugaya’s past, this one is about Rukia’s. And yes, it does feel good as a premise as far as filler missions go. The plot was otherwise simple and predictable as it usually is but ... at least the main idea of lost memories was enough to care about whatever dramatic attempts this movie had.

Production values being so damn high means that even the cheesiest battles looked fine and offered some good choreography at the final dual. Adding cinematics like turning the image slowly to grey or having a sad eerie sound during the flashbacks gave a boost to all those moments where the action just seemed pointless. Also, it felt like a “memberberries” situation, as many flashback scenes are actually taken from the series, including filler arcs. So, it was a sort of summary of what has happened so far and tribute to the evolution of the relationship between Rukia and Ichigo… before it was scrapped for that lame Inoue rescue mission. In any case, you better not watch this movie before the series as it reveals a lot of important events. It still feels weird at times as Rukia and that filler girl had huuuge eyes and the way lips are drawn is a hit or miss. Still, very good overall. And let’s add to this the atmospheric music themes and the very catchy ending song too. Those finer touches actually helped me stay awake through the otherwise cheesy plot.

There are still the usual clichés you find in any fighting shounen movie. It is still to the most part a parade of special attacks and the “Let’s save Soul Society for the millionth time” theme is present for once more. And as I said, beyond the initial interesting premise of the story, the plot is cheesy as hell. Soul Society is in danger; Ichigo to the rescue, everyone fights the minions and lets the lead take on the boss. Plus, it gets lamer with one more addition. Remember how in American superhero crossovers the heroes always fight each other when they meet? Just for the heck of it? Well, it is the same with this movie. Ichigo gets to fight EVERYONE he meets as they are supposed to have forgotten him. And yes it makes sense to do that but it gets dull if 50% of the movie is spars between good guys that never result to anything other than advertising their transforming swords. The rest of the story is about a super hollow created by Mayuri, that erases the memories of someone in EVERYONE’S minds… which escapes in the bodies of two children who can teleport… who were trapped in Hueco Mundo for a century… who return to find their good old friend Rukia and punish the tyrannical Shinigamis… and pretty much invade like the defenses in Soul Society are made of rice paper and turn everything to nice wax statues. Damn, movie villains seem to have 10 times the destructive power of the series villains.

Ok, if you try to make sense out of it, you won’t find any. This is Bleach we are talking about; remember? Plot holes bigger than Menos Grande are present as we were never really told what the hell was the main enemy. A hollow that could transform from a tiny snake, to a scythe that erases memories, to a gargaduan tentacle freak that turns people to statues? For real now, that thing was supposed to be a simple Hollow? It owned most Espada. And what the hell was that glowing bottle thingy? And how could Urahara go to Soul Society if a barrier was supposed to prevent him from doing so?

All I can say is that unlike the previous movies where Ichigo just storms in and beats the villain in a flash, here he is not able to do that right away as the villain can teleport and holds Rukia and two children as hostages. This made things more interesting to watch. Still, the conclusion was predictable and cheesy so don’t keep your hopes up. He finds a way to win even without using his bankai.

In all, the story in the first movie is similar yet far better. The drama of the two children fades away pretty fast without any sense on part of the plot. Half of it is pointless duals and the other half is Swiss cheese. Also, the movie assumes Ichigo’s schoolmates or the Arrancar threat don’t exist so that makes it to stand alone and being unable to fit in some filler moment. Ok, theoretically it can be placed after the filler arc concerning the past of several captains as we get to see Mayuri without his mask. Then again, fillers in this series defy time and space so you can place it anywhere you like.

Still, the cast is more entertaining than in the other two movies. Although the focus is on Rukia we get to see Mayuri going insane in his lab, Kenpachi going amok in battle, Renji showing care about the person who he doesn’t remember and many more. Thus, at least as far as characters go, they feel less dry than in the previous movies. Heck, they even brought Urahara in the action and had Soi Fong in a half-naked, half-yuri scene. Oh, and Kon was also there to be the comical relief that goes all emo on the loss of Rukia. Very pleasing moments. Not great but still better than before.

As for the new characters, those two kids? They had no idea what they were doing. Trying to find their names by making Rukia forget them? WTF? All whining and no meaning. Senna kicks their butts in personality and she was a much weaker fighter without even remembering anything. There is no way you can sympathize them. You can hate them for causing all this trouble out of whining and for torturing poor Rukia like that. Oh, and Rukia? She reverts to the passive damsel in distress who is need of Ichigo to come and save her again. Come on, this got old. Ichigo is always about saving girls than protecting the world from cosmic horrors. The entire Soul Society had turned to a hideous wax statue and all he cared about was saving a chick. Ok…

Value and enjoyment ain’t much for the various reasons I mention. This third attempt made some steps forward (more focus on multiple characters) and some backwards (lame whining new characters, plotholes big enough for the Enterprise to fly through). It is still an average time killer if that is all you want.

Movies deriving from a series are 99% of the time just filler episodes with better animation, more action and a lame story. Did this movie escape this formula and offered something different for a chance? … Hell, no. Be prepared for simply another filler mission, with predictable plot and pseudo-serious matters. Of course, chances are you watch Bleach just for the battles as neither the story nor the characters are deeper than a rain pond; so this will not faze you in the least.

Animation and sound wise, the movie is very good. It uses cinematics greater than those in the initial episodes (how do I ... miss those) and makes the story to look dramatic, like a good samurai movie. The level of lining detail is more or less the same, though there is a higher spectrum of colors and a much lower amount of static images and repeating frames. I must say that as far as atmosphere in a title like Bleach goes, the movie did a wonderful job.

Of course, most will not care about this as much as the action part. Yes, there is action and it is freaking awesome. If you are into superpower battles, you will not be disappointed. Still, don’t expect any realism or decent choreography, as the whole deal was, and still is, just people yelling the names of their attacks and then their swords magically change shapes and spit all sorts of elemental spells. Thunders and lightings fill the screen and buildings crumble and dimensions merge and… Well, it looks epic, who cares about logic.

Story and characters are, as expected, more shallow and uninteresting than in the series. Not by too much though, as all of us who know of Bleach are aware that there was never much meat around those bones to begin with. So, once again, Soul Society is in danger, all the captains attack and do a cameo parade of special attacks before Ichigo storms in and saves the day in the same fashion as always… Actually, the story is not very different than the Hueco Mundo ark. Same basic plot, same pattern in battles.

I can only say that the shift of protagonist from the dorky lead Ichigo, to the white haired boy Hitsugaya was not very successful. Being a filler mission, it doesn’t matter how much they try to flesh him out. Sure, he is less pathetic than Strawberry Boy, but still, he is just another guy shy around women, wielding a magic sword. As for his tragic past and movie rival, it was quite ridiculous as you never quite see how his childhood friend managed to survive, raised a huge army of ghosts and invaded Soul Society like there was no protection at all. Or why the heck doesn’t anyone do something about the ever-present scheming leaders of Soul Society and just kills all those who try to change things. Anyways, Ichigo was still the one to beat the baddy, so what’s the point? Why don’t they just make a movie about Zaraki picking his nose and slaying monsters from beginning to end? It will be far more interesting and it will not even need a story. Anyways, as a whole it is about every character in the series showing off his powers before Ichigo predictably wins. Nice action, boring plot.

Value and enjoyment … or the absence of them. I lost interest in shonen that are nothing more than brainless action and lame attempts at drama. There are far more interesting shonen, as there are far more dramatic and realistic samurai movies. This movie is more or less a waste of time. Something to watch when you just want to see pretty lights filling the screen. At best you can enjoy yet another uninspired movie about yet another series that went down the drain after a while.

This is the first Bleach movie and I must say it ended up being better than I expected. As far as movies go, you can of course expect far better production values and flashier battles. Yet it has something more than just an excuse for a parade of special attacks. It is by all means nothing more than a filler mission but it had a metaphysical aspect that went beyond the simple plot of “Let’s save Soul Society for the millionth time”.

First of all, if you haven’t watched any episodes, stay away from the movie. You won’t understand the new twist to the cosmology of ... the setting without prior knowledge of the general story and cast. Plus, the action may mislead you, as it hardly gets so good in the series.

Second, if you do know of the series and go for this movie, chances are you watch Bleach just for the battles as neither the story nor the characters are deeper than a rain pond. Still, the main idea behind the Blanks and the Memory Rosary are very good as an extra aspect of the otherwise simplified and polarized good souls – bad souls and it would be quite catchy if they had it inserted in the main story from the beginning. It would leave room for side stories in the Valley of Screams and excuse a lot better those out of place fillers. Too bad they didn’t.

Animation and sound wise, the movie is very good. It uses cinematics, greater than those in the initial episodes (how do I miss those) and makes the story to look dramatic, like a good samurai movie. The level of lining detail is more or less the same, though there is a higher plethora of colors and a much lower amount of static images and repeating frames. I must say that as far as atmosphere in a title like Bleach goes, the movie did a wonderful job.

Of course, most will not care about this as much as the action part. Yes, there is action and it generally good. If you are into superpower battles, you will not be disappointed. Still, don’t expect any realism or decent choreography, as the whole deal was, and still is, just people yelling the names of their attacks and then their swords magically change shapes and spit all sorts of elemental spells. Thunders and lightings fill the screen and buildings crumble and dimensions merge. Still, the showdown was very disappointing as the villains in the story weren’t much of a threat in close combat and only their run-of-the-mill “Let’s destroy Soul Society from afar” plan was their only slight change of winning.

What else… Ah, yes; voice acting. Can’t say it was any better than in the series. It is still mostly one-liners and yelling of the names of transforming swords and spells. The dramatic tension is almost lost because of all that. Thank goodness there were some semi-psychological dialogues around existentialism issues that saved the movie from complete boredom. I never say no to some intellectual flavoring to a fighting shounen.

The characters are, as expected, more shallow and uninteresting than in the series. Not by too much though, as all of us who know of Bleach are aware that there was never much meat around those bones to begin with. It is a filler movie and you get nothing extra, other than seeing all the captains attack and do a cameo parade of special attacks before Ichigo storms in and saves the day in the same fashion as always. The movie villains were all talk and no personality. Unless you consider a “kill everyone as revenge” attitude as personality. Senna on the other hand was quite an interesting character, both as a girl fooling around the serious Ichigo but also as a character with issues around the meaning of life and being. I actually sympathized with her more than almost anyone else in the whole series.

The story has a simple and expected plot. Soul Society is in danger; Ichigo to the rescue, everyone fights the minions and lets the lead take on the boss. But the main idea behind the otherwise simple plot was very interesting. Imagine being given a bunch of memories, not of your own. Are you a different person than before because of them? Are your thoughts the thing that defines your soul? Great food for the mind although it is not really looked upon and you’d probably care more about the battles than this issue. Still, the story overall is quite weak as you hardly believe these Nobodies (literally speaking) were actually a real threat for the captains of Soul Society, with their imba cannon and their imba bankais and the imba lead on their side. By the way, everybody was just trying to deal with the villains that were created by the very misdoings of their leaders and no one seemed to think how getting rid of their scheming leaders would stop bringing their world to the brink of destruction every 2 months. Not to forget to mention that once again Ichigo was fighting to save a chick and not to save the world. Somebody needs to explain to him one day that a random chick he has no real interest in is less important than the rest of the world.

Value and enjoyment ain’t much. I lost interest in shounen that are nothing more than brainless action and lame attempts at drama. There are far more interesting shounen, as there are far more dramatic and realistic samurai movies. So this movie is more or less a quick watch without something to remember it for.

Here’s another adaptation that missed the mark. Animation and sound are pretty standard with nothing particularly interesting to remember them for. This kills everything the manga was going for, meaning the rough pen artwork is gone and so is most of the gore. Turning that to a typical anime artstyle just kills the artistry. It’s like taking the Watchmen and changing them into Super Friends.

Beyond that, this series is not even good as a standard action series. The main character is immortal and can never die no matter how many times he gets stabbed, clubbed or thrown into a huge blender. It doesn’t really matter ... how strong his opponent is or what technique he is using. The protagonist just stands still and gets hit without caring and waits for the adversary to leave an opening so he can kill him. Basically, he can’t lose while they can, and that makes all the fights boring.

The protagonist is not even cool like Alucard from Hellsing or Dark Shneider of Bastard!! He leaves you with no real impression. Neither do his random enemies and allies. The story is a generic revenge quest you have seen a billion times already, made up of stand alone missions. Plus, it ends without concluding anything.

TL;DR: A passable and forgettable series. Not even the aesthetics of the manga managed to keep me interested for long. The gore was fun and even that fell short when the all mighty protagonist who has no special features could never die.