Naruto and Bleach II: I don't have the heart to care anymore.

[RPGJay]

Hoo boy. Bleach and Naruto with no One Piece to help make me feel better this week. This oughta be fun.

This week's Naruto was bad, though I am glad the fight between the Kages and the real Madara is not being glossed over. This chapter is at the bery least better than the last couple for me by that alone. I can understand skipping a bit of a fight if nothing of consequence is occurring. Although nothing of real interest has happened this chapter either. The Kages are getting their asses kicked unsurprisingly by one of the strongest ninja to ever ninja who is now an immortal zombie with First Hokage cells. Once again having genes/cells/organs of anyone relatively semi-related to the Sage of Six Paths instantly means you're super-Jesus until someone with more/bigger/stronger genes/cells/organs beats you into submission.

Anyone else ever think that Kishimoto took a Psych class and only payed attention to deterministic (aka biological=everything) theories?

To give credit to this chapter I did like the Tsuchikage's flashback. I can't quite articulate my thoughts as to why into words exactly, but having a "but what matters is inside" speech in this series without it sounding like a Dora the Explorer lesson is refreshing. Plus the fact I kind of like the old man helps. Granted it's a generic as fuck plot device of "I had a flashback and now I'm not giving up" attack but hey I'll take what I can get. It's certainly better than what is going to occur next chapter when/if Itachi and Sasuke meet up.

As far as the art is concerned I agree with the consensus that it's rather bad. I think the big thing for me is that the fight scenes with Madara just look unfinished. Like, stuff like the first 3 pages with the flower thing and the environment look like they were drawn in but someone forgot to ink them or they just look like the opposite; a blob of ink that forgot to be properly detailed like Madara's ink aura on page 4. As a result everything looks really bland at best (like Madara's ink aura) or just ugly and sketchy (like page 10 with the Tsuchikage's attack).

Oddly enough the best drawn pages were the last few with Sasuke and Itachi. Gee I can only wonder why~

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As for Bleach...eh. By Bleach standards it wasn't an awful chapter but it still gets very low points for being so samey. Aizen face guy shows himself to Ichigo, Ichigo is caught offguard by the power he uses (again, way to go with the whole genocide of the Quincies thing Soul Society), and a new faction of enemies who no one knew about make their presence known and ugh. Kubo is so incapable of going outside his usual formula of New arc= reveal new team of characters until I think of what to do next. I mean, shit I barely even noticed those two new pipsqueak shinigami were even in this chapter, which is certainly bad writing to almost immediately make any new characters from not more than 2 chapters ago already seemingly irrelevant.
Oh and this page needs to win some kind of award for bad art. All of the big series this week seem to be pretty shoddily drawn. I guess it's Naruto x Bleach: Scribble War 2 now

[Cyan D. Funk]

MEANWHILE IN KUBO'S OFFICE

"Hmm, kay I need villains for my new masterpiece arc. I've got it! How about archers...archers who...who...do what that bird-sword thing Soul Society has does, what was that again...uhh...oh yeah, destroy souls! And....and these archers...were all killed by Soul Society for really stupid reasons. So now these archers...all hate Soul Society! Oh Kubo, you're so brilliant. And I'll call these archers...Quails...Quints...QUINCIES! That's it! Wow, I wish I thought them up before the final arc in my masterpiece manga!"

And Ishida's just crying in the corner while all this happens.

[RPGJay]

You know you'd think the ONE thing Soul Society wouldn't fail at would be genocide but turns out they're too fucking lazy to do even that!

[Jabra]

Three pages of Sasuke do not count?

Seems my brain was trying to protect itself from taking long term damage, nothing to be ashamed of.

[No Maam]

They're wearing masks.

It's likely. All I'm saying is I wouldn't be surprised if this is literaly what they look like.

[Sander]

I wonder why the act as simple as Sasuke noticing Itachi passing by required whole 2 pages.

Then again,I don't know why Kubo needed 3 ZOINKING PAGES to show how Ginjou was drinking alcohol with via Fullbring powers.

[Gliblord]

Guys, guys. In fairness, the murder of the Quncies was a unilateral decision of Mayuri's, wasn't it? Also, let's not forget that Quincies were putting the balance between worlds in jeopardy through their intransigence, so it's not like they're totally guiltless.

[Sander]

Guys, guys. In fairness, the murder of the Quncies was a unilateral decision of Mayuri's, wasn't it? Also, let's not forget that Quincies were putting the balance between worlds in jeopardy through their intransigence, so it's not like they're totally guiltless.

Fair enough I guess.Though one has to wonder why Mayuri suffered through 0 repercussions for the said unilateral decision of mass-murder.Well,that and his unethical experiments he does all the time.

[Cyan D. Funk]

Guys, guys. In fairness, the murder of the Quncies was a unilateral decision of Mayuri's, wasn't it? Also, let's not forget that Quincies were putting the balance between worlds in jeopardy through their intransigence, so it's not like they're totally guiltless.

I'm pretty sure Yamamoto gave the genocide order.

And what "balance"? The balance of a steady stream of peasants for Soul Society?

--- Update From New Post Merge ---

Kubo may not remember that Mayuri's actually a disgusting shit of a person.

[black-leg jex]

i don't think mayuri ordered the mass genocide of the quinceis but he was the one who killed ishidas grandad

[Sander]

Kubo may not remember that Mayuri's actually a disgusting shit of a person.

He is voiced by Freeza's VA in the anime.If that doesn't scream "creepy sadistic maniacal Shounen villain",then I don't know what does.

[Gliblord]

Well if they didn't become peasants in Soul Society, they'd become Hollows, so that's rather a moot point. Also, we're talking destruction of worlds here, if I recall correctly.

[Cyclone_Baroness]

Hhmmm. Is it weird I actually kinda liked this chapter of Bleach? Maybe I've just set the bar so low for him after the fullbringers that almost anything is better lol.

I'm betting that because Kubo didn't reveal faces that one of the masked guys is actually Ishida's grandfather (and or mother? I don't remember her being mentioned.) That would really be the only reason aside from laziness I could think of to have fully masked characters since he doesn't typically do that. He likes to have his sneering smug faces or horrible emo face characters.

That Ivan guy is weird. I'd like to know what the point was in showing up. But I guess it was just to challenge Ichigo like Ishida did. I hate Shinigami's blah blah blah. But since Ivan hadn't heard the term Arrancar, and he didn't correct it by saying Vizard, that a new term will be created for Quincy/Hollows. I'm still hoping Ishida becomes one >_>.

Also a Quincy in Soul Society could actually mess up a lot of stuff. I was thinking back to Ishida absorbing the buildings during his fight with Mayuri. They definitely have a nearly limitless power source there.

Yumichika's hair...The feathers make it look like he has fuzzy elf ears lol. And that braid. Eh well I didn't quite hate it, it was just weird.

I did find it funny that even his friends barely care what goes on anymore. Even Ishida who's supposed to be the busybody worry wort. "Oh hey, that guy has a bit of Hollow mask on his face. Mmmm bread." Well...I guess they'll have time to finish and join up, then they can all be shocked and crap. I'm also guess Ishida will be "recruited". "Oh yeah I'm supposed to hate the Shinigami. I never did receive my letter of apology for the attempted genocide."

[No Maam]

They don't call him "Titty Kubo" for nothing.

Sadly, he gets rid of them real fucking quick. The female enemies get defeated/dissapear from the plot pretty damn quick, and the one female protagonist was just not present.

Hell I'd realy like to know the total average of how much Chad and Orihime were in each chapter in the last two arcs (Arrancar/War arc and the FB mess).

--- Update From New Post Merge ---

Guys, guys. In fairness, the murder of the Quncies was a unilateral decision of Mayuri's, wasn't it? Also, let's not forget that Quincies were putting the balance between worlds in jeopardy through their intransigence, so it's not like they're totally guiltless.

He said he bribed the SS officers who were supposed to watch over them, so he could abduct them all and torture them to death to find out people die when you burry them alive or when you crack their skull.

[Md-Martin]

Let's see what interesting things come from this weeks Naruto!

1. The First Tsuchikage tells Onoki to stroke rock-hard things from the base.

2. And Tsunade wonders if having sex with Madara counts as an incestuous threesome.....wait that happened right?


Only good thing that came from this chapter was to hype up Madara and Hashirama, a battle we'll never see, and it added evidence to my theory that in the scroll Suigetsu found is Hashirama's DNA(which means his face in this manga) and that it will be sealed in Sasuke to give him the Rinnegan.

[No Maam]

Kubo may not remember that Mayuri's actually a disgusting shit of a person.

Actualy wasn't Ishida just kind of annoyed at seeing him the last time they met ?

[Nobodyman]

Naruto: You know what bugs me the most about this chapter is how they hyped up the first Hokage as being one of the strongest ninja ever; being stronger than Madara and his strength being in the realms of fairy tale. First off, he's Tsunade's grandfather. Shouldn't she (and most likely many others) have seen his strenght firsthand? Second, I seem to recall the third hokage fighting a zombie version of the first hokage (who was tag-teaming with the 2nd no less) and third hokage was holding his own pretty well.

Bleach: God, that has to be one of the most pointless and redundant first pages ever. But I'll have admit, if nothing else, this chapter did at least give us a fair amount of, um......"plot progression." The reveal that Ivan is a Quincy (though I guess we already knew that), the news that an entire village has disappeared and a declaration of war (however underwhelming it may have been).

[Cyan D. Funk]

Actualy wasn't Ishida just kind of annoyed at seeing him the last time they met ?

Wasn't that back in the "Save Orihime from Aizen" arc about six years ago?

If so, then yes, Kubo has forgotten.

[No Maam]

Wasn't that back in the "Save Orihime from Aizen" arc about six years ago?

If so, then yes, Kubo has forgotten.

Thing is, he seems to have forgotten that Mayuri doesn't act evil just to hollows, while being a quirky asshole with everyone else. This guy tried to kill Ichigo and co by setting up his own troops to explode.

Bottom line, I'll be realy pissed if Mayuri returns and no one ever points out how fucking twisted and vile he is.

[MetaMario]

He said he bribed the SS officers who were supposed to watch over them, so he could abduct them all and torture them to death to find out people die when you burry them alive or when you crack their skull.

Yeah, and he even forced one to burn their own son! I mean, jeez.....it's so easy to point out the elitism and class division of Seireitei (and SS in general) as serious faults of the afterlife Kubo set up, but having Mayuri on the same side of the people who "purify" souls...doesn't help their case any further.