Thursday, October 8, 2015

Bleach 646 Review – The Second Eye

Bleach 646 Review – The Second Eye
Written by: ClayDragon

Aren’t comrades great? Whilst Shunsui has been fighting Lille, Shinji decides to leave him to it and continue their advance towards the Vandenreich’s base. Momo begins to argue against his decision, claiming that they should go and back Shunsui up. However, Shinji points out that they’re running low on time, and explains that, were Ukitake with them, he would tell them that Shunsui is capable of looking after himself.

"Screw him!"
Meanwhile, Shunsui has moved to stand right in front of Lille, who points out the recklessness of this move. As it turns out, this gave Shunsui the advantage as he was able to cut Lille’s rifle in half without his opponent even noticing. This turns out to be pointless though, as since Lille’s rifle is made from his reishi, he can repair it without breaking a sweat. However, Lille took his eye off of Shunsui for a moment whilst fixing his weapon, allowing Shunsui to use his Shikai to get behind Lille.
"Do you have any idea how much this cost me?!"
Lille tries to put some distance between himself and Shunsui, but when he starts to run, multiple shadow clones of Shunsui ambush him from above. Too late, he realises that they were only a distraction, allowing Shunsui to stab him in the back. Rather than be shocked, Lille seems more irritated, as this move caused him to open his left eye. He goes on to tell Shunsui that he can only use the true power of the ‘X-axis’ when both his eyes are open.
There's a Naruto joke in here somewhere, I just know it...
This ‘true power’ essentially allows his body to become completely intangible, whilst his bullets can still damage any opponents. So he’s essentially invincible at the moment. Normally, this power only activates for a brief amount of time, but once his eye opens for the third time in a single battle, he can continue to use the power for the remainder of the fight with no drawbacks. Apparently, this is to give his opponents a fighting chance (why he’d want to do that, I don’t know).
That seems suspiciously like cheating.
He goes on to tell Shunsui that he was the final Quincy who was given an ability by Yhwach, and as such he is the Emperor’s ‘greatest creation’ – the man closest to being a god. This arrogance makes him think that having to open his eye three times is unthinkable, and he decides to just end the fight as soon as possible. The Quincy cross manifests itself in front of his eye, and Lille unleashes his Vollständig.
*Insert holy-sounding music here*
…Yeah. Before he can really react, Shunsui realises that Lille has somehow paralyzed him. The holes in Lille’s wings begin to glow, and three bullets pierce through Shunsui’s hat, shoulder and side. Why Lille only fired three shots, and why he seems to have missed Shunsui’s vital spots, is left unexplained.
Not the hat! NOO!!
Some weeks, I don’t write a review because I’ve been too busy. And some weeks, the chapters just don’t interest me at all, meaning that I’m much less inclined to write a review (thankfully this isn’t a real job, or I would be fired by now). The latter is pretty much what happened recently – although I have had uni work to do, Bleach has just been really boring of late. However, I will give my thoughts on the last few chapters, for completeness’ sake if nothing else:
 
"And if you could throw your gun away too, that would be great."
So Nemu was able to increase her power and blow Pernida into pieces. That’s cool and all, and the flashback showing her growing up was quite cute, but there is one thing about that entire fight that infuriated me. These guys are meant to be the smartest Soul Reapers there are. So why did they seem to turn into idiots for this fight? Firstly, Kurotsuchi forgot to take any drugs with him to the Vandenreich base. Secondly, he found out early on that Pernida could regrow any lost body part, and that if a section of him was cut off, it would grow a completely new hand. So why did almost every strategy they used involve trying to blow him up?
How did you not see this coming?

I suppose it’s good that Kurotsuchi was able to bring Hitsugaya and Matsumoto back from being zombies, but what about Kensei and Rose? Given that Gremmy apparently killed them earlier on, does that mean that they’re actually gone for good? On a side note, there is no way that Nemu was able to bring those healing tanks with her without anyone noticing. They weren’t even foreshadowed. It just seems like Kubo pulled them out of nowhere. And, although we know where Ikkaku and Yumichika are, where is Hanatarou?
Maybe he had to go to the toilet again?
With regards to this chapter, it was rather funny to see Momo’s well-meaning yet futile attempts to convince everyone to help Shunsui. However, Shinji mentioning Ukitake brought up a rather confusing plot point: what happened to Ukitake? The last we saw of him, he’d collapsed when Mimihagi was absorbed by Yhwach, but it wasn’t made clear if he’d actually died or not. I hope he’s still alive, especially when you consider the fact that we haven’t seen his Bankai yet. 
Hopefully at least one of them knows CPR.
Lille’s eye power seems pretty arbitrary when you think about it. For starters, why does his eye need to open three times before he can get full access to his power? And did he impose the limits himself, or did Yhwach do it when he gave Lille his power? Secondly, this is apparently the third time that he’s opened his eye during this fight…except we’ve never actually seen him do it before. When you look back at the panels where he claimed to have opened his eye, it isn’t actually opening. Lastly (and I’m just splitting hairs at this point), wasn’t Uryu the last Quincy to be empowered by Yhwach? And why was ‘X’ the last letter? Wouldn’t it have made for sense for it to be ‘Z’?
This is clearly the face of someone closest to being a god.
Lille’s Vollständig is…interesting. I quite like the design, as it manages to look like a seraphim whilst appearing otherworldly at the same time. That being said, given that his legs would only reach two-thirds of the way down the armour, the bit at the bottom with the stubby legs seems a bit redundant. Oh well, at least he’s not wearing his skin as a cloak like some people…


Chapter 646 Review – The Second Eye:

Good Things:      Momo misreading the situation.

                             We’re seeing the true power of Shunsui’s Shikai.

                              Lille’s Vollständig has a cool design.


Bad Things:        The ‘three-times eye’ thing came out of nowhere.

                             The background for Lille’s power is a bit contradictory.

                                    
Manga Rating:   3/5




ClayDragon:
ClayDragon is currently studying Physics at university, and is constantly bewildered by it. The main method of contacting him is his Gmail account at claydragon.on@gmail.com. He has an ask.fm account at ask.fm/ClayDragon. When not playing games or reading, he can be found with his head in his hands whilst trying in vain to understand quantum physics. DOXSFQV CXIIP FP DOBXQ (kcab srettel eerht).

2 comments:

  1. I can't say that I've exactly been loving these Schutzstaffel fights, either. They're pretty non-compelling as characters, and their abilities seem even more unplanned and sloppily thought-out than usual. And it really, really didn't help their credibility as threats when all three of them were killed by one guy in seconds back during their introductory chapters. Did Kubo really throw the Spurnedritter (Giselle, Liltotto, and Bazz-B) aside to focus on these speedbumps?

    Here's something that particularly bugged me about Pernida's defeat: Pernida showed no interest in eating anybody right up until the moment when it/they/he/she conveniently did and had an attack of cancer-hubris. And if Pernida was supposed to be constantly evolving and learning, wouldn't Pernida be particularly wary of eating opponents when that didn't work out for Ashisogi Jizou? Argh. I know you have to take things like logic and consistent characterisation as they come in Bleach, but the whole sequence seemed like such a lazy wrap-up. It's always nice to see Szayelaporro again, though!

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    1. The main issue I have with the Schutzstaffel is that they've had no focus until their fight started. It would have made more sense to either introduce them earlier, or bring back some Quincies that were more loyal to Yhwach, like As Nodt or Mask De Masculine.

      In fact, come to think of it, when he was first introduced, Lille was stabbed and 'killed' by Nimaya. But shouldn't his eye powers have activated at that point and made him intangible?

      My main problem with Pernida was that it had so much potential. For a start, it was a creepy, shadowed thing that seemed like a mass of tentacles or some other eldritch horror, and then it was revealed to be a huge hand. And then during the actual fight, it seemed as though everyone involved suddenly dropped around 100 IQ points. It was just so underwhelming. Szayelaporro was an unexpected pleasure, although it did seem a bit random, so I hope it gets some follow-up.

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