Bleach

A lot of what you just listed is either extremely common to shonen in general or only superficially similar and dissolves as soon as you actually look deeper.

Yeah and besides, who doesn't have a pretty young ghost girl hanging around them nagging them to take care of things?

I can think of two other anime with a non-romantic ghost girl mentor - Death Note if you pretend Rem was part of an organized system of shinigami, and Higurashi because of Hanyu.

And I'm pretty sure neither are shonen making it seem fairly uncommon.

I guess Soul Eater too.

edited 24th Jan '17 4:45:42 AM by Soble

Death Note ran in Shonen Jump.

Mhm. It's not a Shonen Fighter, but it ran in Shonen jump and the writing is still recognizably 'Shonen' if you know what to look for- exactly the right kind of melodrama, moral philosophy stuff that looks a lot less profound once you graduate from high school, larger than life characters...

Yeah and besides, who doesn't have a pretty young ghost girl hanging around them nagging them to take care of things?

My psychiatrist says she doesn't really exist, though.

...fair enough.

So I'm reading that Black Torch manga and the similarities to Bleach are astounding but this is really good so far.

Okay, it's been a while since I've read the Memory World arc of Yu Gi Oh, but I did re-read it to be able to summarize the major issues it had - note I think this arc has many issues, but I'm leaving out the ones that just seem weird to focus on the ones that I think are a result of Takahashi's illness (manga spoilers):

So in the Memory World, Thief King Bakura and his Ka, Diabound show up and start gathering the Millennium Items to place into the stone tablet at Kul Elna and gain "the ultimate power". After a fight with Bakura, Akhenaden gets a visit from his future self, revealing that the Memory World is made up of both Atem and Akhenadingdong's memories. The future Akhenadingdong says that it will be him who puts the millennium items in the stone tablet in the future, making a contract with the dark powers and becoming Zorc Necrophades. He then explains that he fought Atem after that, who sealed both of them in the Millennium Puzzle and shattered it. Dark Bakura, playing the RPG with Yami in the real world, says that his goal for playing this game is to resurrect Zorc. He has the mummy of Akhenadingdong with him, ratifies the story that this is Zorc, and says that Zorc also sealed part of his evil spirit in the Millennium Ring, which is how Dark Bakura is formed. Dark Bakura is playing the game to release Zorc from the Millennium Puzzle.

However, once we get up to the items being put in the tablet, things get wacky. Thief King Bakura starts adding his items to the tablet, noting that he will release Zorc Necrophades and gain ultimate power. As he's simply a memory of the original timeline playing his original role, he shouldn't even know about Zorc - he should be trying to make a contract with the "dark powers from the underworld" as mentioned earlier. But then Dark Bakura starts describing Zorc as the dark powers from the stone, not what Akahenadingdong becomes - so we've had a sudden retcon from "Akahendadingong makes a contract with dark powers to become Zorc" to "he makes a contract with Zorc Necrophades to becomes the High Priest of Darkness". Which could have just been a simple retcon, except that if the High Priest was still the one sealed in the puzzle, then Zorc wasn't.

Zorc is released, a fight breaks out and Akhenadingdong teleports Priest Set out with him back to Atem's city to try and tempt him to kill Kisara and use her White Dragon Ka to become the new Pharaoh. Meanwhile, Atem continues to fight Zorc until Yugi and friends arrive and help him learn his true name, which he uses to summon Horakty and destroy Zorc. Then, Akhenadingdong kills himself and his soul possesses Priest Set and makes him duel Atem upon Atem's return to the city, as the duel shown in the museum's stone tablet and a shared flashback that Yami and Kaiba had in Battle City. Set is freed by Kisara's Ka, and Atem tells him to become the new Pharoah, passing him the Millennium Puzzle instead of shattering it and faded from that world, waking up in the present.

There are numerous issues with this. For starters, Memory World isn't a real world, so the passing the torch things means absolutely nothing and does not change the original events nor does it create an alternate timeline or whatever. Furthermore, this doesn't fit the original memory, as Atem had to have dueled Set before the battle with Zorc, where he sealed himself in the puzzle. The flashback also shows Set and Atem dueling while Akhenadingdong is still at large and Takahashi noted that the original plan would be that Set originally betrayed the Pharaoh over Kisara and dueled him because he blamed Atem for her death, before they reconciled. This seems to be here to just clear up the Set vs Atem duel that had been foreshadowed previously.

So then we've got Zorc and the High Priest of Darkness. If the "High Priest" isn't actually Zorc, who is instead the "dark powers" then that begs the question of who was sealed in the puzzle. We actually SEE Akhenadingdong sealed in the puzzle in his description of the fight, and we're repeatedly told only two spirits were sealed in it (Atem and "Zorc"). That would mean the real Zorc was never sealed in the puzzle, which is fitting with Dark Bakura's original plan to gather the millennium items and place them in the PRESENT DAY stone tablet at Kul Elna to free Zorc. However, if Zorc was not sealed within the Millennium Puzzle, then the one who appears in Memory World is not the real Zorc, thus destroying him with Horakty is rather meaningless. B Horakty is another issue, because it's revealed that Atem needed to know his real name to summon her and destroy Zorc, which enabled him to win at the climax of the fight - but Atem knew his real name in the original history. So if that was the case, there'd be no reason for him to seal Zorc/Akhenadingdong in the original history as he had everything he needed to summon Horakty.

And ultimately this means that Thief King Bakura, and his Ka Diabound, have no real relation to this. They get things started, and do most of the work getting the items to the stone tablet, but Thief King Bakura has no connection to Dark Bakura (despite the fact that Dark Bakura said he is the soul of a thief earlier in the manga) and his constantly evolving Ka, which starts looking more and more like what Zorc's design ended up becoming, is just killed and leads to nothing. I think his role was something that did not go originally as planned, especially considering who/what Zorc was ended up being very obviously retconned. In the end, it's not entirely clear who was sealed in the puzzle, where the 'true' Zorc was in all of this, what Zorc's ultimate fate was, what happened in the original history and what differed with the current history. Takahashi was majorly ill during this time and mentioned not being able to go through with his original plan, and boy it shows. The actual ending with the ceremonial duel is alright, but the latter half of the Memory World arc is incredibly jumpy, with many things occurring out of nowhere - Bobasa revealing that he's Hasan, and then Hasan revealing that he's Shadi, Jonouchi and Bakura starting a duel and suddenly appearing in separate locations with the only acknowledgement being that everyone blacked out and no-one remembers what happened, Akhenadingdong just teleporting Set out of the final battle, Thief King Bakura dissolving into sand once his role is done, etc.

Um.... so someone likes Yugioh.

edited 24th Jan '17 6:15:14 AM by Soble

I didn't know how much of a mess the Memory World arc was. Interesting to see how messy, but for the sake of prevented any complaining you should take this to the proper thread.

So I just thought of this, but who is doing the cooking in the Kurosaki-Inoue household by the time of the epilogue? Cause it's either Ichigo or Orihime, and the latter means she either got better at making sensible dishes from her job at that bakery or whatever, or the whole household is being fed her..."creative" dishes.

Yuzu and Karin are implied to live with Ichigo

So I'd just assume Yuzu does the cooking.

Well, the manga did state that Orihime is an excellent cook. It's just her creativity can make people too nervous to try her food to find out how good a cook she actually is.

Either her creative combinations remain a thing throughout her life... or she grew up.

My guess is, with the whole manga/anime thing about 'good wives and mothers', she probably 'grew up' (but indulges every so often when an occasion merits some fun).

I can't imagine Ichigo being any good at cooking. He and Uryu were designed to be the 'opposites complete' types, and Uryu is supposed to be a decent cook.

edited 11th Feb '17 3:46:56 PM by Wyldchyld

I mean, Orihime has already had enough motherly growth in other areas, so I believe it.

Missing Bleach again today. Goddammit 2016...

Everything is Ending

Read Black Torch. The first chapter is basically the same as Bleach's opening, after all. It's a monthly, sure, but it's pretty good so far.

Oh, I meant to check that out but forgot about it.

Think Kubo will ever reveal how he wanted to end the Wandenreich arc before he was worked until he dropped by the hideous Jump bosses? I know the epilogue was planned from the beginning, but what about the war with the Quincies itself, which we know was Cut Short?

Not with current Standards of polite professionalism in Japan.

You can have the most volatile relationship with your work...but its something you only talk about openly in private or in the group proper

Well, he ended up cutting it short due to his own health and only pressed on to the ending instead of just letting it drop because of that one dead kid's letter. He could talk about what he had originally planned on doing without saying bad things about his editors or anything.

Yeah, he's stated that the issue was his health and that he's being hospitalised more and more and finding it harder and harder to recover each time he comes out, to the point where he was spending an entire week's leave in bed. He said he'd have quit Bleach many years ago if not for that child's letter.

So, while the Vandenreich arc was condensed, I get the impression that he got in most of the scenes he wanted to put in, even if he couldn't build up to them or linger on them as much as he initially planned to.

I mean, at the end of the Fullbring arc, he did those three interviews where he made it clear that he knew exactly what Yumichika and Kira's Bankai were and if he was going to reveal any unseen lieutenant Bankai, the most likely one would be Yumichika's (yes, the link between lieutenant and Yumichika was in the interview as well, that's not a typo on my part). However, he was dubious in the interview about whether or not he'd actually show Yumichika's Bankai before the end of the story. He didn't really say why beyond feeling that Bankai weren't important to him in the final arc. He did state why he didn't want to show Kira's, however, something about Kira's Bankai being too gross.

So, the fact we didn't see Hisagi's Bankai isn't as much of a surprise as it might seem, since he really wasn't sure how many new Bankai he'd end up revealing anyway. He did claim that the point of the final arc was not going to be about Bankai anyway... which I suppose is... sort of true.

edited 26th Feb '17 1:40:17 PM by Wyldchyld

yeah but at the same time he also went on that Ginjo and Aizen's backstories would be important to the plot as would Rangiku

Rangiku you can kinda excuse as a side character cuts have to be made... Ginjo and Aizen'Especially Aizen' were both prominent villains

at the end of the day Kubo was building up to something and then pulled the plug before he got to whatever mind rending revelation he was building up too with the amount of IOU's he used in his narrative.

edited 26th Feb '17 3:01:11 PM by FrozenWolf2

Rangiku's past would be important to the plot. And it was, but not because of Rangiku specifically. I'm pretty confident Kubo was always talking about Isshin's flashback without wanting to directly spoil it.