Bleach

I'm not too sure I'll say that, but Bleach always seemed to juggle between different kinds of fights, probably best seen with Mayuri's fights vs Kenpachi's fights.

Edit: Also, the powers seemed to get more abstract in the later parts.

Edited by Kakuzan on Jul 31st 2019 at 9:59:29 AM

What do you mean?

The Almighty, The Balance and The Antithesis are the prime examples, but I guess Giriko's time contracts, Tsukishima's self-inserting, Urahara's power to remake things and The Miracle/The Superstar count.

Pretty much.

Edit: There was also Toshiro's whole "freezing the functions of things" seen with the 3-1 fight with Gerard.

Edited by Kakuzan on Jul 31st 2019 at 2:59:38 PM

Tosen's bankai was fairly abstract although still pretty easy to explain.

But bankai were otherwise fairly straightforward. Big poison worm. Big dumb snake. Big armor guy. More cherry blossoms than the previous amount of cherry blossoms. Ice dragon cosplay.

And now we're getting stuff like double crucifixion tree and hey would you like to be in my two man play starring us dying horribly?

That's just power creep and a change in priority. The final arc's Bankai don't resemble what we saw earlier because the story wasn't about powers of that nature yet.

I know the latter is Shinsui’s, but which one’s the double crucifix?

This isn’t that important, but would Tousen’s Resurrección count as an Ass Pull? The idea is that an Arrancar unleashes their original Hollow form and powers from their sword, but Tousen’s pretty much a Visored, so his original form isn’t a Hollow.

Edited by KOman on Aug 1st 2019 at 3:05:39 AM

Hisagi's, although I misremembered some details.

Edited by Bocaj on Aug 1st 2019 at 6:09:06 AM

Not sure if I can count it as an asspull because I remember it being the very first thing he did in the fight.

I mean, it may not have direct prescient, but the entire point of all the Visored/ Arrancar stuff was about blurring the lines between Shinigami and Hollow. Why shouldn't someone who's gone even further down that path be able to grab a trick from the other side's playbook?

Remember, after all, that the process of becoming a Visored involves temporarily going Hollow, so it's like Tousen would be incapable of getting a Hollow form.

Edited by Gilphon on Aug 1st 2019 at 8:01:33 AM

plus Ichigo turned into a Hollow form once or twice

Are there any applications for Haineko that you guys think could have been used but were never seen? One that I see often is having Haineko attack enemies from withing. Another I think could work is creating a dirty thunderstorm.

Exploding people from the inside?

Sounds like something out of Mortal Kombat.

Would you all say that, of the old Big Three (Naruto, Bleach and One Piece), that Bleach does its female cast the most justice? They're not all hopelessly pining after a man like in Naruto and they can actually get into intense fights where they get hurt unlike One Piece.

I'm struggling to think of an issue specific to women in Bleach... Maybe they get overshadowed a bit but that is true for much of the cast, men or women. There's a good variety of them and they have victories in pretty cool battles. Sadly that's pretty substantial praise for women in battle shounen.

I dunno, just lot of nostalgia on my mind lately.

I would agree with that, but with the caveat that there's an element of damning with faint praise to it. Like, for example, it's impossible to say that Harribel was handled well, but nor did it ever feel like the female characters were always doomed to get the short end of the stick.

I'd say they're easily the most popular females of the three series if that's anything to do with being done well.

Bleach is the better of the three by the very definition of clearing a low bar.

Oda confused the bar for one of his character's waists and grabbed it, then Kishimoto dug a massive hole underneath them and brought the bar fifty miles below sea level. Kubo woke up late, strolled outside and tripped over a rock, landing face first on the opposite side of the hole. Winner winner.

Bleach definitely issues with its female characters - but it's a question of how much of them are issues with his characters period. There are some trends such as his female villains having a much higher survival rate than their male counterparts, and there's some fanservice that gets exaggerated into the final arc, plus males generally occupy more important roles than female characters - top 3 Espada, Captain Commander, head of the RG, the Vandenreich Elites, Visored Captain/Vice-Captains, few female Captains, etc. Nearly all the top spots are men.

The female fights are generally the same as their male counterparts, off the top of my head anyway. And ignoring the post-Bleach novels, the final arc seems to avert the 'boob postulate' with several female characters seemingly dying.

So, Kubo's not the worst, but he definitely needs to kill more women if he wants to be seen as a feminist.

One Piece is the best of the big three when it comes to female representation but Bleach is still better than Naruto in that regard. While none of Bleach's major female characters fall prey to Faux Action Girl (the closest I think is Rangiku but she has her moments) there is a sense that they're never quite allowed to match or surpass their male counterparts. There are some dodgy elements like Mayuri's abuse of Nemu often being played for laughs. And of course, there is the numerous wasted opportunities, like Unohana dying just as we finally see why people are so afraid of her, Harribel being reduced to damsel in distress during the final arc and doing nothing with Rangiku having a piece of the Soul King in her other than using it as Gin's motivation to go after Aizen.

When it comes to One Piece, Hancock, Robin and Nami alone blow every Naruto and Bleach female character (that isn't named Yoruichi or Rukia) out of the water (no pun intended). When it comes to backstory, development, fight scenes, plot relevance, the women of Bleach and Naruto lose in that regard though the former does offer better competition than the latter. Rangiku, Mei, Yoruichi, Tsunade and Hinata really had the potential to be up there with Robin, Hancock and Nami but alas.

Considering what often befalls his female characters, villain or hero, him not killing off so many of them is probably one of many reasons he isn't considered to be as sexist as Kishimoto.

Edited by windleopard on Aug 4th 2019 at 3:56:15 AM

Hard disagree on those One Piece examples. Nami has a woefully poor track record in her fights, and is mostly only able to win joke fights or against weak enemies (also, she's very often paired against women). Robin had a good track record as a villain but is terribly underused , and still comes nowhere close to the competency of the Luffy, Sanji and Zoro. Yes, those three are the 'monster trio' but it doesn't excuse that the females can't be even remotely considered their counterparts.

Hancock hasn't done a whole lot, and isn't that impressive considering. Plus Amazon Lily is an entire island of ridiculous man-hating Straw Feminists and Boa changes her mind due to Luffy, who she then falls in love with (and becomes hopelessly devoted to).

Sexual harassment is played for laughs with Sanji, Momonosuke (the fact that he's a child is no excuse, because Oda is an adult man using it for humour) even Smoker does it with Tashigi! Worse, Sanji's chauvinism is played seriously as something to be respected, even though it's all kind of fucked up.

One Piece is horribly sexist.

Just want to say that clearing a low bar is still progress. Bleach is not a feminist masterpiece but improvements should be applauded and compared to Dragon Ball or Yu Yu Hakusho, I'd say Bleach shows a lot of improvement.

I've seen better shounen with better female casts - Inuyasha came out years before Bleach and the othe rtwo and has way better female representation than the entire HST - but I'm just indulging in the old, endless comparisons of the Holy Shounen Trinity because I'm a decade behind everyone else.

"But my Shonen is less sexist!" isn't meaningful discussion to me anymore. They're all bad about it for slightly different reasons.

I don't think that's a productive way to look at things. Shounen is far and away the most popular type of anime people will be exposed to. It might be "for boys" but it's so mainstream that a lot of girls like it. (I got into My Hero Academia and One Piece because of my GF.) That's why it's valuable to discuss, praise and critique female representation in my opinion. The girls who grow up with the show should have idols and heroes just like we do. I point to Inuyasha again as an example because I actually grew up with it and knew girls who liked it because of Kagome and Sango and Kikyo and Kagura. I think Inuyasha was always singled out as a shounen that was popular with women ("it's DBZ for girls!") because of this.

Less about arguing which is bottom of the barrel and more about finding out what they do right and wrong so hopefully things can improve.

Saying that Bleach has better female rep than DBZ and YYH is kinda disingenuous. Both Bulma and Genkai alone are way better written than most shounen females, especially when compared to fellow Jump manga.

Either way, if you want consistent good female characters, you're not going to find it in battle shounen with any regularity.

I'd say that's more a problem of audiences having limited horizons than anything.

Genkai could be literally the best female character of all time and it wouldn't mater because she's one of three female characters with any real screentime or importance and the other two women can't even fight. Saiga was criticizing Bleach's lack of women but its female cast utterly dwarfs DBZ or YYH and that's important. Having women be part of the main cast who are around most of the time and fight most of the time or get character arcs about them is important. Genkai mostly serves as Yusuke's Obliged to Die Mentor. She exists for Yusuke's and Toguro's rivalry.

And you have to make do with the tools you are given. It doesn't matter if people have shit taste and should watch or read shojo more. They don't and that sucks but what does that really do? Talking about popular media is the most important part of media criticism because these popular shounen are going to have the strongest influence.

Edited by Nikkolas on Aug 4th 2019 at 7:36:21 AM