Just the one this week.
Bleach: Series 2: Part 1
In which we get to the third phase of a Shonen Jump manga’s life and we find the start of the “big plot”. Often you get a few trial chapters where the series introduces the characters and series concept, then a longer story where it finds it’s feet, before moving onto the main the story. Shaman King did it, Naruto very clearly did it, One Piece did the first two steps, but then kept the rest of series to multiple arcs similar to Dragonball. And talking of Dragonball, Bleach’s big plot owes a lot the Red Ribbon Army arc (and to be fair, One Piece similarly raided this for it’s Enies Lobby arc).
The biggest plus for the series is that adapts the manga at a pace quite unlike it’s peers. These episodes clear through manga material at least twice as fast as Naruto or One Piece typically do. This gets the series into trouble later, but here the series is refreshingly light on typical time stretching devices such as long reaction shots and lengthy recaps and flashbacks.
The cost of this is that you don’t get the occasional dazzling animation display that Naruto has, instead Bleach maintains a solid level of competency throughout.
The eleven episodes here can be picked up from online merchants for around £15, which is a decent price in the current DVD market, though I’d argue that just buying the manga would be the better way spending of that cash, as it’d get you three volumes and change. But it’s only better by a margin, as this boxset pretty much cover volumes 9, 10 and 11 of the manga. Yes, 31 episodes in and they’ve covered nearly 11 volumes of manga, that’s how pacey the adapatation is.