The Snowy Manga Discussion Thread

[Super_Boom]

Shadow1980 said:

Bleach did have its issues. The 1000-Year Blood War arc in particular started strong, hyping up the Wandenreich to be a serious threat, but then it meandered quite a bit after old man Yama was killed. Some of the Sternritter did prove to be threats and had great fights, but others were just pushovers with little to no development, though Ywach turned out to be unfairly broken as final bosses go. Generally speaking, Aizen's crew and the Arrancar were more interesting characters. I didn't like how how Unohana was stuffed into the fridge off-panel, all to give Kenpachi a power-up, and even then he proved to be less than effective. The rushed ending also cut short any further character develpment for Haschwalt in addition to leaving the fates of many characters unknown.

I was dissapointed with the Sternritter overall, which is part of why I was so critical of the final arc. Kubo did a fantastic job with the Shinigami captains and Espada during the previous arcs, and compared to that, these guys just felt so 1-dimensional. Kubo created a design, a fancy name, a power, and then just had them fight someone at random. Rinse and repeat. Almost none of them had interesting motivations or backstory, and the few that did were killed off extremely anti-climactically.

I think the final fight with Ychwach would have been much better if Kubo had more time, as he was one of the few villains whose stories I was actually interested in. Especially since he was strongly implied to be a warped version of Jesus Christ...Kubo could have done so much more with him. Instead, we got a rushed and cheesy motivation that just fell flat...well to me, anyway.

psychicscubadiver said:
Sorry to be late to the party, but I have to say, oh, Kubo you beautiful, unrelenting troll. As much as his antics amuse me me I am surprised anyone thought Ichigo would end up with anyone other than Orihime. Kubo has shilled her hard ever since Mexican Hell.

Personally, I wasn't expecting pairings to be confirmed. The only open romances he's done before now have ended with one of the partners dead. Kubo has always seemed to have a knack for bittersweet, tragic type of romances...like Gin/Ran, Isshin/Masaki, and Ken/Uno (arguably Ulqui/Hime and Noi/Nel as well, but those are a lot more vague I suppose). The few times Kubo's added romance into the story, it was a lot more subtle, which is why a lot people weren't expecting him to go the "married with kids" route with four of his main characters.

I mentioned it in my post, but the only reason Kubo seemed to do pairings was a means to an end. He wanted to end the story like it began, which is why he had Ichika and Kazui meet just as Ichigo and Rukia met 700 chapters ago. I honestly didn't care that much...but I can't imagine I would be excited no matter what pairing I liked. The girl Ichigo ended up only had like three panels in the final chapter....and I can't remember if Renji even had a spoken line.