Bleach Series 4 - Part 3   Starring (voice): Fumiko Orikasa, Masakazu Morita, Hiroki Yasumoto and Kentarou Itou Manga Entertainment RRP: £24.99 MANG9024 Certificate: 12 Available 07 June 2010

Ichigo Kurosaki, having gained the powers of a soul reaper from a Shinigami named Rukia Kuchiki and taken on the Soul Society itself for her safe return, has returned to earth and his home town only to find that things are not as he left them. Another danger looms in the form of the Bount, immortal humans who feed off human souls. Having run into them in the first half of season four, the fight against the Bount seems to have hit a lull, but unknown to Ichigo the Bounts have big plans, plans which bring them to the attention of even the soul reapers society...

Bleach: Series 4 - Part 3 continues the Bount story with a further three disc DVD set, containing episodes 80 to 91.

The Bount saga continues, though by this point the pace of the war is rivalling that of Ichigo’s rescue of Rukia, in that it just seems to go on and on. More elements are added, we get the soul society becoming involved having decided that their mission is to oppose all monsters, including the Bount, who likewise don’t seem to be in any hurry to confront anyone.

There are some nice additions to the plot including the Bitto, flying balloons which suck out fresh souls for the Bounts, who are obviously getting lazy in their old age. The first disc contains a pretty good fight between Ichigo and Dalk, although you get the feeling that the plot is getting paper thin at this point with the writers only thinking up more ways to create fights which ultimately fail to resolve much - which is bourne out but the close of season four. Far from defeating the Bounts, the Bounts invade the realm of the soul reapers, so we can look forward to the same fights, but in a different location.

The discs continue in much the same vein with a 1:33.1 picture, which is clear and free from defects, though the level of animation seems to have dropped a notch. Audio is the same for all the discs with options for either an English or Japanese 2.0 with subtitles. In these austere times the brief blossom of good extras on anime discs seems to have passed with this set only being able to produce a textless closing sequence and some production art galleries on disc one, two and three with some trailers on disc three.

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Charles Packer