Bleach Series 6 - Part 1   Starring (voice): Fumiko Orikasa, Masakazu Morita, Hiroki Yasumoto and Kentarou Itou Manga Entertainment RRP: £24.99 MANG9054 Certificate: 12 Available 11 April 2011

Ichigo Kurosaki, having gained the powers of a Soul Reaper, returned to Earth a changed boy. Not only can he see spirits, but now he has the skill to combat them. With the Bount crisis resolved Ichigo returns home with his friends but his original dealings with the Hollows have not disappeared, if anything they have become worse while he was away. Now a new more powerful form of Hollow appears...

Bleach: Series 6 - Part 1 (2007) sees the show move back to following the manga, rather than creating stories of its own. This has the odd effect of negating the previous series as the characters, for the most part, act as if it never really happened.

Series six opens up a new storyline with Arrancar: The Arrival arc. Ichigo is back at school where he meets new student Shinji Hirako, who can produce a Hollow Mask. The general thrust of this season arc is the appearance of a new, more powerful form of Hollow under the command of former Soul Reaper captain Sōsuke Aizen. Yup, it’s another disgruntled captain out for a bit of the old ultra-violence.

As an idea it could have been a winner and with fans of the show that want to see it return to its roots I’m sure it will be. The problem here is that it does not take the show long before it falls back into its old habit of creating a situation just so that ‘fight of the week’ can occur. This means that the actual story content of most of the shows can be reduced to a couple of lines - and half a season to a paragraph.

There are some nice situations revolving around Ichigo as his inner Hollow starts to make itself felt, but once again much of the interesting story elements are buried under a pile of, albeit well-choreographed, fight sequences. The introduction of the Shinigami, a group of renegade Soul Reapers, who have embraced their inner Hollow’s also, holds out the promise of some diversion.

Like the previous releases in the series the first half of the season - episodes 110 to 120 - are spread across two discs with audio options for either a Japanese or English 2.0 track, with optional subtitles. The only extras are on the second disc, consisting of some production art, trailers and a textless closing sequence.

Well the show has found its groove and returned to its roots, though to be honest the difference between this and the filler episodes are not as great as you would think, or hope for.

5

Charles Packer