Bleach Series 6 - Part 2   Starring (voice): Fumiko Orikasa, Masakazu Morita, Hiroki Yasumoto and Kentarou Itou Manga Entertainment RRP: £24.99 MANG9055 Certificate: 15 Available 13 June 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 2 contains the concluding episodes for this season. Finding myself enamoured of the first season, well for the most part, the show picked up, strangely with the filler season, before we got back on track and back down to earth with season six. It started well but by midway had stalled to repetitive fight sequences, which could not have sustained any form of interest had it continued.

The latest, two set, DVD release covers the last eleven episodes (episodes 121-131). The story picks up with Ichigo and the Reapers battling across the city against rebel reapers and enhanced Hollows. With odds like that things do not look good for our hero. Given that it is only part way through the season, the good guys prevail, but Ichigo is finding it increasingly difficult to control his Hollow side.

From episode 128, the show diverges from the manga, giving it time to catch up with eight filler episodes. In truth the filler, like the one before, isn’t all that bad.

The picture is better than ever, now it is no longer a conversion but presented in its native PAL format. Although there is a change in the picture quality the audio options remain the same, with options for either a Japanese or English 2.0 track, with optional subtitles. For extras you get production art, textless closings and trailers, not much but then it’s in line with the previous releases.

I guess if you have come this far then this will be another purchase, personally I think that it is starting to suffer the same fate as Naruto did, with storyline being dragged out, unnecessarily, over multiple episode with the fight sequences used as bulking material.

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Charles Packer