Bleach Series 12 - Part 2   Starring (voice): Fumiko Orikasa, Masakazu Morita, Hiroki Yasumoto and Kentarou Itou Distributor: Manga Entertainment RRP: £24.99 Certificate: 12 Release Date: 09 December 2013

Ichigo Kurosaki has become a respected member of the Soul Society, beings dedicated to defending the human world from intrusions by demons and to safeguard souls on their journey to the afterlife. The realm of the Soul Reapers...

Bleach-Zanpakut: The Alternate (2009 - eps. 242 - 253) is an on-going anime show which, for the most part followed the manga series written and illustrated by Tite Kubo. The one problem the show did have was its success, meaning that the episodes were often produced quicker than the manga was written.

The producers of the show were forced to create filler arcs which would eat up enough time for the manga to get far enough ahead for another series to be produce. The fillers were of variable quality, some even better than the show's current story, some were not. Whether you think that the current filler arc is any good is a matter of personal taste.

What hadn’t changed was the overall structure of the show. Bleach was ever a show about the fights, fights which would pit the show's heroes against an ever increasingly strong opposition, allowing them to develop and display newer and more exotic battle techniques. Yup, it’s a ‘fight of the week’ show.

The current discs finish off the on-going filler story, which sees the Soul Reaper’s weapons anthropomorphised into living beings, often in direct conflict with their owners. It’s an idea with merit as the Soul Reapers garner much of their fighting abilities from their weapons and there was much that could have been done with this.

There are splashes of genuine conceptual brilliance, but most of these are slaved to the need of the show to present an endless series of fight sequences. Muramasa, the antagonist who initially gave the Zanpakut’s corporeal existence, tends to fade against the weapons themselves.

The episodes are presented as a two disc DVD set, as per the rest of the series you are presented with a very clear, aspect ratio 1.78:1, picture. Disc one has the textless opening sequence, disc two the textless closing.

The show goes ever on and on and if you have bought into the previous discs and arc, this is more of the same.

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Charles Packer