Bleach Series 15 - Part 2   Starring (voice): Fumiko Orikasa, Masakazu Morita, Hiroki Yasumoto and Kentarou Itou Distributor: Manga Entertainment RRP: £29.99 Certificate: 15 Release Date: 29 June 2015

With the unusual disappearances from the Soul Society, Ichigo must solve the puzzle, while at the same time contend with his own fading powers.

Bleach: Series 15 - Part 2 (2011. 299 mins) is the latter part of the Gotei 13 Invading Army story arc, part of season 15. The show was directed by Noriyuki Abe and as it did not directly come from the manga, is a portion of the one hundred and eleven episodes of work exclusive to the anime. The three disc DVD set contains episodes 330 to 342.

Things have somewhat improved in the second part of the season, mostly thanks to the introduction of a new character, the amnesiac Nozomi Kujo, who appears to have many of the powers of a Soul Reaper, without actually being one. With Ichigo’s powers fading, she may hold the key to the final battle. The fight, this time, because let’s face it Bleach is one long fight sequence with a bit of a plot sewn through to give it a semblance of coherence, is against Kageroza, the mad man who has been replacing Soul Reapers with duplicates.

By this time you must all know what you’re getting in the extras department. Yup, the clean opening and closing sequences with burnt in subs so you can sing along. The picture is fine, if a little soft and the audio track is a respectable 2.0 surround sound.

There is a problem with the overall story. I’m not saying that I didn’t like it, because I did, but with so much Bleach experienced, it's an odd conclusion that, freed from the constrains of following the manga, the filler stories tended to be better as they could do what they liked with the characters, short of killing them, knowing that at the end of each filler arc the story would revert to canon. The down side of this is that much of the character development and new characters are just cast aside.

So with only two more sets to go before the show ends we will have to see if it has something special up its sleeve or whether it will fade away in the usual repetitive string of fight sequences.

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Charles Packer