Ichigo Kurosaki is a high school student with a special
gift: he can see spirits. One night, an
encounter with a monster known as a Hollow brings Ichigo face to face with a
Soul Reaper named Rukia Kuchiki. Through
a twist of fate, Ichigo gains Rukia’s powers and becomes a Soul Reaper
himself. With Rukia as his mentor, Ichigo
begins to embrace his new abilities.
However, great challenges lie ahead for both of these souls. Ichigo must face a great darkness from his
past while Rukia’s own actions threaten her future. All points converge on the ultimate
battle between good and evil, with Ichigo and Rukia caught in the middle. The legendary Shonen Jump classic comes to
life at last.
In the vast universe of Anime, Bleach is a title you’d
think would be tough to tackle for a live action project. Based on the long running Manga of the same
name, Bleach is a tale that spans multiple worlds on a beyond epic scale and
has all points action, comedy and drama.
Taking even a sliver of that to make into a roughly two hour film is a
difficult task. And while I think this
film feels a couple years too late (it’s been ages since Bleach was at the
height of it’s popularity), the live action Bleach film at least manages to do
a better job adapting a beloved story than Fullmetal Alchemist. It still, however, falls incredibly short of
matching the perfections that are Rurouni Kenshin and the Death Note Duology.
The film covers the first arc of the series, the Substitute
Soul Reaper Arc. It’s pretty faithful to
the source material, at first, until we get past Ichigo’s first battle. Then we begin to see things both diverge,
merge and clash together. In a way, it’s
not a bad choice to take two of the biggest conflicts of the arc and purge the
rest. It helps make Bleach a little more
focused than most live action Anime while also giving the film its own identity
to stand apart and focus on telling a stand along tale without setting things
up for a long running franchise…yet.
This is helped greatly by the characters and the world they live
in. Rukia, Renji and Byakuya are all dead
on in their portrayals but the MVP is definitely Ichigo. Ichigo is still the all around tough guy with
a very strong sense of honor and loyalty and a good heart that made him so
endearing in the Anime and Manga (a far cry better than the dismal portrayal of
Edward and Alphonse Elric in Fullmetal Alchemist). His actor gets some of the films best moments
(especially in the films climax), even if the film itself isn’t working as well
as it could. I also liked how the
battles of the movie played out in a very “secretive” manner, not unlike X-1999. While warriors are slicing away at monsters, normal
humans cant see them and instead believe a natural disaster, like a small tornado,
is unfolding. That was pretty neat and
visually, the rest of the movie keeps up.
The Hollows do look terrifying and id be lying if I said seeing the brief
glimpse of the Soul Society and Renji’s Zabimaru didn’t leave me wanting more.
However, the story, for all its credit for trying to
condense, is where the film falters the most.
While the movie clocks in at about an hour and forty five minutes,
Bleach seems to drag on ALOOOOOOTTTT.
For a movie based on an Anime about Reapers hunting Monsters, things couldn’t
be more dull for more than 3/4s of the film.
The film lacks a clear energy to keep the viewer engaged, no matter how
cool the characters look on screen.
Worse yet, while there are a couple of good action scenes, especially
the centerpiece Ichigo vs. Renji, they are few and very far in between. Seriously, after Ichigo’s first Hollow battle
I don’t think we got another action scene til about the one hour mark and even
then it was very brief before going back to tons of talking. There is a sense of urgency brought into the
story at about the last act but that should have been something going through
the film as a whole. The pacing is
terrible and ruins what Bleach already had going for it which had been lacking
in other recent live action Anime adaptations.
Would it have been better had the film tried for a beat for beat
retelling of the Anime or Manga and carried the energy those versions had along
with it? I also feel like the movie is
coming in a little too late for it to matter in the grand scheme of
things. Like I said, it’s been a long
time since Bleach was even in the Anime spotlight along with it’s other two
Shonen Jump brethren, Naruto and One Piece (together forming SJ’s Big Three for
many years). I wonder if I would have
been more pumped to see more had this come out back during the near apex of the
shows popularity.
Bleach has a lot of good going for it with a smart
approach to the source material, a great cast and visual style. However, the smart approach isn’t executed
very well and the movie suffers from a lack of action and way too much
exposition. It is a better movie than
Fullmetal Alchemist but Bleach could have been a heckuva lot more had it
quickened the pace and added more fight scenes (id hoped it would at least rival
Gintama, which, despite it’s third act stumble, was a very good time). I’m kind of mixed on whether or not id want
to see more from this version of the story but at the same time, it seems right
that the film ends on a stand alone note rather than being prepped to launch another
long running live action Anime film franchise.
It’s not the worst attempt to bring one of Anime’s greatest legends to
the screen. It just had a lot of
potential to do things a lot better than many recent films had. But hey…at least everyones swords looked bad
ass (which is why I got into Bleach in the first place).
6/10
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