The Diamond Dust Rebellion was a Bleach movie that got a
lot of things right. It centered on a
popular character, produced a very emotional and intimate tale, and still
maintained all of the fun and excitement Bleach was once known for bringing to
the masses. In many ways, it felt like
lightning had finally struck where Bleach was good. Fade to Black tries to replicate the
successes of The Diamond Dust Rebellion but ultimately doesn’t even come close
for various reasons.
Erasing Rukia from the memories of the cast is a big deal
and a smart way to start a story off.
Rukia is an essential part of Bleach, without whom much of the main story
would not happen. Ichigo, Renji and
Byakuya would all not be the heroes they’ve become without this one girl in
their lives. Taking her out of the
equation is a big shake up. But the
initial shock gets kind of lost when Bleach tries to retread old ground as the
story goes on. Many fans, like myself,
came into Bleach during the second and third seasons when Ichigo was fighting
every Soul Reaper on the map. It made
sense in a TV series where every battle was properly paced and given the right
amount of emotional depth with each duel.
Here in Fade to Black it just feels like a cheap attempt to grab
attention when there should have been more focus on making Rukia’s long lost
wards more interesting characters. The
only time Ichigo’s fights with the epic Soul Reaper cast kind of payoff is when
he faces Renji and Byakuya but that’s because those two are the other closest
people to Rukia’s existence, her best friend and brother respectively. Heck, Byakuya doesn’t even fight Ichigo. He hears him out and actually helps him
without drawing his sword, another reason why Byakuya Kuchiki kicks ass while
everyone else is too proud and stagnant to be that great a character.
Much like The Diamond Dust Rebellion, Fade to Black tries
to liven things up by exploring Rukia’s past and an event that we had no
knowledge of. In the end, while we do
get some good emotional moments from Rukia, it doesn’t feel like much has been
gained exploring the memory loss angle.
Her captors and the villains of the movie feel more like truly lost
souls trying to be bad guys just to give Ichigo an enemy to swing his sword
at. Even for all of his lack of depth
and uniqueness, The Diamond Dust Rebellion’s Kusaka had a tragic backstory tied
directly to Toshiro. There’s less of a
sense of overall urgency in Fade to Black because of the failure to make the
main villains interesting. And of course
trying to bring in every Bleach character under the sun to get involved doesn’t
help matters either, especially in a, once again, overblown finale. It would have been better had the final
battle been cut by about 10-15mins and focused exclisivley on the very well
done duel between Ichigo and a possessed Rukia.
The action is fast paced and the duel is well choreographed and executed
while everyone else fights a giant tentacle monster shooting out those weird
snake thingys from Prometheus so everyone can spam special attacks. I keep thinking Fade to Black is “trying” to
repeat the things that worked about Movie 2…but in the end sometimes it just feels
lazy.
Bleach: The Movie 3-Fade to Black has a good setup is squandered
by the fact that everyone needs to be involved, old stories need to be retold
and the main antagonists aren’t very memorable.
Had we kept things relegated to Rukia’s importance to Ichigo, Byakuya
and Renji and not focused on some cataclysmic event befalling the Soul Society
(again) this could have been better than Movie 2. While there are a couple of good character
moments to enjoy and one of the best duels in Bleach PERIOD, Fade to Black will
fade from memory not long after seeing it.
Come on Bleach, you can do better than this.
5/10
And with that, next week Bleach goes to Hell…no literally
the actual story takes place partly in Hell.
Anyway we finish off a month of Bleach movies next Monday with Bleach: The Movie 4-Hell Verse. See ya then.
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