Anime: Gekijouban Bleach: Jigoku Hen 45d2x

The movie is supposed to take place in a timeline where the Fake Karakura battle never happened and Ichigo didn’t lose his powers. It starts with a flashy opening where Inner Hollow Mark 3 and Super Demon Clown Release Mark 2 are fighting over a pair of breasts called The Kurosaki-kun bimbo. If any of you are Ulqi fans and expect a rematch later on, SUCKEEERS NO MORE ULQI THEREAFTER. In reality this entire introduction scene is completely irrelevant to what follows next. Introductions are meant to foreshadow what comes next, but this is Bleach we are talking about so we might as well say it was very fitting after all. The really intelligent viewer will realize that THIS WILL BE RANDOM SHIT AS USUAL! ARE YOU REALLY EXPECTING SOME PLOT IN THIS MOVIE AND NOT COOL ACTION?

Anyways, after the flashy opening, the filler plot kicks in and we see Ichigo having a normal day in his life. Kicking random bullies, being kind hearted to dead kids, fighting with his father… Hey wait a second, why do all that seem so familiar? HEY, IT’S THE EXACT SAME THING THAT HAPPENED IN THE PILOT EPISODE! Damn Kubo, you ran out of ideas to the point you are repeating THE EXACT SAME PLOT from the series? … TWICE? … IN JUST TEN MINUTES?

Anyways, after that he goes to school where the only thing that is not happening is studying and learning. Such concepts do not exist in the Bleachverse and schools are places young people gather just for lame humor and piss poor romance that never leads anywhere waiting to happen. And indeed, random stuff start dropping and nobody suspects a thing. Yeah, some students almost got killed by the debris and the whole incident went by like nothing much happened. That makes sense, especially since the whole town has always been oblivious to all the mass destruction and murders that take place every three days.

Anyways, the school eventually blows up and these evil dudes attack, so Ichigo and his gang go to stop them… Hey, wait a second, why didn’t his sword fire that laser beam when he went bankai? Damn, more inconsistencies! Well whatever, it’s not like there are rules or restrictions in this show and as expected a flashy but completely random battle follows. For some reason the villains want Ichigo’s sisters but blow up his school instead. And when one of them is defeated he is taken to hell by that gate we haven’t seen since episode 5. Yeah, I guess every single Hollow that was defeated after that episode was not evil enough to deserve the gate… or Kubo just forgot about it until he decided to make this movie, which is nothing but a rehash of scenes from the main series. THIRD SCENE THAT REPEATS!

Ah Rukia is in this film too. Is she going to be kidnapped for the nth time so Ichigo can have something to do? … Nah, it can’t be, this time it’s his sister that needs saving, so we already have the same old objective. Rukia’s role is to kindly explain what happens in hell with her amazing drawing skills. Oh, and as usual she is useless in battle and thus she had to be saved by Sado… who appeared on that roof out of nowhere despite the fact he can’t fly with the speed of light like everybody else and was in the other side of the city ten seconds ago. Lovely consistency.

After that they are taken to hell by a guy from that place who claims he wants to help them get her back. They get to fight all the goons there and once again we see Kubo repeating scenes from the main series (*cough* Rukia defeats Espada 9) before it is revealed he is the big bad of the film and all that was a trick for Ichigo to go berserk and destroy the gate permanently so there will be no chains to keep them there. Surprisingly Ichigo’s sister is saved but Rukia gets captured in her stead, and now is all naked in chains and tortured by the big bad. Oh I see she finally got her real place in this movie and once again ICHIGO NEEDS TO SAVE HER! He goes to fight the villain and gets yet another power up just when he is about to be killed (yeah Kubo, that is the only thing you do to save your protagonist), and with it he magically beats the big bad and fixes the gate in a minute. The end. Isn’t it lovely when the main villain goes through all the trouble of setting up an elaborate plan against a complete idiot hero, who just storms in and never thinks anything, yet loses because the hero has plot armor? Doesn’t than make all efforts pointless if you are not the main lead who wins no matter what even with no brains or strategy? Am I overthinking this for a show called Bleach?

I must say this movie had by far the least amount of context. While the other three had some sparks of drama by focusing on a secondary character, over here we get squat. The main villain tries to offer some sort of drama over his grim existence in hell but who cares; he is a generic Big Bad for the sake of having something to fight. Plus it was as I described a collection of scenes from the series, thus not even the plot was anything new. So ok, they showed how hell looks like and gave Ichigo his SSJ4 form, all of which will be rendered useless when the main story will ACTUALLY be about hell.

The best part is of course the action scenes and only in of hollow (lol) entertainment. I can’t say I was thrilled with the coloring or the animation as they felt too blobby at times and less detailed and with less cinematics in shading than the previous movies. The soundtrack also felt weak this time as it was too much pop and too less cool in the sense it doesn’t make you feel anxiety and unrest.

There are still the usual clichés you find in any fighting shounen movie, it is still to the most part a parade of special attacks. Surprisingly, for the first time ever it was not about “Let’s save Soul Society for the millionth time” theme but “Let’s close the gates of hell” for a change. It even fooled us for awhile to think it was about saving a girl other than Rukia or Inoue before it finally returned to the good old Rukia… Plus now she was naked and chained; so double the service (and lol, she is the only one naked when the other captured males are still dressed; phallocracy ftw). Even the big bad’s identity is deceiving. The final showdown though was rushed and a cop-out; extremely disappointing even for the few remaining Bleachtards. Even this new form he gets looks rather lame; I was misled to think I was watching Saint Seya for a few seconds… Hey wait a second… Hell? Golden armor transformation? A rescue mission to save a chick? DAMN KUBO; LEAVE POOR SAINT SEYA ALONE!

Value and enjoyment ain’t much, and this time are even lower than usual because of the complete lack of personal drama. In all, Bleach went to hell with this movie (not that it was that far away from there the way it went under after the SS arc). If only there were Blanks and Sheena in the main series, which Aizen was going after in order to make the key, if only the Fake Karakura war was depicted like in Diamond Dust Rebellion and if only there was an Espada like those two kids in Fade to Black to give Rukia further role in the series, before hell breaks loose...
...if only...