Bleach

[Rust]

Alright, I understand Japanese television doesn't do the whole "Rerun"/"Season Break" concept and just plows right through, year to year, with brand new programming. I can respect that.

I also understand that Manga-to-Anime productions will always be slaves to the Manga's production schedule.


That being said, I'm getting fed up with the current story arc's shifts to Filler without so much as an explaination. One minute Ichigo and Company are fighting for their lives against Aizen and his Arrancar Espada, the next...they're back in the real world dealing with a Soul Society noblewoman and her soccer tournament.

Now they're shifting the story 150 years into the past to deal with the Soul Society and many of the secondary characters. Which, frankly, I'm perfectly fine with - this filler actually looks interesting and has the potential to fill in a lot of background information prior to the final face off with Aizen.

The problem I have is that they're hiccuping the story to do it. If they'd gone from where they initially left off (Aizen, Tolsen, Gin and the top three Espada vs Yamamoto and the Captains of the 13th Court Guard Squad in the real world with Ichigo and company (Plus four Captains) against Ulquirroa and the remaining Arrancar in Herco Mundo) to this backstory filler I wouldn't have had problems with it. It's got the prospective to really flesh out the backstory. But they had to do the stupid soccer tournament two parter which, being it's filler nature, wasn't even serious and threw off the entire pacing of the story. That's not even accounting for the filler that took place right after the end of the Grimmjow fight (The filler in and of itself was not bad, it just totally killed the pacing of the main storyline).

It's making me miss the glacially slow Bount arc. At least that was a fully realized arc and a storyline of its own, and wasn't interfering with the goddamn plot!

[ashes]

I know your filler pain.

Have you bothered to watch some of the Naruto filler? Oh dear lord.

Not to mention the drop in production values.

[Akitsu]

At least with Bleach the production values stay the same. The real problem is that there's such a demand for the show that they don't get to take breaks in the production... so instead they have two teams animating different stories at the same time, and switch between the two in order to play catch up.

Thankfully, the end result usually yields pure awesomeness.

I'm still getting over the last seemingly endless break we had with the soul society side story... *sob* ... now you're telling me there's more?

[Rust]

Unfortunatly. That annoying little Princess comes back for a two episode filler involving a Soccer Tournament (I skipped the episodes), and now they're going back 150 years.

That'll be worth watching if only because we get to see Urahara as a Captain, as well as a few Vizard as Captains as well. It's looking to be an intriguing little romp - and makes a helluva lot more sense then "Everyone's suddenly back in the Real World" crap they have been pulling.

[VannNesral]

Where in the bloody 'ell did you see that they were going back 150 years?? Tell me for I must know and use this to force the soccer tournament out of my mind

[Rust]

Did you not watch the Preview for Next Week after the Soccer Tournament eps?

[VannNesral]

...obviously i didn't. I'm an idiot, what can i say?