Bleach 573: I am the Edge

Zach Goodier

http://www.mangapanda.com/bleach/573

This week is another short chapter, and Kenpachi fires the opening salvo against "The Visionary."  While at first it seemed as though his powers might be too much to fight, Kenpachi quickly showed that his strength is more than enough to fight his enemy, at least at the moment.  But neither has truly showed what they can do yet, so both fighters are currently holding their cards pretty close to the chest to see who makes a move first.

The Quincy powers are still a point of irritation for me, as they are just too overpowered with no real explanation of just how they are able to do half the things they do.  How do you make your imagination into objective reality?  Can you just imagine someone to death? That's a new one.  These things are irritating, and they result in a set of characters that starts a lose me, especially when they just keep coming out of the woodwork to challenge Soul Reapers. 

Part of the challenge with big casts is keeping everyone engaged, and not having a lot of characters hanging around being useless.  Bleach has usually be good about that, but at the price of taking a long time on sideshow fights before you get to the main ones.  While I usually don't mind this, it does result in weeks of waiting for the manga just to get passed one of these fights.  That inevitably becomes the challenge with the "Big 3," and is half the reason why they have the following that they do, because you actually have to follow them as they lead you down 1,000 side-streets before you get to the main road you've been looking for.  In some ways, this builds up suspension and keeps you eager for the next chapter, but I feel like Bleach is starting to reach that point where it's actually losing sight of it's original course, and has overindulged itself in secondary fights.  That isn't to say the manga has gotten bad, but in the first attack on the Soul Society, the Quincy moved with a purpose, and you never really lost sight of where it was all headed.  This was how you were always on the edge of your seat, and how the show kept moving right along without delay.