Fresh Take - Bleach Thousand Year Blood War First Cour Thoughts

 Available on Hulu

Story

Bleach is back and to be honest, I am glad they are adapting the final arc of the manga. The story of the first 13 episodes deals with the return of the Quincies and their leader Juha (I know it's not spelled that way but that's how it sounds) Bach. We finally got to see how the Quincy clan function and how powerful they are as well. I will not lie I was a little worried when it was reported that Disney had gotten the rights to Bleach for the Thousand Year Blood War arc. However, I was pleasantly surprised as they were able to get the feeling of the manga and for the most part, did a mostly 1:1 adaptation. There are a few little additions to some of the episodes but they don't take away from the story at all. Visually, the anime looks great. Animation has evolved since the last time Bleach was out, which was 2012, I think the time off has helped as they were able to capitalize on these new techniques. There is a lot of action in these first 13 episodes. We got to see a lot of great fights here. My favorite has to be how they animated the Genryuusai fight with his full Bankai unleashed. I was wondering how they were going to animate that and they did an outstanding job. The fight that I thought was really well done, was Kenpachi and Unohana. There is a certain sadness with that fight that I thought they were able to capture perfectly. Also, let me just say this, this is brutal there is a lot of blood and dismemberment happening in this arc and I was very glad they added it. There are also some very good emotional moments in this cour as well. They did a truly excellent job on the flashback dealing with Isshin Kurosaki, Masaki Kurosaki, and Ryuken. We got to see how they met and interacted and even though it was only basically an episode and a half they did a great job with that as well. For those of us who read the manga when it would get licensed in other territories most of the time, it would be heavily censored from what was in the manga. Now that we are in the age of streaming that's no longer an issue. 

If there was one thing I didn't like it was that there are doing this in cours or sets. So the second cour doesn't release until July of 2023 and that was an issue for me just because I don't want it to end. Other than that I think they have done an awesome job adapting this arc so far. My only other area of concern is that this is supposed to be 52 episodes in total. The manga ended kind of prematurely from what reports said at the time with a lot of events being left out. I am hoping that they will be adding what was dropped due to time back into the arc. This arc does move at a fast pace so that is one of the things I am wondering how that will be addressed.

For Parents

This is rated TV-14 and while there isn't anything vulgar in the show it is bloody and very violent at times. There are also some elements of horror in it as there is one character whose abilities deal with fear and the animations they do to showcase that can be seen as disturbing. All of the episodes are between 23 and 25 minutes and there is an English dub up on Hulu as well as original Japanese with subtitles. 

Overall Thoughts

If ya can't tell I enjoyed this cour very much. I am a fan of the Bleach series and I am enjoying what they have done so far. Looking forward to July and the release of the second cour. I highly recommend watching it if you are a fan of shonen anime. Do you need to have watched the original show? I would say you would need to have some knowledge of the series as they don't stop to explain things. There is no recap. They hit the ground running and for me, that is what I wanted. Let me know what you think about the show in the comments. Are you looking forward to the rest of the arc? What did you think about the animation? As always thanks for reading and interacting.

Trailer

Trailer for Cour 2

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Fresh Take - Tales of the Jedi Anthology Thoughts

 Available on Disney Plus

Synopsis: A collection of animated shorts that center around a young Count Dooku and Ahsoka Tano. 

For this review, I decided to take a different approach. Since the shorts are six episodes, three for Ahsoka and three for Dooku, I am going to give my thoughts on the Ahsoka shorts and then the Dooku shorts. Finally, I'll give my overall thoughts on the series as a whole. 

Ahsoka

The Ahsoka episodes I found to be just okay, I didn't hate them but I didn't love them either. I think it's because it's a character we already know so much about that there wasn't a lot that was very interesting with her side of the anthology. Don't get me wrong it's animated great and they do a good job of giving the viewer the familiar things that we all love about the character also having Ashley Eckstein back voicing Ahsoka will never be a complaint from me I just would have probably been more interested in going with a different character that could be fleshed out more. The best episode to me of her side of the Anthology is the last one, episode 6 entitled Resolve, it serves as a good bridge in my opinion between Clone Wars and Rebels. 

Dooku

The Dooku episodes I thought were the best part of the Anthology. Mostly, because we get to see what Dooku was like when he was younger. We also got to see a young Qui Gon Jinn as well as his interactions with fellow Jedi including Mace Windu. We got to see how the death of Qui Gon affected him and what eventually caused him to turn. All three of his episodes were well done and left me with wanting to know more. Another thing about his side of the anthology that I enjoyed was just how manipulative Palpatine was and how he knew what buttons to push to bring people over to his side. I thought it was nicely done and I could see how Dooku would have fallen to the dark side given the events of what happened in those three episodes. 

Overall

I enjoyed it, I thought it was well-done and well paced. The animation was in the Clone Wars series style, a style that has grown on me over the years. The music is always great and I thought that keeping it to two characters was probably the right decision in the long run. Although I do think VISIONS is a little better (I'm a little biased as I am a huge anime geek) I think this one is very good as well. Have you seen Tales of the Jedi Anthology? What did you think? Leave a comment and let's talk about it. What other shorts would you like to see done? As always thanks for stopping by and supporting the blog don't forget to check out the Wingin IT Podcast and Fresh Take on Sundays.

Trailer

Just Thinkin - The 2022 Game Awards

 

So the annual Game Awards presentation was last night and to be honest this year was pretty good. Hopefully, you were able to catch our live reaction to the presentation if you haven't please check out our YouTube channel as I think it shows we had a pretty good time. This year's show had some nice surprises, and many of the World Premiere's were games that had not been shown before. One of my main complaints from years past has been the fact that a lot of the premiere's had actually premiered at e3 that year but this year was a pleasant surprise. There were also a few surprises with some of the wins, one of which being Bayonetta 3 winning the Best Action game. I thought with all of the controversy surrounding that game they would have stayed away from it but hey glad to be wrong in that instance. 

There were a few games that had reveals that surprised me. Tekken 8 showed the story trailer for the game which I thought was pretty good. I have a sort of love/hate relationship with Tekken but this looks interesting and it looks like some old characters will be returning so there's that to look forward to as well. Another game that caught my eye was Hades 2. You guys know that I am not the biggest fan of the rogue-like genre but I do love the first Hades game. I am looking forward to jumping into the sequel. The biggest surprise to me of the night was Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon. Platinum has another Bayonetta game coming and it launches in March of 2023. The trailer has a storybook feel to it as you control Cereza before she becomes Bayonetta. The trailer really piqued my interest as I really like different types of art and from a visual standpoint, it just looks really appealing to me. They also had Keegan Michael Key come out and show a clip from the Super Mario Movie. I am really looking forward to that movie next year. There were also reveals for Armored Core 6 and Diablo 4 that I thought was pretty cool. However, I do agree that while some of the reveals were pretty cool a lot of the trailers looked and felt the same. There were way more post-apocalyptic, dark, realistic, and ultra-gritty games that just saturated the show. So much so to the point that they all felt the same. Gaming really does need to get back to having more unique and varied games in all honesty. 

Overall it was probably the best show they have done in years. It could still be a little shorter, I think they can cut at least 30 minutes from the show to make it a little tighter. Also, they have to do a better job reining in those with acceptance speeches some of those speeches rambled to long last night. What did you think of the 2022 Game Awards? Please leave a comment and let's talk about it. Check out the official presentation or you can check out our live reaction. 

Official Presentation

The Crew Live Reaction