And now that I've slept on the first season of Bleach...

[meganbmoore]

I have to say...I dunno.  On the one hand, I liked it and will watch more.  On the other, and maybe it's because I was flipping back and forth between subs and dubs for various reasons, but they seemed to make the characters more stereotyped, and remove some subtext from the manga and add others...I mean, honest question here...has they manga ever really had any Rukia/Ichigo subtext at all?  I remember being surprised it wasn't going the normal route of automatically pairing the male and female lead when I first started reading the manga.  Though at least now I get why other canon-centric people I know are so Ichigo/Rukia centered, even though I could never ship them myself(honestly, I ship nothing in Bleach...if I did, it'd be Ichigo/Orihime and Renji/Rukia just because Origime and Renji are so blatant in their adoration of seemingly oblivious people.)

But like I said...I dunno.  Isshin, Ishida and Orihime also seemed to lose a lot of their brainpower in the translation.

Comments

[magicnoire.livejournal.com]

I never thought there was any Ichigo/Rukia subtext in the manga at all but something might be there because I know some fervent Ichigo/Rukia shippers who have shipped them since before the anime started.

Then again, that could just be a result of people being used to the normal pattern of pairing the male & female leads.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Rukia/Ichigo has, from the moment I realized it wasn't going to follow the normal pattern(really, I suspect it's where the shipping comes from...you expect it so you see it) always struck me as bickering best friends who will move the world for each other because they changed each other's lives, but neither has ever struck me as having the remotest romantic interest in the other. Honestly, part of why it appealed to me early on was that the central male/female relationship wasn't romantic, but was instead a strong friendship.

I mean, granted, I may just be missing something due to Orihime and Renji's blatant adoration, but I don't think so.

[chomiji]

Interesting ... I was reading vol. 4 of Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service last night when it struck me that I have no urge to ship anything in that series, and started wondering why. It could just be that there are only 5 of them (the other recurring characters only show up for a couple of episodes) and they're all so dysfunctional, or it could be because it's not really one long story - it's episodic, like Mushishi.

But I really think that it's because each episode is a little puzzle, and so the emphasis is really on solving the puzzle. The human interactions are just seasoning. But just about all the one-long-saga type of manga get into human interactions among the characters to some degree, and storylines develop from those interactions, and from that, you can get shipping.

Having said that, the only thing I've shipped in Bleach even just for fun is Ikkakku/Yumichika - and that's definitely just for fun.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

You should watch the first few minutes of part 1 of the third Bleach musical at http://www.crunchyroll.com/showseries?id=7706, because it starts off with Ikkaku's Lucky Dance. XD

I have no idea what the second Bleach musical covers, but the first one covers the first half of the Soul Society arc, I think - I only got about halfway through it before Momo's song of love and adoration for Aizen bored me to sleep, so I'm not sure where it ends. The songs are pretty much dull, but some of the stagecraft is interesting, like how they chose to do Byakuya's shunpo and Gin's zanpakuto. Rukia has a lot of quick costume changes, which impress me a lot, as the story has a lot of flashbacks.

The story makes absolutely no sense unless you know Bleach, of course, and they leave out a lot of characters (no Ishida! no Yumichika in the third! Kenpachi's in the 3rd, but no Yachiru!) in the interests of keeping the musical within a reasonable time limit.

[wistfulmemory.livejournal.com]

The first Bleach musical covers from the beginning of the story to Ichigo and Renji's fight, the second musical goes from that fight to right when Rukia is about to be killed, and the third one goes from there to the end of the arc. (Kenpachi shows up in the second musical.)

I was impressed with how they did Renji's bankai, but it is hard not to start giggling during the serious, angsty songs.

This person has all of the musicals and the Live Bankai show subbed: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=andromeda881 I'm amused by the singing and dancing that's done after the "official" show.

(Oh, and I love your icon. It makes me giggle every time I see it.)

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I've ordered but don't yet have Kurosagi, but I suspect I'll be the same as you with it.

Bleach is different from most series in that almost every character relationship, (even most of the rivalries) is focused almost purely on friendship, not any romantic or sexual subtext. Even Renji and Orihime, with their blatant adoration, are driven more to protect their friends than to protect their crush.

Even SDK, with the heavy emphasis on friendship, as a lot of emphasis on romance. You have(covering only what's been released in the US) the very canon Kyo/Yuya and Kyoshiro/Sakuya, and the heavy subtext of Benitora/Mahiro, as well as the fact that his lost love is one of the driving factors for Yukimura. Whereas Bleach has some instances of one sided crushing, and that's it.

I'm really big on character development and relationships-romantic and otherwise-and how they define and showcase a character, which is the main reason I start getting so very, very twitchy about the non-canon stuff.