Bleach movie 1: Memories of Nobody

Not too long ago, it was announced that the Bleach anime is imminently coming to its close, at an awkward point not long after its timeskip. The last TV episode will air at the end of this month, with its replacement – perhaps rather gallingly – apparently being the Rock Lee SD spinoff that’s recently been making for a far more entertaining manga than its parent title.

It seems like a good time, and nothing stops OVAs and movies carrying on the story. Plus the fourth film, The Hell Verse, was for me something of an apogee for the animated version, which will leave me with fond memories of this derided Shounen Jump piece. I have to say, though, when Bleach really had everything going for it, it rather squandered its chance.

This, the first film, came out in Japan at the end of 2006, though I didn’t get a chance to watch it until the DVDs were released and fan-translated. My impressions on the 13^th September ’07 were mixed: I loved the parts with Kenpachi, as I tend to across Bleach media, but I found the plotline generic and dull. Ichigo befriends a girl who looks like Rukia with a different hairstyle, helps stop a plot that will destroy the world and defends the girl when she turns out to have a similar issue to Haruka from Noein. There’s great self-sacrifice but of course the plot is very much standalone. Standard Bleach stuff.

For the first theatrical venture of a big anime title, this is not a terrible effort, but it falls well short of being anything special, and the slightly above-average visuals can’t make up for a seen-it-all-before plotline.