eah, my guilty little pleasure – anime. I love Japanese animation. For every ten series I start, one stays with me and I’ll watch it all the way through.
So, there’s one called Bleach, a fairly famous and very successful franchise. It started in the mid-2000’s and ran twenty seasons of twenty episodes each.That’s about (give or take) about 400 episodes. That’s a lot of bleach.
It hit me while I was fast-forwarding through the opening number (as I do). Hulu dutifully informed me that I still had something like 730 episodes unwatched. Since half are subbed and half dubbed (I’m watching the dubbed, and don’t go purist on me, please), that means I still have 365 to go. To give you a scale on this, simply skipping the one-and-a-half minute intro saves me just over nine hours of time. That means I have days and days of Bleach ahead of me.
Why put so much time into this effort? Well, yes, I enjoy it. Its plot is silly enough that I won’t bother to explain it, but I will mention that the series does have crowning moments of awesomeness in it. For example, in one bit, hero protagonist Ichigo Kurosaki is fighting in a master opponent in full traditional Japanese ninja costumes, swords and robes (there is a lot of this sort of thing). Ichigo has his massive sword, and his opponent a more traditional samurai sword. But just as you think Ichigo might win, his enemy touches something on his weapon and suddenly it clicks and is now a spear, earning Ichigo an slash. While the hero staggers back, the gloating villain explains how this is possible because his weapon, from the tip to the red tassel on the hilt, is perfectly balanced. Ichigo tries to correct for fighting an enemy with two weapons (and hence two fighting styles) and suddenly – click – and now the spear is a three-sectioned set of long nun-chucks. Again, a strike. Ichigo looks pretty ragged now. More gloating. More weapon-swaps and perfectly-balanced hits. Ichigo launches a desperate attack and takes a nun-chuck in the face which sends him skidding backwards on his back, blooded, defeated. His enemy slowly walks towards him, spinning his nun-chucks, gloating. But Ichigo staggers to his feet and explains that he’s got his enemy’s measure now. “How can you say that?” the baddie gloats. “Soon you will die before my perfectly balanced weapon.” To that, Ichigo opens his hand and the threads of the severed tassel float away in the breeze. Having sacrificed a face-hit for a chance to rip the tassel away, the perfectly-balanced weapon no longer is. At which point, Ichigo demolishes the villain (and lets him live, of course).
Great fun. Great bits. So yes, I’ve got a lot of silly stuff to go (and some moments that are truly clever).
We all have our weaknesses.
Even if it is a simple tassel.