User blog:Lemursrule/Bleach 268 English dubbed Review

As I commented on last week's blog, there are some characters that work better in English and others do not. This week's episode proved my point quite clearly, but before I get to that, I will discuss what I did like about the episode.

Johnny Yong Bosch was flawless as Ichigo and his acting couldn't be any better. In my opinion, Johnny's portrayal of Ichigo has become much stronger over the last two years or so due to the birth of his daughter. I think becoming a parent has really heightened his protective parenting, which reflects in his portrayal of Ichigo and Ichigo's will to protect. Tony Oliver's Ulquiorra was also excellent and Tony reflected Ulquiorra's lack of emotions rather well. Stephanie Sheh did a great job as well as Orihime and really brought a sense of strength in Orihime's current weakness and helplessness.

However, Colleen O'Shaughnessey's Loly stole the show for me. Although there were some "iffy" line reads (which frankly was the ADR director's fault, because it is the director's job to direct, they clearly rushed to get it done), she really did a great job in, pardon my language, bringing out the "pyscho bitch" in her. The script writing for Loly was well done, unfortunately not every character got great dialogue adaptation.

My main issue with this episode was Yammy in general. Going back to what I said earlier with some characters working better than others, this is pretty much a picture perfect example. If you don't already know, I have never been a fan of Paul St. Peter's Yammy. When Jamieson Price replaced Paul in Soul Resureccion, I really hoped he would replace Paul in the anime, but sadly he did not. Don't get me wrong, I think Paul is a great voice actor, but he is just not a good Yammy. Kenji Nomura brings out the crassness and brutality of Yammy so exquisitely that no one can really match. While I am not crazy about the voice Paul uses for Yammy, it isn't terrible, but Paul just is not Yammy. Jameison really got the same feeling I got from Kenji, Paul just cannot give me that same feeling. The script doesn't help much either. Yammy's dialogue has never really translated quite right into english, because generally in Japanese Yammy says pretty much the same thing just in variations. This would be a great opportunity to spice the dialogue up, but the dub missed these opportunities time and again. I can understand that they want to keep the show TV-14, but it would not hurt to "turn the heat up" a bit on the language. If they don't want to use "bitch" there are several other words they could have used that would have produced the same effect of showing Yammy as a classless brute, instead of an elementary school bully on steroids.

Overall it was a intense episode, but the plot doesn't really advance much, but the action really kicks off next week.

Final Rundown

 * Story 7.5/10
 * Art/Animation 9/10
 * Sound Effects 10/10
 * Script adaptation 8/10
 * Music 9/10
 * Acting 8.5/10

I give Bleach episode 268 an 8.7 out of 10.

Join me on Saturday when I review episode 269 dubbed, and please watch Bleach as it continues to lead the new Toonami.

Until Next Time! -- 03:48, August 27, 2012 (UTC)