User blog:Lemursrule/BLEACH 275 English Dubbed Review

Hey guys I’m late, because I am bringing the quality up big time.

Everyone really brought in their A++ game this week, even Steve Staley gave a pretty damn good performance (more on him later).

Keith Silverstein did a great The way he said cero was brilliant. I just can’t wait until he says, says, "Los Lobos.”

Laura Bailey also did a great job as Harribel. Added the emotion to Harribel, but was still subtle at the same time. Every time she spoke it was just complete perfection, but it’s Laura Bailey and I expect nothing less than (personal) perfection.

Steve also did a great job as Tōshirō. Although some of the screaming was “meh,” he more than made up for it with his rendition of “Hyōten Hyakkasō,” and his explanation of the ability. To be honest in terms of the screaming, I can understand that Steve is getting older, but at this point I know I’m not going to be satisfied with the screams. He is not Romi Park, so I just need to accept that and move on.

However, the ones who really stole the show this episode were Michael McConnohie and Karen Strassman.

Michael did an amazing job as Baraggan. When Studiopolis recasted Baraggan, it was a good call. Michael brings just so much to the role that Steve Krammer just could not bring. Michael brings the fear of Baraggan’s character to life in a way that in my opinion exceeds his seiyu, Shōzō Iizuka.

Karen Strassman did a great job as Suì-Fēng, I especially liked the “sweaty ass” line. Everything from the screaming and her interaction between Baraggan and Ōmaeda was brilliant. In my opinion this is the best performance of Karen Strassman, but in all her work, period, in a very long time.

The animation was okay in this episode. It wasn't horrible, but it wasn’t that great either. I thought some of the character design translations from Kubo’s work were a bit weak, some of the proportions were off, and some of the frames were just plain weird. The fact that Pierrot was too cheap to animate Baraggan's jaw in my opinion takes away so much of his fearfulness, and he looks so much more intimidating in Soul Resureccion.

I also thought the digital paint job could have been better and I felt a lot of the color was extremely desaturated. Mainly I had a color issue with the “end” of the Hitsugaya/Harribel fight. First of all, you have two characters who have water based weapons and who have tons of complimentary and contrasting colors in their (original) character designs, and this is the best you can come up with? You have a blue bankai and ice it could really some, oh I don’t know...BLUE! The coloring changes in bleach have always dumbfounded me. First we go from way over-saturated in season 1, we tone it down a bit in seasons 2-3, but its now a little too desaturated. Then, we try pumping up the saturation a bit and go to a more pastel color pallet from seasons 4-10. After that we go more bolder in coloring in seasons 11-13. Then at the beginning of season 14 we get nice and bold colors, then after the Ulquiorra fight we get this? The only time were the color is at as close to perfection as you can get with that budget is the “Deicide” portion of the arrancar arc. Bleach has to be one of the schizophrenic series in terms of coloring I have ever seen. I mean I work a lot with digital color and it’s not really that hard to fix saturation or other color issues. It is completely mind boggling that a group of people, who have been working on a single project FOR YEARS, can’t find a good medium for a stable color pallet.



Overall great voice acting, however some subpar animation takes away some of the emotional impact.

Final Rundown

 * Story 8.5/10
 * Art/Animation 7/10
 * Sound Effects 10/10
 * Script adaptation 10/10
 * Music 8.5/10
 * Acting 10/10

I give Bleach episode 275 an 9 out of 10.

Join me on Saturday when I review episode 276 dubbed, and please watch Bleach as it continues to lead the new Toonami.

Until next time! -- 04:28, October 17, 2012 (UTC)