User blog comment:Godisme/A Piggy Party/@comment-387500-20121218181843/@comment-1393830-20121218210428

My problem with this arc is that it is all senseless. The Vandenreich are destroying everything. Okay what is their motivation? We don't have it. The strongest Shinigami to ever live steps out on the battlefield and finally shows his bankai, he gets killed in one hit. Nothing happened for a while in the beginning, then there was mindless slaughter in which there wasn't anything you could even call a fight, it was nothing but one sided battles that showed that the Vandenreich are in every way superior to the Gotei 13. The entire invasion felt like nothing more than a set up for the Royal Guard to step in. Then you have Ichigo gaining Quincy powers so he is now a Human with Shinigami powers and Quincy powers who once had Hollow powers and a Fullbring. He is every race of the series, which is a little ridiculous. We are constantly teased with backstory, finding out that Juhabach and Yamamoto fought once before 1000 years ago or that The Gotei 13 was once little more than ruthless mercenaries and now Unohana was the first Kenpachi, which is all great, but Kubo has decided that instead of actually showing history, he is just going to mention it and let us fill in the rest. The problem is pacing. Everything was moving too slow, then it all moved too fast, now it is moving very slow again. Kubo cannot find the right pacing for this arc. Chapter 481 introduced the concept that the world was tearing itself apart due to the imbalance that the Vandenreich were causing, forcing Mayuri to kill countless Rukongai citizens to correct this. Now that the Vandenreich have stopped the invasion and Soul Society is in pieces, the world should be tearing itself apart again as they can freely kill Hollows again but there is no mention of this. If Kubo wants to fix this arc, he needs to find the right pacing. I don't mind a nonsense chapter every once in a while but when you use 12 pages to show two characters arguing just to show that even in these tough times, they still act like they normally do, something is wrong. That all could have been accomplished in 5 pages. When there are only 17 pages a week, each page needs to do its job and I felt many were not doing their job this week.