User blog:Lemursrule/BlEACH episode 295 review: The good old days

HOLY S*#T! IT MUST BE CHRISTMAS! Shigekuni Claus...I've always believed in you. I mean a new episode and a new chapter in the same day! But, anyway I am just reviewing the episode today, although the comedy in 425 was off the wall, very off-beat, plus I love Orihime's new hair style, its nice to see her with some bangs again. Shall we begin...

Episode 295 begins with a very short 2 minute-recap of the last episode, and they added dialogue for Aizen. THANK YOU PIERROT FOR FINALLY GETTING ICHIGO'S NEW MASK RIGHT! I love how Pierrot got straight to the point and made the hogyoku and Aizen's regeneration quite visually pleasing. Then, I know after that point, it pissed off a lot of people off...RECAP. However, I am going to have to disagree with the vast majority of people that the episode was not very good for several reasons.

As many of you are aware of, Bleach is one of the longest running Shonen anime in history, and next year will be the anime's 7th year in production. A lot of things have happened throughout the last 7 years in the anime. The thing people have to keep in mind is that the anime is not just made for the Bleach super-fans, it is made for a general audience. As hard as it is to believe, some people only watch the anime, and not everyone might remember some of Ichigo's important battles. This episode reminded me and I hope the rest of you why we fell in Love with Bleach and how we have remained loyal to Tite Kubo through the good and the bad(which when you think about it, it could have been A LOT WORSE). Plus I love how they added the monitors and the interaction with the Squad 12 members and Aizen and Gin. I know some people complained that they didn't reanimate those scenes. But, really DOES EVERY LAST RECAP NEED TO BE REANIMATED! Plus people also complained that the recap was in the original 4:3 aspect ratio(fullscreen/sd) that was used from 2004-2008, while now we are in a 16:9 aspect ratio(widescreen/hd). I am glad they left it in 4:3 for two reasons. #1 if they stretched the picture, it would look absolutely horrendous, that is was Funimation got s#*t for the Ouran High School Host Club Blu-ray, they took a 4:3 sd master and stretched it to a 16:9 hd up-convert on blu-ray. The old animation was converted to hd without distorting the original picture quality. #2 it made sense that it would be 4:3, because considering that at this point in both the anime and manga takes place in 2001, widescreen monitors and smaller widescreen hd tvs had not yet been invented, hence in chapter 424(which takes place on April 14, 2003) Ichigo has a widescreen flat-panel tv in his room, because that is the point they started to go commercial. Ok enough of my nerdiness, lets move on.

I am glad Pierrot didn't waste their time on doing all that recap, I would prefer if sometime in the future they reanimated The first two major story arcs in Bleach and followed the manga more closely and made a sort-of director's cut of Bleach on blu-ray. No filler episodes, no censorship, give me my pepper ball training PIERROT! Basically something alla DragonBall Kai, but actually reanimate it not just trace over the original animation. Now they can save their energy, because Isshin will probably arrive next week(Finger-flip of DOOM) then Deicide will probably start on November 16 or 23.

Ok final rundown
 * animation(new and old) 10/10
 * music 10/10
 * story 8/10
 * Acting 9/10

Overall I give Bleach 295 8 out of 10

Join me next week as I review Bleach 296. I am also starting a countdown to episode 300 of Bleach. Do you have any favorite episodes, any funny Bleach-related stories, how did you find and get into the anime(for my story please refer to my talk page). Please share your opinion of the episode and post some of your favorite Bleach memories. Until then...BANKAI!