by Nathaniel R
boys and their toys... i mean, superpowers.
How often do you have random streaming adventures where you watch something you've literally never heard of? This week on Netflix I caught a new Japanese flick called Bleach (2018) though for the life of me I can't figure out what the title means. It's one of those movies that's 1000% obviously based on a manga because it throws lots of random names, superpowers, and world-building terms and rules at you and assumes you'll be able to keep up. But nowhere in the entire picture does the word "bleach" factor in. I've turned it over and over in my head and unless I blinked during a crucial subtitle the title makes no sense whatsoever.
It was a fun popcorn watch but I had to share one moment near the beginning that had me howling...
A "soul reaper" named Rukia (Hana Sugisaki, the voice of Mary in Mary and the Witch's Flower), who vanquishes "hollows" (demons of some kind) with a totally normal looking sword, has chanced upon a teenage boy named Ichigo (Sôta Fukushi, Blade of the Immortal) who can see dead people and other invisible creatures. She ends up transferring her powers to him during a battle with a Hollow because... well, it's complicated... because in-world genre rules! When he gets the soul reaper powers he magically has a costume and a sword that's way too big for his body. That leads to this priceless moment of disbelief as she watches him swing it around.
I'll take phallic euphemisms for $200, Alex.
Ichigo does, in fact, strut around with annoying BDE even in the high school scenes where he's swordless, but that's taking it visually a bit far, doncha think?
I will never be able to scrub this moment from my mind which is maybe why they called the movie Bleach.
P.S. The best thing about the movie is that the demons that Ichigo battle look way more like three dimensional CG renderings of Miyazaki creatures than the tired 'scary/ugly' demons of Hollywood genre pictures. Just look!