Bleach Movie 4 The Hell Verse: Hardcore action but definitely too rushed

Written by Little_Wolf-18 on March 23, 2012 at 4:55 AM

Warning first, don’t download the file subbed by “Team Akatsuki” – the subs are hilariously incomprehensible. Somebody seems to have gotten their hands on the script and shoved the whole thing into Google Translator. (Seriously, what or who else can translate Renji as “Mrs. Oven”?!?)

Anyway, review-wise – “The Hell Verse” starts off quite promising, but quickly goes downhill. The story is easy to follow, but rather predictable at the same time and, sadly, rather rushed and inconsistent. You get to learn about Hell in the Bleach universe, which so far was mentioned only in a few episodes. Now that in itself would be awesome; weren’t there the plot holes. Example? /SPOILER WARNING/ How can Sinners escape from Hell without being chased? How come they’re chased only when they’re injured? And that’s just part of the questions left open in the end. /SPOILER END/ The plot would need a whole lot of details not given due to lack of time. Plus, there’s basically no time for a decent buildup of tension, making the whole thing feel like a rather rushed release.

The relation to the anime itself is badly done. If you ignore the first two minutes, you can watch this as any other movie as a filler and addition to the storyline – and you’ll be fine. However, those first two minutes draw a direct relation to the fight between Ichigo and Ulquiorra, which in turn left me personally waiting for another relation for the duration of the full movie, since there is no other relation. There are a few allusions to the Soul Society arc, yes, but that one was long over when Ulquiorra entered the picture in the original anime. The possible relation left me wondering what was going on. *sweatdrops* The recycled scene didn’t make sense to me other than for drawing watchers in. That might be my quest to have things make sense though.

Quite unlike the other movies, “The Hell Verse” focuses on Ichigo and his care for his family. You won’t get to see many people from Soul Society, but you will get to see characters a tad out of their usual character (I faintly remember Inoue hugging Ichigo out of nowhere *coughs*). The villains are kept flat, lacking a real background and motivation, making them pretty clichéd. Blame the time limit, but they could have done so much better than this.

There’s not just a movie-exclusive villain but also a movie-exclusive power for Ichigo, which – compared to the other Bleach movies – might be a nice change of pace. Speaking of Ichigo, however, he seems more dumb than usually. I wonder who else would believe a Sinner that just escaped from Hell (me definitely not).

The dialogue is average; spiced up with some “big bro talk” but generally not all that different from the usual series; nothing you haven’t really heard before.

The animation, however, is good indeed. This movie focuses on fighting instead of plot, providing its viewers with nonstop action. There’s some drama/friendship mixed into this, but mostly, it’s action, and action only. The art is high definition, though I can’t help but feel like Kubo-san could have been more creative with Hell (frankly spoken, to me it looked like Hueco Mundo dyed red… but perhaps that’s just me *sighs*). However, the music is finely done and fits the scenes. The sounds, in turn, sometimes annoyed the hell out of me (pun unintended). I don’t have anything against screams in anime, but once the crew enters Hell, there is a scream in average every 20 seconds of which you don’t even know where it came from. That went on for a few minutes till I turned the audio on mute (and I’d advise anyone who can’t stand that to do so too, quite frankly).

For an action-only fan, or a Bleach fan that can’t miss a single episode, this movie most probably is enjoyable. However, don’t expect too much in terms of plot or character development (I was - and that was the mistake). Yes, the animation is high definition, and yes, you’ll definitely get your fill of badass action, but the plot severely lacks. IMO a lot more could have been made out of this had there been more time for the release.