Bleach Movie 3: Fade to Black - Reviews

With Bleach being one of my all time top favorite Anime's ive been really excited to be able to see Fade to Black.

The story of Fade to Black is finaly one of those "fillers" that doesn't fell like one. It does a really good job of taking the whole story from the anime, it was a really nice feeling to see the way everything was connected to the story... 

The downside of such a strong connection to the anime's story is that if you havn't watched the Anime all the way where it is right now (about 241) then some points will be completly unknown to you, and never answered.

The animation were smooth, crisp and looked very natural. The sound was also as allways nice, for some reason i just love the sound "Getsyga Tencho" makes its just awesome everytime you hear it.

One thing that really makes this movie so good is that you dont get this "empty" feeling after watching it. Its not like those crappy anime's where the endning is the main charrecter smiling at the camera, but a real ending, a good one, just like the ending in Death Note (At least i think thats one of the best endings ever, because it didn't leave you unanswered).

If youre a fan of Bleach then you must see Fade to Black! But remember one thing. This movie mostly applies to people watching the anime allready in order to get the full experince.

The entire movie had a great plot and amazing story line, digging deeper into Rukia's past than they had before.

The entire movie revolves around how once you meet a person, they always have a way of leaving a distinct impression upon your heart and soul, whether it's good or bad.

It depicts how big of an impression Ichigo has made on all of the residents of the Gotei 13 Divisions within Seireitei, and how they each handle the situation of the 'intruder' who knows almost everything about them.

It shows how close Ichigo and Rukia have become while fighting together and how much each means to the other, how you can never completely erase a person because there will always be someone out there who remembers them.

This is definitely a movie for the IchiRuki shippers and in my opinion it's one of the best movies in Anime history (so far)!

Story: 5.5/10

The initial idea is good. Some mysterious forces launches a devastating attack on Soul Society and also assaults and kidnaps Rukia. Ichigo, feeling that something might be wrong, travels to Soul Society with Kon to investigate, only to discover that no one has any memory of neither him nor Rukia and is therefore though of as the intruder who caused the attack and is met with hostile force.

For a while this idea is dealt with pretty well, but eventually it spirals into nothing but action fanservice like most shounen filler-movies.

Animation/Artwork/Visual Effects: 8.5/10

From time to time during the course of the movie we get to see some flashbacks from the TV series, and those are usually from the very first episodes. I liked that, because it made me notice the progress Bleach has made in animation over the years. Now, I know that it's obviously gonna be a big difference between a movie's and a TV shows's quality in animation, but I (and most likely the majority that watched thise movie) have seen some (most/all) of the later episodes in the series and can therefore tell that the animation of the show has gone way up. But back to the movie; Bottomline, it looks great. The artwork is nothing revolutionary and it has some unnecessarily "flashy" movements (like shaking ones head when speaking to try and make it look more dramatic or something), but both the aniamtion and visual effects are top noth.

Sound: 4/10

It was nothing but re-used songs that they've played over and over in the TV series. These songs got old a long time ago. Highly unimpressive.

Although the voice actors brings out a very nice performance like usual.

Characters: 4/10

Nothing special to say here. It's same character as always. While Bleach does have a great cast, they're used very poorly here. Almost everyone is used for nothing but fanservice.

Although I did like the decision to make use of Urahara Kisuke. The villains were decent for this kind of move though.

Overall: 5/10

Started out nice, but ended poorly, as expected. The action scenes, while they had nice animation, were decent at best. None of the previous Bleach movies were any good and this one doesn't bring any change to that.