It's Friday, Friday, got another Bleach review on a Friday! Damn that sounded very wankerish but anyway it's time for the final installment of Bleach Week 2013 and we are closing it with a bang... Well not really as it's more of a sizzle but one heck of a sizzle if you catch my bad pun.  That's right baby, we are closing it off with a review of the fourth film in the Bleach movie series titled "Hell Verse".  Hell Verse starts off with Ichigo and his two younger sisters saying goodbye to their dad because he is going to a doctors conference and won't be back until the next day.  While Ichigo is wrapping up school the building gets attacked by unseen foes until he gets into soul reaper mode to see who is attacking the school.  What they see is a bunch of men with masks, cloaks and chains that are trying to gain his attention (all that's missing is them going "Oh hello sailor").  They manage to knock the mask off of one guy and then the gates of Hell open with a big giant skeletal hand wielding a giant scythe comes out and grabs the now mask-less attacker and drags him back to Hell.  While the other men are stunned about the sudden loss they aren't worried about losing the battle as their mission is completed. (Click "Read More" for full article).

What was their mission you ask?  It was to distract Ichigo so another group of their men could snatch his sisters as means of collateral so they can get Ichigo to help them out.  What the men want with Ichigo is to get them free from Hell completely without them worrying about creatures trying to take them back.  From out of nowhere another mystery man that looks like Kakashi (from Naruto) joins the battle and they manage to get one of Ichigo's sisters back.  The masked men flee the battle and travel back into Hell with the other sister and it leaves Ichigo feeling very agitated and begins to question the warrior that helped him.  The warrior is named Kokuto and he explains that he followed the masked guys out of hell simply because he doesn't like them with no intentions of helping anybody.  Ichigo tries to convince Kokuto to take them to Hell so they can rescue his sister.  Kokuto accepts to help him out because he has a sister of his own and knows the pain of having a sibling in trouble and thus begins Ichigo's rescue mission to save his sister in Hell.

Remember me saying how "Fade To Black" sounded like a plot to a Bruce Willis action film? Well the plot to this one sounds a lot like it could be a sequel to a Bruce Willis action film.  With that in mind, yes the story is a bit corny (what shonen isn't) but I must give it credit for the way it is shot as for a good 60% is in one clean shot ( I don't know if "shot" is the right way to describe that term in animated features).  This makes it feel like that I'm joining in on the journey to Hell with them.  This film also focuses on telling the story with action scenes more so than talking scenes.  I liked how they did that personally but it's easily a hit or miss thing so if you don't enjoy that element of the film you will most likely dislike this movie as a whole.  Characters in this film are good but just misses the mark of being great as they could of been fleshed out a bit more.  A problem I have with Hell Verse is that there are scenes in the opening titles that are very pointless and out of place. It's also a bit silly how the bad guys choose to try to kill Ichigo in order to ask for help when they could of simply just asked.  People who have not scene the television series or read the manga can enjoy this one but some things may confuse them as it references stuff that you are expected to know from the television series but not so much that you can't follow the main story of the film.

Artwork is pretty good and it gives off a perfect atmosphere for its hellish backgrounds with a very dark, creepy, and disturbing aura.  Character designs are pretty good but the ones that stand out the most are the grim reaper gorilla looking things that keep Hell in check, Kokuto and Ichigo's other forms. Animation is pretty good but nothing stands out as anything special.  English dub is pretty good but there are some lines that are really bad and not in the good kind that you can laugh at either.  Soundtrack is decent but throughout most of the film you won't hear any music and I like this as it helps with the films atmosphere.

There is a small selection of special features including the Japanese cinema trailer and two art galleries with one showing off production artwork and the other showing promotional artwork.  Overall this film is pretty decent but nothing you'll be watching over and over again but is worth a watch nonetheless.  Decent viewing that makes an excellent rental.


Title: Bleach the Movie #4 - Hell Verse
Animation Studio: Studio Pierrot
Genre: Animation/Anime, Horror/Supernatural, Action
Running Time: 94 minutes
Distributor: Madman Entertainment (www.madman.com.au)
Rating: M15+ (Supernatural violence)
Price: $29.95
Recommended: Yes (Really good rental)

So that's it for Bleach Week 2013.  I had a really fun time working on all these articles and especially the one for Burger quest as that meatball sandwich was enough to make me climax (too much info but I don't care).  Before I close off this article as a whole I want to blabber on a bit more (hence why this is on the bottom of the page) about the order of films going from least to favorite in a quick top four list and I also want to go over my original plans for how the original Bleach Week was going to be like.

First we have the top four Bleach movies list.  The reasons I'm doing this are pretty simple, A. To fill in page space, B. To tell you which Bleach film was the best incase for some reason you only want to watch the best one (or it could be for other reasons I guess).  This list is going to be very plain with no comments after as you should know by now on how I feel about the movies (you have read the reviews after-all and yes I do sound like a wanker when I put it that way).

Kaiser's Top 4 Bleach Movies
1. Memories of Nobody
2. Fade To Black
3. Hells Verse
4. The Diamond Dust Rebellion


Now believe it or not Bleach Week wasn't originally meant to be a series of reviews about the films.  This was originally meant to happen back last year and was suppose to be about me doing a lets play series on seven Bleach games with one being posted a day for that whole week.  The reason why I didn't do this was for the simple reason of me not having enough money to support this idea and was canned pretty quickly.  As soon as I heard that I was getting the Bleach films for review the thought of Bleach Week came back to my head but this time I had the materials to give it life.  Now if you are still reading at this point of the article I give you my sincerest apologies... I mean thanks for reading me blabbing about stuff that quite frankly won't interest many people.  Now will Bleach Week make a return next year?  I don't know but if it does I hope it will end up something like how Bleach Week 2012 was supposed to be.  What I can say though is that there will be more themed weeks like this coming in the near future and I'm working hard on those as we speak (plus a ton more reviews that will appear soon).  So I hear by officially close off Bleach Week for 2013 and I hope you all have a safe one.

Cheers,
James Kaiser