Bleach – Volume 74 Review
Bleach Volume 74 sees the end of the “1,000 Year Blood War Arc”, with the villain side coming down to the Quincy Wandenreich army of all-powerful Yhwach, his direct subordinate Jugram Haschwalth and Sternritter Schutzstaffel M “The Miracle” Gerard Valkyrie, although the latter actually doesn’t make a real appearance in this volume. Instead the fights can be broken down to Uryu Ishida vs. Haschwalth and Ichigo (and allies) vs. Yhwach.
Uryu’s fight ends up being similar to the usual Captain Mayuri affair of two characters with absurd abilities out absurd-ing each other. You see each of the Sternritter Schutzstaffel have had special abilities relating to their letter designation called a “Schrift” and both Uryu and Haschwalth’s Schrifts are so over-powered that you know the series is ending, as Uryu especially would never lose a fight again…
We then get to the big showdown, Ichigo faces off with Yhwach, who now has essentially the power of God infused with him, and the ability called “The Almighty”, which allows him to see all possible futures and pretty much edit them how he sees fit… so as you can imagine, he’s not an easy opponent. Ichigo shows us a new form comprised of all his different powers (being half-Shinigami, half-Quincy, born a Human and fused with a Hollow, he is literally all the different races in Bleach in one) and the fight is on…
WARNING – SPOILERS FOR HOW THE SERIES’ END FOLLOWS
Sadly the final fight is not very good. Yhwach at one point absorbs the power of Haschwalth and Valkyrie, not only winning Uryu’s fight for him, but off-panel killing another character, one last time for good measure. Ichigo falls into despair as he realises fighting someone who can choose how the future is going to turn out might be unbeatable (can’t blame him!) and eventually, and I mean eventually, the fight suddenly ends thanks to Aizen, who was freed by a blast from Yhwach, using his classic hypnotism, and Uryu firing a special arrow that stopped Yhwach’s powers temporarily, long enough for Ichigo to get the killing blow. It literally comes to an end in one chapter after several “how can he win?” chapters; there was no real fight in the end…
The last chapters are your cliché time skip ending, with Rukia getting promoted to Captain and being in a romantic relationship with Renji that includes having a child (that came out of nowhere!) and Ichigo and Orihime also having a child in the real world. The gang gets back together, except Uryu, who is now a doctor like his father, and Chad, who is now a famous boxer… which is odd as his Grandfather taught him to only use his fists to protect, not to hurt or to gain… I guess as he got older he realised he could make some serious money with his special powers, so screw it…? Good for him. The last panels are of Rukia and Renji’s daughter Ichika, already a Shinigami, meeting with Ichigo and Orihime’s son Kazui, who seemingly absorbs the last remnants of Yhwach’s power and reveals that he is a Shinigami as well…
As an overall ending, it could have been worse. It wasn’t very original, but it will do. The chapters before it? Not so good. As an ending to an arc that started in Volume 55 it was severely lacking in drama and pacing, it felt completely rushed, just like the last few volumes, to be fair. There is no doubt in my mind that Tite Kubo had to rush the ending, whether that’s because of the Jump! editors or his own lack of drive I can’t tell you, but there is no way those final chapters were how Kubo envisioned the “1,000 Year Blood War Arc” to end…
SPOILERS STOP HERE, YOU CAN NOW READ EVERYTHING UNDERNEATH THIS SENTENCE
Once again the artwork is well drawn, detailed and occasionally gory. Kubo and his team never let that slide, even if they did let the story itself slide more often than not…
Bleach Volume 74 ends the “1,000 Year Blood War Arc” in spectacularly unsatisfying and rushed fashion, but does at least give us a basic, but quite enjoyable epilogue to the series as a whole. If you’ve been collecting all the volumes up to now then there isn’t a need to convince you, if you should pick it up, but otherwise it’s not a very satisfying read if you were thinking of buying this volume on its own… for some reason. A bad ending to an arc and an average end to the series as a whole is a sad way for a once great story to end…
