Manga – The Other White Meat

I don’t even want to wait to jump into the recaps because both Naruto and Bleach had awesome chapters this week. As you know if you’ve been reading these recaps, the manga themselves, or following them in another manner; the arc with Aizen as supervillain in Bleach is slowly winding to a close.

In Naruto Madara is looking to solidify his power by obtaining the Rinnegan from the recently deceased Nagato. Between Madara and this prize is Nagato’s friend and final living companion trained by yet another late character, Jiraiya, Konan the paper technique user. She is much stronger than Madara anticipates, but I have a feeling that Madara has a few tricks up his sleeve that even Konan isn’t expecting.

No more setup, to the chapter recaps we go!

BLEACH

In chapter 420 of this long running series Ichigo is finally ready to unleash the result of all his training in the middle dimension on Aizen. What is the name of this? Why The Final Getsuga Tenshou. As he changes Aizen looks on and asks the simple question, “What is that form?” He looks pretty stunned so it must be awesome.

Before it is revealed to us, however, we finally get a flashback to Ichigo’s training in trying to obtain this power. Presumably Ichigo has been fighting his hollow half materialized sword form for months at this point. I believe they were going to train for the equivalent of one year in the dimension. In the end Ichigo comes to the realization that he can’t obtain the new power by force. He needs to accept the blade. With this he allows his opponent to pierce him through the chest. He feels no pain, which Zangetsu is happy to tell him makes sense since this is Ichigo’s soul they are battling in. As long as he accepted the stroke he would be fine. He did that.

We find out why when Ichigo explains that the name isn’t “the final” because of its power, but because after using the technique Ichigo will lose all Shinigami powers. Does this mean Bleach is ending? Either way Ichigo’s final form is…one of the more badass things I’ve seen in Bleach. His hair turned long and black, he is covered in tattered dark bandages up to his eyes and covering the right side of his body. His right arm is oozing out a dark reiatsu which also seems to flow in the air around him like ink. No sword is present but he can probably materialize it. I’m not even coming close to displaying how much Ichigo almost looks evil because of the aura around him, but what little of his face that remains shows he is still indeed human.

Aizen is stunned and comes to the realization that by training in the dimension between worlds he may have ascended to a level even he can’t understand. This drives Aizen to a rage but before he can do anything more than yell his frustration Ichigo attacks with an explosion that seems like it could shatter the world occurs. With one word, Mugetsu, Ichigo seems to have victory. I doubt it is over but I have a feeling we are REALLY close.

NARUTO

Chapter 510 in Naruto is almost as exciting as the last chapter in Bleach. This chapter concludes the battle between Konan and Madara. If you recall Konan has Madara completely surrounded by exploding tags when she brought them forth from an ocean. Six hundred billion exploding tags now surround Madara. They can explode for ten consecutive minutes, which happens to be five minutes longer than Madara can stay in his phased form taking no damage. Just as Madara is about to be taken out we see him reach for his as yet always concealed left eye.

Konan thinks that she has won the fight, but then Madara appears behind her. When asked how Madara does a little monologue for the fans to inform us of how he escaped. He reveals that he used the power of Izanagi, the same forbidden technique that Danzou attempted to master and use against Sasuke. Unfortunately this technique causes the eye that uses it to lose sight. Now it makes sense why Madara had a whole wall of harvested Sharingan eyes from the Uchiha clan in his hideout.

He also reveals that this technique technically should only be able to be used by someone possessing both the power of the Uchiha and the Senji. That should be impossible. Madara reveals a little bit more about the founder of the ninja world, the sage of the six paths and how he created the clans and bloodline abilities. Madara also reveals that he is supposed to have died at the hands of his rival Senju Hashirama, wielder of the Senji power many years ago. In fact Madara never fought that battle to win, but to gain access to those powers and combine them.

Konan realizes she is defeated but before she can attack again Madara pins her and uses his techniques to find where she hid Nagato. Konan dies and Madara gets the information he wants. The chapter ends with him leaning over claiming that the Rinnegan was the third of the six paths. This makes Madara the wielder of three of the six paths. Madara is growing stronger…I wonder if Naruto is going to be able to stop him.

See you next week!