ばんかい！

After 8 years and 366 episodes ブリーチ (Bleach) anime series ended. I got the feeling that the decision was made quite quick for some reason. They've just started a new story line and after a couple of episodes they quickly solved the problem and ended the show. But at the end how Ichigo says good bye doesn't exclude anything... He might be back.

This was my favorite anime series, and I guess I'm not alone with this feeling. I have mixed feelings about ending this show. The story was agonizing quite a bit in the last couple of years. The original idea was however great. And they managed to come up with new and new story lines after every 50-100 episodes to keep the it interesting, but some of them was a bit ridiculous and when a  fight lasts through dozens of episodes that's just not good enough.

I figured that the best series usually have 20-50 episodes. The ones below 15 episodes are based usually on a bad idea or the artwork is crappy and they failed. The ones over 100 episodes have usually a great story base and good artwork and everybody got carried away and they just don't know when to stop.

Japanese have quite a colorful imagination and quite a a few taboos... I guess this is why from time to time a great anime/manga series emerges.

Since with one exception of Cowboy Bebop the dubbing of any anime series is just awful! I always watch them in Japanese with English subtitles. Otherwise it just cannot be enjoyed. So I picked up a couple of very 'useful' words and expressions that might come handy one day (implied irony):

たたかい	[tatakai]	battle
大丈夫	[daijōbu]	Are you all right?
馬鹿	[baka]	idiot
手前	[temae]	you (Usually translated as 'Bastard', probably not a nice thing to call the other ^.^)

Probably there's more, but I can't remember right now :)

Now I have to finish up Naruto Shippuden (bout 200 episodes are left) and I can start looking for something new. Probably there's at least a couple of series on my hard drive I still haven't seen...