Bleach is back!

I'm pretty sure that's Ichigo when his hollow is running rampant while he's conquering it.

Edit: Let me first state I'm really not trying to piss anyone off, though I think my annoyance came through a bit more than I wanted. Please take my tone with a grain of salt, it's been a crap day, and I have to go pick someone up so I don't have time for a more extensive edit to take that tone out.

Actually, I'm starting to think that DBZ is the new Hitler: anything you can possibly relate to it is automatically completely horrible. Honestly, I hate DBZ, and even I don't think it was that bad, just unremarkable. There was nothing it excelled at, and it tried to do a bit of everything. Bleach actually seems to have a very definite point and sticks to a few things. Do the characters get better at fighting the more they do it or practice? Yes, if you have a problem with that, here's a homework project for you, go study a martial art diligently for 6 months and try to suck as much on your last day as your first. The more you do something, the better you'll be at it. Same goes for the increasing of spiritual "pressure" going by the world Bleach has set up. In fact, there's a number of spiritual traditions you can look into that have elements in common with Bleach, all of which also preach that the more you exercise your spiritual capabilities, the more they'll grow. Don't get me wrong, Bleach could be a bit better in places, but there's no need to crap on it because DBZ almost got two things right.

Though I would say the story so far more closely resembles the greater arcana story than what I've endured of the dbz story.

As for the image, I'm positive it's just the hollow form of Ichigo towards the end of his time in the vizard training ground when he was fighting his "inner hollow"/Po/lower soul/Shadow/insert your traditions name here to gain control of the transformations.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to misunderstand your point. Now that I do understand, isn't that really the drive in any ongoing story? Granted, there's usually a wider variety of opponents (man vs. man (Izen faces off against Momo after she finds out about his replacement lolis, fight!), man vs. nature (Ichigo must find a way to stop a drought that's affecting Karakura town, figh..er, um figure it out and stop it), man vs the divine (Someone who's comparatively a god decides that even they cannot resist Rukia. Ichigo and the others persue, one by one falling behind to hold off the minions of the goodlike dude/dudette until Ichigo and Oriheme finally catch up. After an impossible battle, Ichigo is defeated, but Oriheme informs the entity that they have two choices: let everyone go home fully healed, including Rukia, or she would reverse their personal time until they were a simple child again. They check to be sure her resolve is sound and let her attempt go on for quite a while, but then Rukia appears and asks Oriheme to stop, explaining that they only wanted to show Oriheme that she had the power to stand with the others and to have faith in herself. The entity explains that she reminds him of a daughter they once had and wanted to help for the memory of her [*any* Oriheme episode will be pretty emotion/connection centric]), man vs the opposite of divine (Rangiku kills a hollow, but the gates to hell open...and stay open as something crawls it's way out. No one has the power to do anything more than annoy it, but perhaps there's a ritual in the soul society archives or Hat 'n Clogs has some hidden bit of lore), man vs time (Oriheme's been poisoned! it's a race against the clock to get the antidote and get it back to her), man vs society (The new central 46 decide to execute Ichigo for his invasion of the soul society, one annoying trial follows ending in Ichigo and Bakuya compairing the size of their bankai's), and the list goes on. I present these mini stories as illustrations (and humor in some cases) of how all these stories are different, but if you simplify them they're actually all the same: a challenge presents itself, someone increases their ability in some way (knowledge, strength, spiritual pressure, it's all just increasing an ability), and the challenge is resolved. That's kind of the problem with episodic storytelling, it has to contain a complete story or people feel like nothing gets resolved. At least that's my take on it.

Ichigo dies