From the back cover:
Chad has stormed his way into the heart of the Soul Society, only to meet his match in Captain Kyouraku. Meanwhile, Ichigo struggles in his battle against Kenpachi Zaraki, the captain of the 11th company. Although Ichigo succeeds in drawing blood, the secret of Kenpachi’s zanpaku-tou may be his undoing. Before Ichigo realizes it, Kenpachi’s blade has pierced his heart!
Review:
This volume started slowly but really built up to a great ending. Things picked up around chapter 111, when Ichigo seemed to’ve lost his fight against Zaraki. Zangetsu (Ichigo’s sword) put him through a test to determine whether he (Ichigo) was worthy to possess him (Zangetsu). What originally seemed like a lame gimmick to have Ichigo fight his mirror self actually turned out to be pretty cool as he learned to rely more on Zangetsu’s power. Hopefully this means we’ll be seeing more of Zangetsu in human form in the future.
The best bits, however, were from chapter 113 to 115. In these, Ichigo’s exciting battle came to a conclusion, the past of Zaraki and his Assistant Captain Yachiru was glimpsed, we possibly learned the name of a person from Rukia’s past who referenced a few volumes ago, Ganju and Hanatarou found Rukia, there was an awesome revelation about Rukia that I probably should’ve totally seen coming but loved that I didn’t, Yoruichi appeared on the verge of divulging his true form, and then Byakuya arrived on the last page. I didn’t even miss any of the supporting cast, it was that good.
I do remember liking this section of the Soul Society arc, and I do like it when Ichigo fights, because his battles are usually pretty awesome. I also don’t mind when any of the secondary human characters fight, and Ishida gets an awesome fight somewhere in here, but I remember being extremely frustrated with many of the ‘teen volumes of Bleach because the focus shifts to Soul Society characters that I have no connection to, and I just can’t get into their politics and character goings-on since it seems like it affects the characters I do like very little. And I also felt totally dissed by the beginning of the new story arc in volume 21, which didn’t help things much.
I’m interested in the Soul Society stuff so far because of Aizen’s death, but it is true that we haven’t seen Uryuu or Orihime in a couple of volumes now.