Bleach: Can't Fear Your Own World 1 Read:

Ryogo Narita is the famous author of Baccano and Durarara (neither of which series he's finished).  But he also moonlights as the author of Bleach, and his sequel novels to the manga are extremely important considering how half-assed the ending to the manga was.  Perhaps Tito Kube's poor health can excuse the sudden ending to the series, but there were far too many unresolved questions that, thankfully, the skillful author of Baccano decided to tackle.

Now we have a much clearer picture of who exactly survived the 1,000 Year Blood War and how.  The answer is -- virtually everyone survived the war.  It was far less deadly than Tite Kubo would have had us believe.  For instance, the entire Zero Squad survived.  These were all lingering questions and I'm glad to have answers, though I'm not particularly pleased that all those people I thought dead are back again.  What is it with shonen series and their unwillingness to let any characters fall in battle?  Why are battle manga safer than romance manga?

In any case, this book isn't the ending either.  There are two more volumes of this work slated for translation, one coming out in 2021, so we won't know what 'really' ended up happening in Bleach until then.  There are still lots of questions left I'd like answered and I hope Narita is up to the task.  I wish he'd finish Baccano while he was at it, but at least I already know him to have an adept hand for this monumental Bleach concluding task.

There's a new villain in town, but it's hard to take said villain seriously since there's no way he's as strong as Aizen or Ywach.  Thankfully the book doesn't focus much on the new villain but instead talks a lot about the old ones -- Aizen, Tosen, Grimmjow, the Quincy girls, etc.  I'm much more interested in their lives anyway.  I suppose moving forward the focus will be on the new villain more, but that's fine so long as I keep getting fed juicy details about past characters like whether Kira returned to normal or not.

In a couple days volume 15 of Hai to Gensou no Grimgar comes out, which should see the reunification of the party.  August's light novel fun isn't done yet.