Title: Weapons
Author: Random One-Shot
Rating: T
Genre: Drama
Status: Complete
Words: 3.072
Summary: The Shinigami have duty. The Arrancar have Aizen. The Hollows have hunger. The Vaizard have revenge. But what does it take for a bunch of human children to fight?
Link: FF.net

I've no idea whether this kind of story appeals to anyone else but I used to be a big fan of little stories like this, making comparisons between the characters and weapons, elements and other concepts.

Here's a one-shot describing what drives the Bleach's human protagonists to fight a spiritual war instead of studying for school like any other teenagers, set during what looks like an extended version of the Arrancar Saga. It even includes an interpretation of Tatsuki, Keigo and Mizuiro who were completely wasted in the original series despite being foreshadowed as part of the main group.

It's almost like a 'What if?' of what the human characters could have been with the right kind of story and development.

It's nothing groundbreaking but if you're familiar with Bleach and got ten minutes or so spare, I'd say it makes a nice little read.

4/5

 

The concept is neat, in its own way, but this is fairly poorly executed. As is inevitable with this type of thing, it's all tell and no show, so there's no emotion behind this. There are a few decent bits of description in here; I liked the metaphor for Uryuu as "the arrow that knows the way to the end" but ultimately that's not enough to carry it.

Passive writing which is pure exposition and no plot make this a rather empty read. Perhaps I'm being harsh, but I feel this isn't enough to stand on its own.

2/5

 

I usually like these types of stories but this one didn't grab me much. Uryuu's and Orihime's parts were pretty neat -the latter was the best, imo - but the others just didn't work for me.

Still, worth giving a shot.

3/5