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Bleach 16, Claymore 5, Darker than Black 5, Jing: King of Bandits OVA, and Law of Ueki complete collection - goodness abounds, my friends.

Rukia is rescued. Ichigo is a substitute Soul Reaper. Uryu is powerless, though the others don’t know it and Kon is still annoying - just how we love him. Everyone is back at school, and everything is back to normal. Or so it seems.

The gang gets down to business as usual - hunting hollows - three very strange people show up, and they want to play. Meet Lirin, a cute, scheming little girl, Kurodo, who looks like a magician, and Noba, the ninja. Each of them have strange powers, and their first move is to abduct Orihime, which is a good was to piss off Ichigo (and Chad. I’m not usually one to go into shipper territory, but Orihime + Chad = Nice. Very, very nice). As the guys try to get their busty buddy back, the three mischief makers always seem one step ahead - even with the addition of Renji (yay!)

As most fans know, this disc begins the run of a long filler arc revolving around the Bounts. Though in disc sixteen the only place a bount can be found are in the opening and closing credits (yay for the closing song “My Pace” by SunSet Swish, which also makes my ipod play list) the three tricksters certainly get Ichigo in the fighting mood.

So what’s the bottom line? This arc isn’t in the manga, and though it does slightly shift the massively cool Hueco Mundo arc in the anime, it isn’t, strictly speaking, cannon. But who are we kidding here? It’s freaking Bleach, which means that it’s automatically the awesomeness.

Darker than Black 5 proclaims that the end may be neigh, but there are still a good few kicks to the gut to go.

The appearance of Heaven’s Gate and Hell’s Gate did more than scramble the stars and bring forth contactors - to some of the more mundane, normal people of the world, it was a springboard for new gate-based religions. Hei’s assignment - to infiltrate one such group, and kill their leader, the Prophet with the help of a syndicate mole. As it turns out, this mole is Shihoko, someone Huang knows, someone from his past. Finally we get to see Huang’s past, and how he became involved with the syndicate, which has been a long time coming. And while that’s happening, a few dots, ready to be connected, begin to appear in the big picture. Evening Primrose, the gate religions, Pandora - it all leads us to the next two episodes, “City Under Crackdown, Moist with Tears…” in which dots begin connecting.

The recent bombings have worsened, and while on assignment with Hei, Mao gets captured - by none other than Amber. At the same time, swishy MI-6 agent, November 11, goes missing. While the gang tries to rescue Mao, the cat finds himself getting an earful of Evening Primrose’s plans - as well as those from the syndicate. Turns out, all the research, all the scheming, it all comes to one very bad purpose, one that makes Amber look a little less evil, November 11 a little less carefree, Huang a little less prejudiced against contractors, and us… well, it leaves us counting the days until the next Darker than Black release (September 11th, boys and girls. That’s a long time away, after this cliffhanger).

Ever wonder what it’s like to drop acid? In Jing: King of Bandits OVA Seventh Heaven, Jing and his loudmouthed avian sidekick, Kir, get tossed into the infamously violent prison, Seventh Heaven. But Jing only has one thing in mind:  treasure. A long time ago, as the boy adventurer tells it, a magician who could capture dreams and imprison them in little orbs was imprisoned in seventh heaven. Now Jing is after the treasure , only he’ll have to go through one trippy maze to get it. Along the way, he’ll meet a dream girl (of course there’s a Jing girl! There’s always a Jing girl!), battle tree monsters (and logic), And pop out of a statue’s head (more than once, actually).

Jing is quick, funny, strange, comical and downright weird. But when has that ever been a bad thing? The OVA is accessible to those not familiar with Jing, though they will spend so much time muttering ‘what the f…?’ that it might be best for those already familiar with our bandit king.

Clare finds herself in an unequalled danger in Claymore chapter five, and the other Claymores find out that number 47 is not someone to be taken lightly as they all go north, to the town of Pieta where an army of awakening beings has gathered around an abyssal one, Isley. Though there are twenty-four Claymores, the danger facing them is enormous, considering that many of the group have never fought an awakening being before.

The first two episodes on the disc are the second and third parts of “The Carnage in the North”, which follows the initial battles in Pieta, where the five captains lead the fledgling Claymores against a small number of ugly awakened beings. “Invasion of Pieta” one and two bring a whole new level of big and nasty to the group, in the form of Rigardo, the Silver-Eyed Lion King. Things look really bad as he comes into the fray, and so many people fall so fast that it’s hard to keep up. Clare, in a last ditch effort to stop him, does something a little desperate and a lot ballsy - and we have to wait for the next disc to see how it turned out.

And where is Raki in all of this, you may ask? Raki, hearing that a coalition of Claymores have headed north is, himself, headed north. He happens upon a young woman, lovely and sweet, who instantly takes a shine to him. She is none other than Priscilla, and traveling with her is Isley - both in their human forms. Raki decides to travel with them for a while, and even begins to learn about Priscilla’s true nature without much judgment until he learns of Clare’s position at Pieta.

Claymore is a beautiful anime. Like the women themselves, the color palate of the show is steeped mostly in silvers and is lovely in an unearthly way, rather like a Corot painting. The downright prettiness of the show is juxtaposed thematically with the violence and artistically with crimson red of blood. The art of Claymore makes it one of my favorites - the fighting and Clare’s character arc don’t hurt, either.

Lastly, The Law of Ueki is a show that, perhaps, I’m not quite fit to review, as I am ridiculously out of the target audience. A show about one hundred middle school students fighting each other so that their sponsors may gain status as God of Heaven. Basically, the show is set up like Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh!, only the main players use their own talents as opposed to cards or little fluffy critters. Though the characters all look as if they were traced off of One Piece and the show isn’t terribly original in concept, I had a hard time following it. Again, though, I am not the target audience: the show seems more kid-friendly than grown-up, pink-haired, anime junkie territory, so I tried to give it a bit of leeway. Sadly, leeway isn’t my strong suit.

Ueki is a middle school kid who gets drafted into the contest by his homeroom teacher, Mr. K. Laid-back and easy-going, his power granted to him by Mr. K is the ability to turn garbage into trees (almost all the powers are this strange, yes).Ueki is befriended by Ai at the beginning of the show (and series long contest) - Ai is a girl in Ueki’s class, who believes that none of the power-users (as the contestants are called) are trust worthy save Ueki himself. Though the power users make informal alliances throughout the series (and formal alliances, towards the end), she remains by his side, and cheers him on, gives him help (in a very bossy form).

Though the show didn’t hold my attention, I can easily see a younger audience getting into it. The complete set is a monster of a DVD collection - thirteen discs in two cases. The biggest problem I had with the series was a logistic one - none of the discs have numbers, the cases don’t say part one or two, and the only way to tell if you’re on the correct disc or not is to check the art on the discs against the insides of the case, where a little guide is listed. It’s a bit annoying.

Good stuff, amazing stuff and random stuff - this month has brought us some fantastic releases, and these are just a small example of the anime goodness to be had.

(Amanda Rush is a fan of all things pink and needs an anime twelve step program. If you know of one, tweet her at BrokenAmanda.)