Fade To Black

Promotional posters and the movie guide for the newest Bleach movie, Fade to Black is already out.

This 3rd movie hopefully will do better than its predecessors in being more than just a shounen filler extragavanza.

Anyways, this movie sounds and looks promising, basically it's about Rukia and the rest of Soul Society losing their memories due to some incident.... hence, it's Ichigo to the rescue again! However, what makes this different compared to the other movies is that KT has some input in this movie - the title of the movie, Fade to Black is his idea as well as the Japanese subtitle - Calling Out Your Name.

Fans of Ichiruki all over the world are also eagerly awaiting this movie as there has been not much development in the Hueco Mundo arc where the focus was mainly on Orihime - so, is this a hint of what to come pairings-wise in Bleach as KT apparently has a say in this movie? Will there be anything concrete occuring? Is this a subtle acknowledgement of Ichiruki? Well, maybe FTB will answer some of this burning queries but IMHO, this is and will remain just a filler. Granted, Byakuya saving Rukia against the Bounto Yoshi and in Memories of Nobody are fillers as well and he really did save her again in the canon arc (i.e. against Zommari). However, it must not be forgotten that fillers are merely fillers - i.e. no further progress on Hitsu/Karin despite the soccer episode, Ashido is about to be forgotten, Cloud, Nova and Ririn are memories of yesterday, to illustrate a few examples. Maybe I'm being pessimistic, but I think it's better to go with low expectations and to be pleasantly surprised rather than vice versa (despite being a BIG fan of Ichiruki as well).

Enough with all this meaningless chatter, here are some FTB movie goodies:

Kubo: From the 2nd movie the subtitle was brought up by me. From the time when I first heard that the memory of Rukia will be disappearing inside everyone an image came into my mind that Rukia’s memory of Ichigo and the gotei 13 will be disappearing. From there the meaning of “Disappearing into black” became the subtitle “Fade to black”.

After coming up with the English subtitle "Fade to Black” they asked me to come up with the Japanese subtitle (laughs) So after carefully digesting the scenario I searched for some scenes that can be the key word or words that I can use, and found that in the plot, someone calling out someone’s name, especially in this story where Ichigo calling out Rukia’s name was a strong expression that even though no one else remembers you I do, and I found out it had an important meaning behind it. So that’s how I came up with the subtitle “Calling Out Your name”

- An excerpt from an interview with KT about his role in the upcoming movie.

Go here for another tidbit of a translated interview with Ichigo and Rukia's seiyuus as well as links to Bleach TV for a sort of behind the scenes of the movie (too bad it's not subbed though) - credit to Bleachness.

If you're interested to know what happens in the movie, go here for the translated version of the movie (of course it still doesn't beat watching it but we'll make do with what we have).
- credit to all the people on Ichiruki BA.

Here's the movie preview on the current episode's opening and closing credits.

Another trailer for the movie - the background music is the movie's theme song by Porno Graffiti - supposedly a famous band in Japan.

Here's part of the lyrics:
Tonight where does the moon illuminate
With the thick clouds covering the sky
Tonight who will you be embraced by
You wander in the lost road you escape the wind by the thunder cloud
You even start hating your true self
You even pretend you are a traveler
Alone, you let the rain pour on you
If you are going you rather go to a wasteland
Tonight, I wonder if you can you see the moon
Even, tonight if you can't find the place where the moon illuminates I will make sure I'll find you.

Sounds pretty shippy (I like! :P).

Despite trying not to, I can't help but feel quite excited bout this movie.. Looking forward to next September then (when the subbed version will be out). :)