Bleach’s newest ending made me remember one of the reasons I love the art so much: it’s so stylish. Although I’m sure that the animators at Toei (or in Korea. Or wherever it’s made) are good at coming up with fashionable designs, but Kubo himself holds a lot of credit for the clothing. Despite his, uhm, sub-par storytelling, I’ll be damned if the man can’t come up with the most suitable and overall cool clothes for his characters.
The same thing shows up in Tower of Druaga as well. Although the opening fits the first (parody) episode of the series well, considering what happens in the rest of the series, it doesn’t go with it at all. But it’s definitely meta I can get behind.
I’m not sure what’s so appealing about taking characters who are normally in some fantasy or ancient setting and placing them in the modern era. It may be that they’re shown doing in today’s time is so far removed from what they’re normally doing that it comes off as both funny and slightly heart-warming. This is especially the case for Bleach: since literally everyone is in the midst of battle at the moment, seeing them relax, work or just live in modern day situations is pretty amusing.
There’s also the fact that Barragan is a P.I.M.P. This is fine too.
Grand Punk Railroad 
No matter what quaims I have against Kubo Tite (and there are a lot) I have to admit quite rightly that that man definitely has style when it comes to clothing. It’s very noticable in the manga, and it bleeds to the anime as well I’ve seen.
I haven’t been able to tolerate keeping with the anime but from this ED, I see that style is keeping strong.
I love it when the characters are in modern clothing, which gives us such a nice change of pace from the usual. Especially noticable in Bleach since everyone is in either the bad guys’ or the good guys’ set uniforms.
To be honest, the previous filler arc is the only thing worth watching. The anime isn’t too great and the only reason I keep watching it is because… well, maybe I’m just masochistic. You should definitely follow the openings and endings of the series at least, they’re always interesting to watch.
As far as I know, Yammy is never in the OP/ED. He’s big and fat and doesn’t really conform to the grimjow/byakuga/ichigo/ulquifoajerifjlsdjk style of emasculated-masculine beauty represented in those weird meta-pictures of the characters. It’s like….really different than contemporary western male beauty, which is all pierce brosnan, clark kent, ted kennedy my shoulders are 50 miles wide stuff, and probably also includes army-type shaved-head buck types. Seems like that’s generally left out in Japanese and Korean (dunno about Chinese) male models and in anime.
It reminds of this “Japan Then” and “Japan Now” picture I saw. The past Japan’s ideal was GAR bearded samurais, and the current Japan’s ideal is beautiful manchildren
I really wish Kubo would work fashion into the actual series, instead of just chapter front page images. Of course this would make production all the harder and probably isn’t a realistic expectation, but wouldn’t it be grand…
I’d also really like to see the shinigami uniforms modernized and stylized and individualized for each character. That might turn out pretty cool too.
I kind of like how the shinigami uniforms generally look the same. Reminds me that the Gotei 13 is supposed to be one unit working towards a common goal. Though with how the manga is now all that’s out the window.
There is definately no denying that Kubo has an eye for style, and I really love the guy’s artwork……such a pity about the quality of the writing though.
Its always fun to see characters in an alternate modern setting – suppose thats one reason why AU fanfiction/doujin’s seem to be so popular.
I’ve yeat to read a good fanfiction, unfortunately. If you see any good ones of Bleach let me know!