The Ballad of Bleach

Who knew that one could find a ballad inside the story of a manga?

Bleach is the tale of a fifteen year old boy who receives Death God (or as in the original Japanese, shinigami) powers from a female Death God named Rukia so that he can protect his family from an evil spirit. She loses all of her powers and has to teach him how to use them. After spending a lot of time together, the two become close friends.
However, her giving her Death God powers to an ordinary human is a crime in her world (the Soul Society), and she is taken back to her home to be executed. She saves him from being killed by her captors and leaves. Ichigo is not about to let the one who gave him the powers to protect his loved ones be sentenced to death.

After thinking on it for a while, I have found that his journey to save the Death God, Rukia, is very similar to a ballad, whether the author knows it or not, which I will explain.

Ichigo is, first of all, a male character whose main identity is as a protector. Upon receiving Death God powers from Rukia, he is able to protect his loved ones from evil spirits. He is strong and brave and he has high morals. He can't stand seeing someone hurt or crying. Yet he doesn't perfectly fit the ballad's traditional hero because he is brash and stubborn. He respects only those who earn his respect, and even then he sometimes refers to them familiarly. There is no doubt, though, that he is definitely the hero of the story who must save the girl.

We see her being arrested and Ichigo is frustrated. He is unhappy that he wasn't able to save her from being taken. (Important for understanding: In manga, dialogue is read from right to left.)

 Later on, he and his friends infiltrate the Soul Society in order to rescue Rukia. The Soul Society, as mentioned before, is another spiritual dimension altogether, therefore fitting the "far far away" classification. His main purpose is to save her.

Along the way to saving her, he goes through a difficult type of training that awakens his darker side, the demonic side of him (the "dragon" of a typical ballad). It is literally another side of him hidden within his mind. He is forced to fight his other side in order to live so that he can forge on to regain power to save Rukia.

 It is also worth noting that his inner side has in fact labeled himself as the horse that lends Ichigo his power, while Ichigo is the king who uses the horse's strength in battle.

 During his journey, he meets many other antagonists who can also fit the "dragon" description, but his inner demon is possibly the most significant, being his own personal dark side that he must defeat (literally).

Ichigo and Rukia are reunited several times, and forced to part upon interference from enemies and unfortunate circumstances. Each time, emphasis is put on their interactions with each other. Manga being a visual medium, it shows the significance and importance of the two finding each other and reuniting once more. It makes it seem that much more important for the hero to save the damsel.

Sadly, he doesn't manage to rescue her that time and must fall back to train once more.

Finally the time comes for Rukia to be executed. This is the moment that time seems to stop as it looks like all of Ichigo's efforts are wasted and the damsel is sacrificed without being saved. She mentally thanks her friends and Ichigo for being there for her as she is nearly killed.

But wait!

What's this?!

It is the cheesy heroic cliché as Ichigo gets there just in time to save her. He blocks the large, fiery guillotine (remembering this is a supernatural fantasy series, the guillotine is the shape of a large bird that is on fire). Overused and unmistakable, the hero arrives at the last moment and his image is emphasized as he takes her from the scaffold she was nearly killed upon.

Note how the author took care in drawing the hero much larger in comparison to the girl he's saving. Though the way he holds her isn't necessarily romantic, the scene and imagery says it all. Hardly any background, a picture that takes up the whole page. It just screams at the reader how majestic this scene is supposed to be.

Many battles ensue, and the real antagonist is revealed. Ichigo is able make peace with the residents of the Soul Society. He finds Rukia to tell her that they are leaving.

Here we find an ironic contradiction to the usual ballad tradition. Instead of the two riding off into the sunset, hero victorious and damsel returning, the damsel is going to stay in the place she needed to be saved from.

Even the hero is surprised! He was so caught up in saving her, he forgets that the Soul Society is where she belongs.

But of course, it's her home. Her friends are not against her anymore and it's where she as a Death God belongs. The two part...

...and are later reunited once more.

So perhaps it's not the best description of a ballad, but it follows the clichéd storyline so well that you can't doubt what the author was going for. Maybe there's another word for it in Japanese, but whatever is used to label it, it is unmistakably a ballad inside of a story. Damsel is taken, hero trains and fights his own personal "dragons", and saves the girl. And even though this time they didn't return home together and end up happily ever after, there is a sense of completeness at the end. It is happy, though not ever after. Yet...