© 久保帯人/集英社・テレビ東京・dentsu・ぴえ
While the Thousand-Year Blood War adaptation has done a lot to overcome fatigue at this stage of the story, I still find it to be quite exhausting after a rather formulaic month of fighting. While some are legitimately entertaining, it’s rare that you get to see a returning character defeat a new villain with a whole new set of powers before it starts to feel predictable. Okay. So I’m happy that instead of introducing another head-to-head confrontation, this episode begins with Ichigo’s return. Isn’t it cheesy to see the entire cast look up at the sky while the savior’s protagonist literally descends from above, complete with his explosively silly theme song? Absolute. However, after weeks of waiting for our lead to finally return from practice, it was a pleasure to see him push through the ceiling and promise to shake this arc off the beaten track. self dig.
It was indeed Ichigo’s. the return also signifies a significant reduction in tension, as evidenced by the fact that he is unfazed as the Sternritter quartet—all the rest of the women, for some reason—try all at once to bring it down. knock him down. To that point, I’ll credit the anime for greatly expanding this battle and even have fun with it by having Giselle, Liltotto, and Meninas transform into Fake Magical Girls. It’s not enough to make the fight even a bit competitive, as Ichigo doesn’t sell every attack without a scratch. However, if we’re going to have a Squash Match between our hero and the entire Quincy Divas Team, I’d like to at least have some fun with it. Now someone at Pierrot has to green light a full anime about the magical girl starring Nao Tōyama, Reina Ueda, and Aoi Yūki. You owe it to the world.
Outside of that highlight, though, it’s mostly a perfunctory fight to determine how strong Ichigo is currently, and then send him in the direction of the big bad. We know that no rank Quincy will pose any threat to our lead, even if eight of them are attacking him, and that means when this episode isn’t fun it’s merely going through motion. If the enemy didn’t rush to Ichigo immediately, it would make them seem stupid, but the law of storytelling requires him to break the whole sequence and leave the food for his friends to clean up.
Then, of course, there was the big surprise that Ywach had been waiting for Ichigo to arrive the whole time! Turns out our hero parachuting from the Soul King’s palace meant he left a hole in their security fence, and King Quincy was just waiting for that to happen so he could sneak in. God’s backyard and start Tping his house. If that sounds akin to Aizen luring Ichigo and the Soul Reaper captains to Hueco Mundo, it’s because it is, and it’s another disappointing repeat from a rapidly losing villain. take away his sense of uniqueness or identity as he gets stronger and stronger. One quirk that I appreciate is the heavy implication that this is also Zero Squad’s plan and that they themselves are planning something related to inviting Ywach into their territory. That at least adds some intrigue to this repetitive plot device.
The big disappointment, however, was when Ichigo finally made it to Ywach and discovered Uryu had joined the Sternritter. This is perhaps a pivotal moment for the part, where Ichigo is forced to consider his friend becoming an enemy—and may even feel conflicted about fighting unilaterally for the Soul Society. After all, Ichigo now knows about his family ties to Quincy, the past between his parents and Uryu, as well as the thousands of years of conflict between these two factions. He’s supposed to have some feelings about all of this, and going up against Uryu was probably the biggest emotional climax of the season so far, but it’s mostly just an afterthought. We even broadcast Chad and Orihime (who introduced the first split, of course) at the last second, as if the saga just recently remembered that they were part of the story too and rushed to throw They come in for duty. There’s not even a sense of betrayal, as all Uryu does is shoot a few arrows at Ichigo before jumping up the Escalator of God.
It’s a weird ending, as opposed to an episode, that feels more like homework than entertainment. The central fight is somewhat engaging but otherwise rigidly animated and low-priority. The biggest plot twist is pieced together from past twists with only the clearest hint of a deeper meaning. Worst of all, the motivation of the most central character gets a weak reward before being rushed to the rear. Overall, it looks like the worst trend and biggest weakness of this section are piling up at the same time.
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Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War Season 2 is currently streaming on Hulu.