Hogan Reviews

The anime adaptation of Bleach’s final manga arc (I guess that’s still technically accurate…) continued with 13 more episodes of the Thousand Year Blood War arc, not only adapting the manga faithfully but adding brand new scenes created by Tite Kubo himself to plug some plot holes and make sure to add more shine to the Royal Guard for good measure. The only issue is that this is where the arc in the manga took a dramatic down turn that it never corrected out of, instead just offering up some fun fights here and there, and while the new material helps it a bit, a lot of the narrative mistakes are still present here. Want to know more? Read on!

The story got left on a classic “heroes look defeated but they’re training to improve themselves” note and it doesn’t take long for Yhwach (that Yu-Ha Ba-Ha, don’t forget!), the “turncoat” Uryu and the rest of the Wendenreich to once again appear, this time surrounding the Seretei in a dome and replacing the Soul Society architecture with their own European looking buildings. This was a fun thing in the manga, beats having yet another arc with nothing but Soul Society buildings, but here in the anime the dome creates a plain red sky and the buildings are all the same bluey colour which after a few episodes really makes everything seem samey and dull, at least visually. Anyway, soon the Quincy Sternritter pair off with Gotei 13 Captains and Lieutenants and that’s the majority of this season summed up, with some exceptions I’ll obviously get to (mainly in the spoiler section). One of the main issues carried over from the manga is that a big deal was made out of four Captains getting their Bankai stolen by four of the Sternritter and for a short period Toshiro Hitsugaya and Soifon do struggle against their foes in Cang Du and BG9 for a bit but it doesn’t take long for Urahara to phone through with a solution to the problem and the Bankais immediately switch back over and that’s it for the Sternritter having any kind of advantage over their foes. That whole idea is dropped in favour of classic Bleach “this is my power, let’s see how you get around it with either your established power or a new one” stuff. Cang Du and BG9 are defeated with no extra fanfare or scenes as well, so we still don’t even know what BG9’s K designation stands for, which I thought might have been something added, but never mind…

They added a classic “group of villains around a big table” scene! They’re even in alphabetical order by the letter designation as well!

Three of the showdowns are definitely worth mentioning though, Komomura facing off against Bambietta (Rank E: The Explode, which still makes me laugh…) sees him reveal a human form that he attained by literally ripping his own heart out as an offering to his large dog relative… thing, and with it near immortality which allows him and a new version of his Bankai to take out Bambi with little issue only to transform into a regular four-legged wolf, losing his consciousness as a result. Rukia faces off with the man who stole her brother’s Bankai in As Nodt and boy oh boy this was an episode. I don’t talk about singular episodes on this blog (with one exception) but if I did this one episode would be an easy five. The animation is stunning and As Nodt’s voice actor knocked it out of the park with mumbly creepiness followed by shouting insanity, sent shivers down my spine. Nodt is eventually killed by Rukia’s newly revealed Bankai that she achieved while up in the Royal Realm. She is helped by Byakuya who was similarly healed up there and he compliments his sister on her Bankai, which is a nice moment. Finally Kenpachi faces off with Sternritter V “The Visionary” Gremmy Thoumeaux, who has the power to literally imagine anything and have it come true. He tries to imagine Kenpachi drowning in water, guns and missiles firing at him, puts him in the vacuum of space and throws and giant meteor that would wipe out the whole of Soul Society at him but Kenpachi is just too strong, especially when he finally unveils his Shikai (which is just a gigantic butchers knife, basically. Fitting!) Gremmy is defeated by trying to imagine having the same power as his opponent and then his body not being able to contain it and destroying itself. Why he didn’t just imagine Kenpachi’s heart exploding I don’t know, but hey-ho…

As Nodt gets mildly upset.

On the flipside a lot of the former Visoreds who returned to being Captains are treated like fodder, which still hurts. Shinji got a new scene showing his Bankai (though I was already familiar thanks to the “Can’t Fear Your Own World” novels) but soon loses to Bambietta before Komomura arrives, while Rose and Kensei arrive when several of the Lieutenants get beaten by a gag wrestler character called Mask De Masculine, who gets stronger the more his “manager” James cheers him on. It’s a funny idea but seeing Kensei get battered with little effort and to finally see Rose’s Bankai and it look so great only for him to be defeated by Mask popping his own eardrums is still so disappointing. I loved the Visored, especially Rose (I always thought he “looked cool”, for a lack of a better term) so this was depressing in the manga and no less depressing here given its handled so faithfully… If you’re wondering Mask is destroyed by Renji, who thanks to his time in the Royal Realm has mastered his Bankai’s true name and is now all powerful. Also it turns out James was the Sternritter and Mask was his creation, which is funny at least. There’s also a couple of episodes that sees Sternritter Z “The Zombie” Giselle Gewelle turn a bunch of Shinigami into zombies (including Hitsugaya, Kensei and Rose) but is countered by everyone’s favourite “somehow still on the good guy side” scientist Mayuri, who reveals he has his own zombie army made up of Arrancar from two arcs ago, which turns out was the identity of the “interesting” thing he saw in Grantz lab during that arc (that is what everyone assumed but the more time went on the more people thought it might be something more interesting… turns out it wasn’t. Oh well!) The zombies eventually cancel each other out and generally it’s not very fun.

Kenpachi’s shikai, as teased way back in the middle of the Soul Society arc. Blimey… Took you long enough!

That just leaves us with our lead character, Ichigo. He gets a brand new training sequence where he shows signs of Yhwach’s Almighty Eyes (spoiler, I guess?) and then later he arrives on the scene and takes out a few Sternritter with little issue. He then confronts Uryu who confirms he’s with Yhwach now and the two of them, along with Haschwalth his second in command, all head up to the Royal Realm together. Ichigo is angry but it doesn’t take long before he calms down with the help of the newly arrived Orihime and Chad. Together with Yoruichi and Ganju of all people (just for the Soul Society arc nostalgia, I guess) they head off to the Royal Realm together in a canon ball, again, just like the iconic second arc. Not much else to say, there are some Sternritter scenes where they all argue a bit when Uryu is named Yhwach’s successor instead of Haschwalth, particularly Bazz-B (that’ll make sense later in the arc) and some fun bratty arguments between the “Femritters”, or a group of four female Sternritters, plus some weird scenes with Sternritter L PePe Waccabrada that are… yeah. Weird. I also got a good chuckle out of a scene with Bazz-B and Renji insulting / praising each other, glad that scene was kept.

That’s it for the majority. The main additions to the canon come in the Royal Realm, so you’ll have to look in the spoilers for that. I will say that despite being very red and blue the actual animation is still extremely high quality, as is the faithfulness of the adaptation (I can’t believe the whole Kenpachi v Gremmy fight only lasted one episode and only a couple of brief reactions to the meteor from Sternritter were cut out, it felt like it lasted ages via weekly chapters…) and of course the voice work and OST are also still top-class. It’s just a shame that while better than the manga the actual source material is weaker here…

Overall Thoughts:

Renji stops Ichigo from taking out ALL of the Sternritters by himself. Got to keep some around for later material!

Bleach’s Thousand Year Blood-War arc’s second season continues the strong animation, voice work and soundtrack but due to the manga material being weaker this faithful adaptation is also weaker, even though some added scenes from Tite Kubo do at least plug some holes and show off some fun new things. Still good fun to watch but now purely due to it being good eye candy rather than some interesting plot-threads, as shallow as they were in the first place…

So Yhwach and his two main underlings arrive in the Royal Realm and are greeted by the Zero Division Captains and are immediately caught in a special cage. Yhwach summons his four top soldiers known as the Schutzstaffel (can’t remember if they’re referred to as that in the anime yet, but that’s what they’re called!) and while Yhwach heads out of the cage to fight the main Squad Zero Captain and rest are taken out quite easily by the Captains after showing some initial skill. We see in the flashback that the reason Yhwach didn’t have his all-seeing Almighty Eyes 1,000 years ago is because Ichibe, the aforementioned head of the Zero Squad who has the power to take away the names of things and therefore their power, well, took the name away from it and thus stole its power. It’s a new anime-exclusive scene that does at least explain how Yamamoto defeated him when he was supposedly at full power and younger. Ichibe slaps Yhwach around a bit so he activates his special Auswahlen move to take the power back from most of his underlings back down in Soul Society and give them back to himself and revive his fallen fighters back in the cage. Interesting to note that while characters like Bazz-B and the female Sternritters survive like they do in the manga the underused Robert Accutrone isn’t seen dying here like he does in the source material, which gives me hope he might have a different role to play in the next season. Kubo did say he wanted to add more scenes for Ukitake, and having him defeat the man who took his best friend’s eye would be a good one…

“Wait, this didn’t happen in the manga?!”

Anyway, this is where things take a major change from the manga as in that the Schutzstaffel make short work of the Squad Zero Captains and that’s that, but here the Captains get together, reveal that their true powers are so large that the four of them seal part of themselves within each other and so three of them kill themselves to allow Senjumaru Shutara, the seamstress who did the least of the four in the manga, to activate her Bankai. This was such a great scene not just because it was a Bankai I had no idea about nor did I see it coming but the actual sequence, where she “weaves” the fates of all four Schutzstaffel as well as Hashwalth and Uryu, is quite the visual spectacle. At the same time Yhwach is seemingly defeated by Ichibe who reveals his crazy broken name powers after he writes that Yhwach has the same power as an ant in his Bankai’s white ink (or “True Sword” as he achieved it before the word Bankai was invented…) which makes it true, and them smacks him back down towards Soul Society. This is how the season ends, with all our key villains in peril, so that’s an odd role reversal! Also by undoing the mistake of having Squad Zero look weak they’ve now made the Schutzstaffel look weaker by having them lose twice in a row… Swings and roundabouts, I guess. Given I know Haschwalth and Uryu’s powers I can see how the tables might turn in the next season’s opening episode…