Hogan Reviews

The adaptation of Bleach’s final story arc fully reaches the point in the manga where Tite Kubo clearly began to rush and the story suffered greatly as a result, a few long-awaited Bankai being the only real highlight, but is the anime any different? Well, yes! Kubo has had a direct hand in the creation of this “cour”, more so than the others, showing how he clearly knows how weak the original is and has sought to improve it, and improve it he has! Plus one of the long-awaited Bankai was still adapted (the other will land in Cour 4) and adapted really well, so bonus point all around! Let’s take a look…

As you may have noticed there’s actually 14 episodes this season rather than 13, but that’s because episode 1 of “Part 3” is half recap and half the end of the previous episode that had to be cut due to budget and timing reasons, so really Part 2 was 12 and a half episodes and this Part is 13 and a half. Yhwach regains his powers as he falls from the deadly blow seen at the end of the previous episode and luckily for him his “Almighty” power not only allows him to negate his foe Ichibe’s powers, even an attack that took him to an alternate realm and stole “years’ worth of time and power from Soul Society’s future”, and gave him enough strength that he easily blows his enemy to pieces. At the same time Uryu reverses the Bankai power of Senjumaru and kills her, meaning Squad Zero is now wiped out and Yhwach and his Schutzstaffel arrive at the Soul King, who is a limbless man with black eyes encased in a large crystal, in case you’re not aware. Also at this time Ichigo, Orihime, Chad, Ganju and Yoruichi arrive and after bringing an admittedly-now-temporarily-powerless Ichibe back to life via the power of names he controls they head to the Soul King and soon Ichigo battles the King of Quincies and while he is initially successful in over-powering him as soon as Yhwach activates Almighty he easily wins and then uses Ichigo’s Quincy blood to control his actions and gets him to stab the Soul King, followed by Yhwach slicing him in half.  Soul Society, the real world and Hueco Mundo begin to crumble but Ukitake arrives on the scene in Soul Society and reveals that the Soul King’s Right Arm, known as Mimihagi, is part of his body due to a ritual his parents used when he was a sickly child and he sacrifices himself to let Mimihagi out and stop the world merger, something even Yhwach couldn’t foresee.

“Okay… that’s a lot of projectiles, but it’s still not as many as Byakuya sent at me the first time I used Bankai…” “That may be true, but mine are… pointier!”

Everything soon breaks down and Ichigo squares off with Uryu in a far more deadly encounter than in the Manga and includes the first-time reveal of Uryu’s Vollstandig, and after a short contest Uryu blasts a hole through Ichigo and lets him fall to the ground below while Yhwach absorbs the Soul King himself and sprouts several more eyes across his face. Back in Soul Society Shunsui frees Aizen from the Muken prison, though keeps him confined to a special chair, and as everyone is having a meeting Yhwach’s new power causes a rain of black creatures to fall down, though they’re soon repelled by Aizen’s power alone (but the chair remains intact, much to Aizen’s amusement) Pretty much every character remaining of note, including the remaining regular Quincy who feel betrayed by Yhwach leaving them for dead, the remaining Visored who were left back in Karakura Town, and several Shinigami who were near death a short while ago, gather together and manage to head off to the Royal Realm to join the fight against the Quincy, apart from Aizen, who they only really needed for his pure “reiatsu” energy. At the same time Ichigo is healed by Orihime and the original invaders decide to give it another go, Ichigo finally learning not to give in to despair like he often did before (though given his opponent can see all possible futures and make sure he exists in the most favourable one, this would be a valid time to do so…) and together with a newly arriving Grimmjow and Neliel (who is permanently now in her adult form thanks to a special bracelet created by Urahara) they all head to the top of the Soul King palace thanks to Fullbringers Riruka and Yukio, who use their unique powers to skip up to the top, so that’s every faction introduced across the whole series appearing in just one or two episodes!

Aizen patiently waits for his chance to shine…

Both sets of fighters arrive in a newly converted Palace at either ends and begin making their way to the centre, with Mayuri, Kenpachi and their related underlings heading in one direction and the rest of the Shinigami heading in another, and sadly for the latter, they start getting picked off one by one by Lille, one of the top Quincy who has essentially a large sniper rifle. Ichigo and his crew are slowed down by another top Quincy in Askin though he is soon chased off by Grimmjow, while Mayuri and co meet a third Schutzstaffel called Pernida. Kenpachi is soon easily defeated by the mysterious entity’s ability to insert its own nerves into the ground and then invade people’s bodies and twist their limbs off, which he proceeds to do to the Squad 11 Captain forcing him to chop his own arm off to avoid the spread… before rushing off and trying it again, leading to Mayuri saving Kenpachi by paralyzing his body. Mayuri then fights his new foe the only way he can: by out-bollocks-science-ing him, including nerve burning agents and his Bankai “giving birth” to a new version of itself with nerves on the outside of its body to stop possession. As this is going on we find out Pernida is actually the Soul King’s Left Arm and I mean that literally as he soon becomes a towering arm and hand with an eye in the middle of the palm, so… it’s an odd fight, one that ends on a bit of a cliffhanger as Mayuri’s Bankai explodes from within after eating the giant hand… Man Mayuri’s fights are always weird to type about!

A giant hand takes out its energy bow and takes aim… not the weirdest thing Mayuri’s seen, but it must be close!

Meanwhile Shunsui uses his zanpakuto’s child games-related powers to find Lille’s sniper’s nest and attack, and to the head captain’s surprise the Quincy gets a few shots on him when he transforms into an “angelic” form and reveals his power is to pierce anything between where he sets his sights on and himself, with no exceptions, plus he can inverse that power so nothing can penetrate his body. With no other choice and bleeding out Shunsui finally activates his Bankai and puts Lille through a four act play that seemingly decapitates and finishes him off, but much like Mayuri, there is a second phase to this battle that I’ll get to in the spoilers. The only other thing to make note of is a brand new anime-exclusive fight between Renji and Uryu that gives us a much better idea of Renji’s new Bankai and some of its abilities before he’s defeated, and a scene showing us that Askin managed to incapacitate Ichigo himself thanks to his power to increase the lethal dose of anything that touches his power, but Yoruichi soon arrives to help…

Overall Thoughts:

Shunsui Kyoraku’s Bankai, something I thought about for many, many years finally animated…

This has been a lot to type! I forget that given the show has no time-wasting filler and instead just straight up adapts the manga with new actually important scenes added in that this comparatively small number of episodes is actually jam-packed. As I mentioned this part of the manga was where the story dropped off a cliff and never really recovered, but this part of the anime however was full of excellent animation, fluid fight scenes and the usual mix of great voice work and amazing OST, so even though its mostly fighting with a bit of backstory thrown in (and one or two arse-pull twists to beat enemies that Kubo made too unbeatable) it was still the highlight of my week each week it was on. Let’s hope the fourth and final part sticks the landing, given it has about half the amount of chapters to adapt yet the same episode count, I’m expecting big changes… which is good given how flat the final battle is in the manga…

Mayuri is saved by his lieutenant Nemu, who then over-charges her artificial body and deals significant damage to Pernida, but the giant hand kills her in retaliation. Mayuri has a mini-crisis where he hallucinates Szayelaporro Granz taunting him only to remember his own words about a scientist should never be happy with perfection because it would mean there’s nothing new to create and is inspired to make a new Nemu later, rescuing her brain before Pernida can eat her whole body, an act that then kills Pernida thanks to her body having a cancer-like effect if eaten (because of course it does…) Mayuri heads into a healing capsule, revealing to the audience that Toshiro, Matsumoto, Rose and Kensei have all been cured of their zombie-ism at the cost of some future life expectancy and are then released. Back with the Head Captain and he is once again shot by the angelic Lille and things are looking grim until HIS Lieutenant Nanao arrives and we get some backstory on Shunsui’s brother and his wife who was part of the same Ise clan as Nanao and that, coincidentally, the clan was “cursed” thanks to a special sword that can “reflect God’s powers” and that Shunsui had taken the sword to spare her from the curse. Nanao takes the sword and confronts Lille and with some support from Shunsui uses it to reflect Lille’s massive blast back at him, seemingly killing him. Handy!

“Oh right, you said that sword reflects God’s power… Bollocks.” Not actually far from what he said, just less British cuss words.

The last chunk of this part focuses on Yhwach’s second-in-command Haschwalth as he’s first confronted by his old friend Bazz-B and we get a long series of flashbacks to them both as kids and teens, seeing their homes destroyed by Yhwach and swearing revenge, or well Bazz swearing revenge and “Jugo” just happy to be with his new friend after it was heavily implied the uncle he was staying with was … um, not a very nice person. Sadly when Yhwach revealed Jugo was actually his “other half” and was to be his second-in-command Bazz-B gave his friend a vicious look of anger and Jugo clearly saw it as something of a betrayal, so much so that back in the present Haschwalth straight up kills Bazz, and not quickly and painlessly either. We then get a quick few scenes with the other Captains and Lieutenants that weren’t downed by Lille facing off with the final member of the Yhwach’s guard Gerard, who is swiftly killed by Byakuya only to rise up more powerful and larger in size, revealing his extremely stupid over-powered ability of “M: The Miracle” which allows him to gain strength every time people think it would be a miracle for him to survive a situation. It does involve some anime-added scenes of Shinji and his Lt. Momo using teamwork to get a hit in and then all the Visored reuniting and donning their masks to fight him though, so that was nice after the manga did so little with the popular group.

Jugo cuts ties with Bazz-B… but cutting him to bits.

Yourichi’s fight with Askin gets interesting as well as her relative Yushiro is beaten back when Askin reveals part of his power means he’s now immune to his reiatsu thanks to being exposed to so much of it, and Yoruichi is next. Oh and we get that classic scene from the manga where parts of Lille arrive back down in Soul Society and turn into killer birds only for Kira to arrive complete with a massive hole still in his body, revealing he is now a walking corpse weapon of Mayuri’s. That was always a weird reveal, but the sight of the crescent moon inside his, um, hole is always a good one… Back with Jugo as Uryu and then Ichigo arrive and Jugo reveals that when Yhwach sleeps the power of Almighty switches to him and he foresees Uryu’s betrayal. Our favourite Quincy tries to deny it for as long as possible but does finally reveal that he was trying to take out Yhwach from the inside as it was his duty after finding out about it in his grandfather’s journal. Uryu gets ready to fight Jugo as he tells Ichigo that if Haschwalth has Yhwach’s power then that means he’s currently powerless and asleep so Ichigo and co. head off to fight him, but in the final scene of the season we see Yhwach awaken, and all the Quincy that felt betrayed laid out in front of him, their plan for revenge a failure…