BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War, Part 3: The Conflict Episode 31 followed up an episode featuring one of the longtime favorites of the series with more of them all at once. Last week’s episode focused on Aizen and his incredible power even after being confined to the Muken for the last two years within the BLEACH world. He served as a useful barometer for Yhwach’s new power; even someone as overpowered as Aizen couldn’t scoff at the pure ridiculous scale that the Quincy king’s power has begun to operate on.
This episode, like last week’s, is somewhat of a transitional one, offering a catchup of everyone’s status and preparing us for what’s certain to be multiple concurrent battles. It did its job, perhaps dragging at points but ultimately succeeding in communicating the information it wanted to.
Spoilers ahead for BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War, Part 3: The Conflict Episode 6 “THE HOLY NEWBORN”
Arrancar and Fullbringer Bargain Sale
The beginning of this episode brought back two of the best arrancar, Nel and Grimmjow, and two of the most memorable Fullbringers, Riruka and Yukio. These re-introductions were cool to see for a number of reasons. For one, like with all of the characters that have been reintroduced these past few seasons, this was a chance to see how people look with the new art style, and all of them look amazing. Second, unlike what ended up happening to a lot of the comedic moments in BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War, funny bits like Nel tackling Ichigo and flustering Orihime made the cut, adding some extra levity to what’s otherwise been a fairly depressing series of events these past couple of episodes.
And lastly, I found a small addition to these scene compared to the manga a nice one; in the manga, the line where Ichigo confirms the two Fullbringers are alive wasn’t there. This scene in the manga was somewhat hazy on that (at least in my experience) and it, plus Ichigo’s genuine smile at knowing they survived, were good to see.
The funny moments continued inside Garganta, but I appreciated how quickly things switched back into a bit more of a serious mode. The episode, like the manga chapters it adapts, manages to communicate a good deal of exposition and explanation without getting too boring, especially with the alternation between various settings to give us an idea of what’s going on with everyone.
Not spending too much time on any one group was wise given that there honestly isn’t too much going on. And one can’t help but chuckle at moments like Ichigo making Riruka blush (he’s really turning into quite the player this episode).
Yhwach, Now With More Eyes Than Ever
The section where everyone arrives to the reworked Royal Palace has always been one that interested me. It’s a bit unclear to me (both now and back when this only existed via the manga) why Yhwach has the ability to perform such complex and precise manipulations of matter like this.
One could say it’s just him using the torrent of power leaking from his body to manipulate things, or that his domination of the reishi in the surrounding atmosphere is just so severe that he can create complex cityscapes, but that part’s always been odd to me. That aside, I did enjoy this section’s music and the return of Yhwach’s triumphant horn theme while his castle was erected.
Generally speaking though, I felt like the second half of the episode dragged a bit. Granted, the same was true of the chapter(s) it covered in the original source material. What it did well was communicate (perhaps a bit too much) that Yhwach has become undeniably powerful and that just about every relevant character in the series is now aware of it.
It also established the sort of environment that the Soul Reaper / Arrancar / Quincy we-hate-Yhwach squad will be dealing with, one in which they can’t manipulate reishi to their liking. It also was successful in the sense that it adapted the manga pages well. I just felt like those dragged a bit too and the entire section could have been a bit briefer.
Overall, like the last episode, this one served as a solid example of a bridge between two more active portions of the plot. I don’t fault it for that; there always need to be episodes like this where BLEACH allows itself to take stock, catch up on different environments, and set the stage for certain battles to come. While I appreciate all of that, I’m looking forward to and hoping for some more action next week.
© TITE KUBO / SHUEISHA, TV TOKYO, dentsu, Pierrot
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