BLEACH: THOUSAND-YEAR BLOOD WAR - THE CALAMITY

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ANIME ActionBLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War - The Conflict

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• 

  Minulf

  100/100
  Hail to the King, Baby. Bleach... Thank you. Thank you so much. [SPOILERS]

  Well, now it's finally happened. This is less a point-by-point review and more like an outburst of words and emotions of a long-time fan. Oh and yes, this contains a lot of spoilers.

  Bleach is over. At least the original continuity. And I have thoughts. Lots and lots of thoughts. You see, Bleach has ALWAYS and I mean ALWAYS been my favourite super power Shounen, even back during the times when it was actually airing on TV concurrently with Naruto and One Piece. I lived through the times when everyone and their mum called Bleach trash, the worst of the Big 3 and some idiots even claimed it should be replaced with stuff like Fairy Tail. But I never really cared for it, or for other Shounen fans calling me a moron for liking this “complicated, pointless story that peaked with its first two arcs and after that became garbo that only people with no taste would appreciate.”

  God I hope they eat their words now after Bleach had a GENERATIONAL return to the forefront of anime. To wit, most anime ranking sites have at least one of the TYBW-arc seasons in their top 20. at the moment of this writing, Calamity, the final season, ranks at number 6 on Anilist while the first season is number 18. Season one is number 17 on MAL, S4 is number 14. hopping over to Anime-Planet, season one is number 15, season 4 #26 at the moment. The only outlier to this is Kitsu. The entire series is number 58 on IMDB. That is insanely high.

  To say it's come back is an understatement. It's not merely “back”, it's crushing titans. Here on Anilist, to wit, you, my fellow watchers, have ranked TYBW's first season better than Code Geass, Season 2 of Frieren, both seasons of Vinland Saga and so on – and better than One Piece and every single iteration of Naruto. Speaking of the other big 3, isn't it kinda ironic how Bleach, the black sheep of the trio, has arguably had the biggest influence in the current Shounen market? Narratively and structurally to varying degrees Jujutsu Kaisen, Demon Slayer, Chainsaw Man, Black Clover and Tokyo Ghoul but also, in terms of fashion stuff like BokuAka.

  I'm sorry, but can I, as a fan who HATED seeing his favourite Shounen being abused and called terrible for the better part of a decade and a half, flip the haters off and tell them to go take a hike?

  But WHY is Bleach's Thousand Year Blood War arc and especially it's final season so cataclysmic?
  Allow someone who's not good with words an attempt to explain.

  First things first, the characters. Granted, they didn't go through an awful lot of development between seasons one to four, sure, they got new power ups, but honestly, personality wise they're still the same, mostly except for someone I'll come to later. Ichigo is still the definite hero, never giving up and receiving a couple of really nice tricks, including his ultra-awesome Bankai, Blood Chains. My god it's so badass. He's the hope, the never-ending hope for mankind, the Hollows and the Shinigami. When YHWACH tries to crush them, he remains as their beacon to rally behind. Ichigo, more so than ever before, stubbornly refuses to give up even if he really is running on empty. Rukia still has criminally limited screentime but what screentime she has makes up for it. Renji, while being a bro (and having a real heart-warming moment with Ichigo in Episode 9) is... there; noble and valiant but ultimately just heavily outclassed. Uryuu's fight with Haschwalth was very entertaining (but stretched a bit too long), and honestly, our boy in white had more ass-pulls than Ichigo this season and I am shocked at that, but honestly, he takes up the deuteragonist of the season and were it not for one of these new power ups (this time in form of an arrowhead his dad hands him), Ichigo would not have won. The Shinigami and the Sternritters didn't change their personality and many of them just carried over their fights from S3, so I will gloss over them real quick. Byakuya is Byakuya, Toushiro became hot and Kenpachi just became a demon from hell holy shit his Bankai... Ha, sometimes raw power is just the best power. Next to Ichigo's, the best Bankai or final release we had this entire season was no-doubt Urahara's. Yes it was bullshit and overpowered and whatever, but it was so creepy and disturbing and smart that it just fit him so insanely well. But my pick to “character of the season” goes to Inoue. Relentlessly resurrecting Ichigo, shielding him and his companions while, for the first time in forever going on the offensive in an anime crashout that will be studied for years to come. Also come on please can we finally stop calling Inoue useless? Seriously, some people think she's as bad as Sakura when she has been an absolute Queen in pretty much all of TYBW. Oh and THEN she caps it off by sacrificing herself for Ichigo to prove she can also protect him after he protected her what feels like dozens of times? While crying and making me cry? Saying goodbye to the boy she's loved for hundreds of chapters? And casually (seemingly) taking YHWACH with her? Inoue is a badass and I'll throw fists with anyone who calls the orange best breast girl weak.

  Oh what's that? Chapters? Yeah, this EPIC scene was an anime Original! GOD. As was the aforementioned new Bankai. And I'm sure a dozen other small and big changes. That's the thing, TYBW's anime feels a LOT more... heavy. Powerful. Dramatic and just... apocalyptic. The world is ending. A terrible threat in the form of a warbling mass of eyes, despair and energy floats through the Soul Society, threatening the World of the Living and Hueco Mundo as well. Our heroes, long time companions through a lot of ups and downs, loss and victory, are battered, bruised and on the brink of failure. Every shounen-typical ass-pull didn't do anything. Black and purple ooze everywhere. The animation is very blood-tinted. Lots of reds and browns. Everything is muted, which allows the pops of colour from special attacks to really shine. It also works as a tremendous contrast; nearly every ability the heroes throw at this titanic threat is a light colour. Ichigo's Getsuga Tenshou, Inoue's shields, Rukia's and Toushiro's Ice, Byakuya's rose petals, Yoruichi's Shunko. Hell, even the claw swipes of definitely-not-a-hero Grimmjow are deliberately bright this season (or the entire arc, actually) just to serve as a contrast to the sheer oppressive nature of YHWACH. It's literally light versus dark. Overall though, especially in the latter episodes, the show has an almost horror movie-esque lighting to it and it highlights again that Bleach is by far the darkest of the Big 3.

  And speaking of visuals. When the hell did Studio Pierrot become Mappa? Or Ufotable? I'm sorry but have you SEEN the fight scenes? The Fight between Ichigo and YHWACH in episodes 3-5 is just pure Sakuga porn. It's so good. So hectic and scratchy, so flashy and so fluid all the same. Dynamic and aggressive with crazy camera angles and special effects out the wazoo that give the whole thing a very very cinematic appeal.

  But no matter how good the animation, if the music and sound effects aren't on par the effect is greatly diminished. And freaking hell did this series as a whole and this season in particular deliver. The opening, I-BULL, is a banger, the outro is a gorgeous song and the overall quality of the sound design is just fantastic. Everything from crackling lightning, rattling chains, crushing steps by Gerard or other giant enemies, shattering ice, blood splattering and Christopher Nolan-esque Bwoooops when YHWACH drops energy blasts and so on is just so crisp and high quality. And don't even get me started on the OST. The remixed Number One, the arrangements of On the Precipice of Defeat and the GODLY chorals during the last big battles. Sadly I don't have any names for any of these tracks cause the official albums haven't dropped yet, but I think you know which ones I mean. But the entire OST by Shiro Sagisu is absolute GOD-tier. Oh and the voice actors. I mean... they're iconic. Props going out to Orihime's voice actress, Yuki Matsuoka. I NEVER expected to hear terrifying, rasping, blood-choked growls from her throat. God that was so good. Oh and, Bleach was one of the shows I exclusively watched in Japanese before – starting with the original series which had a pretty bad English dub, but I wanted to check it out at key points here, and... my god the English voices fucking deliver.

  All in all, Episode 5 is my favourite because it combines all of that into something spectacular (#287 of all TV episodes ever on IMDB btw). Episode 5 is, even after review bombing from MT and RZ fans, still the highest rated show in all of TYBW. And honestly... It feels like the culmination of everything Bleach has been to that point. Gorgeous animation, tragedy, glorious and bullshit overpowered action, two of the best characters in all of Shounen and a real feeling for the show's stakes.

  But alas, YHWACH was just too powerful. Nothing, not Ichigo's insanely sick true Bankai nor Inoue's absolutely beautiful, tear-jerking sacrifice (which wasn't one after all cause... Inoue rejected YHWACH's existence but he still came back along with her...?), all the suffering that the Gotei 13 went through mattered. He beat them down and down again, waxing poetically and just farming Aura (and honestly, perfectly bluntly, it got annoying). If I had any slight criticism of the show, it's that he got on my nerves cause he, also, had a lot of ass pulls and it's just not convincing that a tyrant and complete monster like him wouldn't go all out all the time. That being said, He is a tremendously despicable antagonist and you could really feel how much of a terrifying threat he was. So much so that he just kinda casually fucked up Aizen who is basically a god at this point. Coincidentally, Aizen's episode was the weakest. I don't know, it kinda felt like... filler where nothing important happened, and that was especially terrible cause, well, it's Aizen, one of the most iconic villains in anime.

  But then, an arrow, shot from the last remaining Quincy in Soul Society pierced this tyrant of the spiritual world, the fiend to all existence and forced him to pause. And our hero, with a desperate last swing of his original Zanpakuto breaking out of his shattering sword. And... it's over.

  So what can I say that I haven't already written down... It. was. Glorious. Everything they worked so hard for came to be. And then the flash forward to the aftermath. Ichigo finally married to Inoue. Rukia being a Captain and married to Renji. Both couples have kids, and both of them are shinigami too. Ishida living a calm life as a doctor. Chad being a boxing champion. I'm sorry but THIS is how you fucking end a series that, for the last arc, was nothing but horror, sadness and tragedy. Honestly, my only criticism of the final episode was that they didn't bring back the very first opening, the legendary Asterisk*. I cried tho at the small Number One montage. And then Kazui, Ichigo's boy, touched something... And now we're waiting for Tite to finally continue working on the Hell Arc.

  From the bottom of my heart, thank you Pierrot, thank you for allowing Tite Kubo to properly finish his vision for his Magnum Opus without time constraints and health issues. Thank you Tite Kubo for being a God amongst mangaka and for your story that carried me through some very hard years as a late teenager. I can't wait for your next work.

  11/10.

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• 

  Zorzi19

  88/100
  My love letter to Bleach

  It’s over... thank you. Bleach was, and will forever be, one of the anime that shaped me during my adolescence, alongside Hunter x Hunter and My Hero Academia. "Oh, isn't this the anime with the super cool guy with orange hair? And it’s even dubbed in Italian? Only two seasons, too, I’ll start watching it," is what I said back in 2021. I soon discovered that Prime Video was adding two new seasons every month... and I think that was actually a good thing, because I doubt I would have chosen to start such a long series otherwise. I cried during this final episode, not during any specific scene, but during the opening and the closing credits. Some might ask, "You cried? Over an anime?" But how could they know that, in those moments, all the memories of the darkest period of my life came flooding back? Back then, my escape from being bullied at school was watching this "cool guy with orange hair" try to save Rukia. How could they know that many of the failing grades I got back then were because, instead of studying, I was too curious to see how the story would unfold? How could they know that when I thought I had finished the series, I practically jumped out of bed upon discovering it continued with the TYBW arc? I’m getting emotional even now, as I write this. I really enjoyed this season, though I’ll always have a deeper, more personal attachment to the "old" Bleach, the Bleach that helped me fall in love with the world of anime. Episode 5 of this season stands as one of the absolute high points of the entire series—much like several other episodes within the TYBW arc. What I appreciated about this TYBW [Thousand-Year Blood War] arc is the addition of scenes that fixed the manga’s ending (which I tried to read, but ended up dropping). The final battle was really cool, perhaps a bit chaotic at times, but it was genuinely moving. Thanks to my friend @Salmaxx438 (who watched it recently) and this final part of the TYBW, my passion for this anime, which had somehow gotten lost along the way, has been reignited. Bleach is an anime that truly knows how to stir your emotions. This is thanks to the fantastic work by Studio Pierrot, especially in these latest seasons, and to the absolute genius that is Shiro Sagisu, who remains one of the best composers in the anime industry (arguably my favorite). It’s also thanks to the characters, who, while not always fully fleshed out, are still easy to love, and the villains, Aizen above all. Of course, you have to be willing to overlook a few things; Bleach is wonderful, but it certainly has its flaws, which, in a way, only makes it feel more human. This has been my love letter to Bleach. Thank you, Ryoka group. Thank you, Ichigo. Thank you, Bleach. Thank you, Tite Kubo. Goodbye, or, if you prefer, until we meet again.
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• 

  SiriusStarlight

  30/100
  The Fall of BLEACH (TYBW): How it Happened

  WARNING! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS FULL SPOILERS FOR BLEACH Bleach is one of my favorite shonen stories, and manga in general, ever made. It was one of my first exposures to an urban fantasy anime/manga and that really drew me to how it mixed the terror of the supernatural with very real, down-to-earth emotions, all wrapped up in a distinctly punk aesthetic with some of the best artwork sense in the business. Even as it shifted more towards being a more traditional high-concept battle shonen, which is still excellent though I don't quite prefer to its more grounded side, that still excelled with some psychological fascinating concepts and characters and still tied itself to those same sentiments from earlier in the series to an extent. I feel a need to preface everything that comes after this by saying all of that cause I'm not going to have that many nice things to say from here on. To put it simply, I don't like the Thousand-Year Blood War arc in the manga. It leans all the way into the aspects of Bleach's story I find the least interesting. Most of the biggest developments for its main cast feel fairly redundant. It's overstuffed with one-note villains where only a handful of them are more compelling than the weakest Espada. It's built on tons of fundamental reveals about Bleach's world while somehow feeling uninterested in actually exploring their ramifications on said world. The potentially compelling throughline of the Soul Society still having to face consequences for its systematic failures even as it supposedly improves is completely undercut by its main villain being Super Hitler. It has some likely unintended but still really eyebrow-raising messaging when you look deep enough into its symbolism. I could go on but I don't want this to solely be a rant about the arc on its own. When the anime was announced to be making a comeback in 2022, with a very promising lineup of staff, a seasonal structure and new additions from Tite Kubo himself that he wasn't able to include due to his poor health during the manga's final stretch, it felt like it was possible for this to be the most refined version of the final arc. It felt like we were getting Kubo's true vision, if you will. So now that the final part of this four-season saga has come to its conclusion, have those promises come to light and truly made it the apex of shonen? No. In fact, I think I like the arc less now than I did before. I want to start with addressing the most glaring thing about this cour that doesn't require going to far into the weeds of it narratively: its production. I'm not going to act like the first cour of the anime to be this complete visual miracle or anything, I can name multiple better looking shows from the season it aired in alone, but looking back on the whole adaptation of this arc it stands out as the only cour of the project that has its own identity. It had a slick sense of style to Tomohisa Taguchi's (Director of Akudama Drive, which I finished recently and had an excellent time with, and the two best Persona 3 movies) directing, particularly in its color design, giving it a lot of distinct flair while still being faithful to the feel of Kubo's work. However it feels like with every passing cour, that identity Taguchi gave it was gradually sifting away. A very safe, uninspired panels-as-storyboards approach began to be the more prominent one taken to directing it. I understand the desire to be faithful to the manga, especially given how Tite Kubo is a master of his craft presentation-wise, but most of the time here it doesn't really break any boundaries with adapting the source material. The entirely anime-original sequences have some neat choreography to them, but very few of them get that far beyond "oh that's neat." However, this cour in particular introduces a problem that this project hasn't had before: its editing. I'm not exaggerating when I say that this cour has some of the worst editing I've ever seen in ANY anime. It's on the level of making mistakes that you would catch at a 101 level. Shots constantly break continuity with each other between cuts, the 180 rule is beaten senselessly into the ground, some shots feel like they're actively missing connecting frames. Cuts of animation that in isolation should look good or even great are completely ruined by how they lack any sort of flow together whatsoever. It's not even just in action scenes, even flat dialogue exchanges jitter around between different perspectives giving little to no sense of concrete space between anyone. Almost every single episode ends with a stock fade to black you'd find in default Windows Movie Maker. (I understand that's meant to lead into the fade in with the ED but even hard cuts to black in some episodes would sell that better.) I don't understand how none of this was caught when this cour not only had the longest gap between cours since it started, but also had notably less episodes that needed to be made. And even still it fell apart so badly that the final two episodes had to be delayed by an entire month. This has pushed my patience with the anime to its limit. The fact that an anime of this high a pedigree attached to one of the biggest series in anime history is produced this haphazardly is frankly embarrassing, there's no other way I can put it. But for a decent chunk of people the anime looking the best that it can isn't the main draw, the real hook of it is all the anime-original additions! The core details and extra pieces that were always intended to be part of the original arc that Kubo always wanted to have but wasn't able to include due to having to rush the ending. (And certainly none of which might've come from him changing his mind on things with how many years apart from the ending he is) This true version of the story is finally complete now that we have parts that were always meant to be here like Rukia showing up in the throne room battle to do nothing, the Visored all uniting together to do nothing, and Ichigo getting an all new form to do nothing! Okay, I'm being a little facetious. This has implemented some general improvements over the manga arc over its run, but overtime I've been taking issue with how those changes are implemented. Cours 1 and 2 implement them the most naturally, the flashback when Yhwach enters the palace being a particular highlight. The latter half somehow has the most substantial additions but the least substantive ones at the same time. It does technically fix core issues of the arc's finale but does so with a shotgun blast approach, where tackling these big problems leaves a lot of smaller holes in other places that add up. For example, it most directly tackles the issue of Ishida not really doing much in an arc that's ostensibly about him and doing a poor job of selling his traitorous turn. The anime has him way more actively fight people and take action, but the consequence is that he's so far into the backstabbing friend-sniping display that it makes his betrayal of the Sternritter give a much sharper feeling of whiplash in the manga, which made it far more clear that his heart wasn't in it. Most of the other big anime-original parts lead to some very odd character beats. Episode 5 is easily my favorite ep of this cour from sheer visual spectacle, but it did bother me how much Orihime was constantly lamenting how weak she is when she was pulling her weight more than pretty much anyone else in that entire fight, when her big resolution in the original arc was that she now had the strength to truly fight alongside him on even footing. The type of praise this got online also really bothered me. Like, I guess her being one of the most complex and thoughtful characters in the series from the beginning didn't mean anything until she did a big super attack to take down the big bad. It reflects even more strangely on Ichigo when the next episode starts. Ichigo's whole arc throughout the series is around giving up his reckless self-sacrificing and blaming himself for others' misfortune, but the second Orihime does her big sacrifice play and the altar for becoming the Soul King just… pops up out of nowhere…? Ichigo's first instinct when seeing that is going "welp time to kill myself and become a rock". For what's such a small moment that's entirely forgotten before the scene even ends, that undercuts so much of how Ichigo's grown over the series. Not to say that there aren't good additions, I actually quite like Ryunosuke and Shino's presence in a final act as a way to bring the arc full-circle and back to ground level to an extent, but most of what doesn't fall under that area is just empty calories, bloating things out with wild spectacle and Avengers Endgame style "everyone is here" moments that don't really amount to much outside of just seeing your favorite characters do their thing. The final battle in episode 49 is pretty much how I feel about the Gerard fight on steroids, only really above it by virtue of the comedic characters making shockingly major plays. What compounds this is that all of the dialogue in the anime-original scenes is just terrible. For as much as I have complaints about the overall writing of this arc, Kubo's dialogue is still consistently pretty snappy and succinct. That's why it's most notable when an anime-only scene comes up and it immediately becomes dull, repetitive, hollow, pretty much any adjective you can use to call it stiff. It's at its most noticeable whenever Ichigo and Yhwach interact. Most of it is Yhwach monologuing the same things over and over again, even having multiple instances of him going "I will now tell you x major lore reveal" and Ichigo having no real response to it other than saying that he wants to protect for god's sake. It's like this for every non-manga exchange between them, over and over again. The more it goes on the more it makes Ichigo himself feel like a brick wall for nothing to really bounce off of. I had to reread the fight cause I didn't remember him boring me to tears like this when I initially read it. Being at the end of this big endeavour over the last four years has left me feeling melancholic for reasons that I wasn't expecting to feel at first. Maybe my expectations were a bit out of whack. I went into it expecting something like Invincible's anime, which Robert Kirkman treats as a second draft for the comic that greatly improves on weaker aspects that could be seen in hindsight while still keeping the overall story intact. But Bleach going as far as that did wasn't going to be likely, its changes stayed as minor tweaks to add context at best and most of the time was vapid fanservice. All of the individual highlights in the world can't convince me that this was the best way to close things out. I can't help but mourn how this adaptation started with so much promise only to fizzle out and disappoint time and time again. In a way, that makes this the most faithful adaptation of Thousand-Year Blood War that we could've asked for.
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