Bleach TYBW E37 Review: sword ex mAchinA

Bleach, Thousand-Year Blood War, Episode 37: Shadows Gone

So, yeah. I think I've gone on record in the first part of reviewing this fight that I'm not the biggest fan of how it ends. Both the Pernida and Lille fight had all the participants -- be it Sternritter, Captain or Vice-Captain -- pull some bullshit ability to one-up each other. That's all right. Whether it's Nemu having unrevealed abilities or Lille's Vollstanding forms or Kyoraku's Bankai or Mayuri's upgraded Bankai or Pernida's nature... it's part and parcel of Bleach's DNA. But one crucial thing is that... some of these get foreshadowed. It's not that huge of a surprise that Kyoraku's Bankai, for example, has a lot of esoteric effects -- it hasn't been unleashed and he is one of the more senior captains of the Gotei 13, so of course it's going to be cool. Something not being quite right with Nemu that ties with science-y abilities and being an artificial Shinigami have also been slowly built up across her various minor appearances throughout the series. That's all right too. 

But Ise Nanao? Sure, she does share the unenviable position alongside Iba, Yachiru and Nemu as one of the few Vice-Captains that have never released their Zanpakuto before the Thousand-Year Blood War arc, and with Iba at least we know his sword is a pretty simple one. And unlike Yachiru or Nemu, there really was no indication that Nanao of all people is some kind of secret badass hiding some kind of hidden secret that can match the power of the gods. Which, also, incidentally, is the perfect counter against a being like Lille Barro. 

And it would be something, anything, if there was some foreshadowing in the manga that Nanao doesn't have a regular Zanpakuto, or if her Zanpakuto is actually sealed, or if there was a rumour about a god-sealing sword, or, or, or... and even if you can blame Bleach being rushed around the time that these later chapters were released, there was absolutely no excuse for the anime not to do any of that. The anime adaptation has been masterful at adding subtle hints here and there to foreshadow future events... but arguably one of the things that needed the most exploration? 

So yeah. It also kind of sucks that for all the built-up done towards it, Kyoraku's Bankai really didn't manage to do much but inconvenience Lille Barro a bit.

But with that rant out of the way, I would still like to talk about this episode and what a good adaptation of the "Theater Suicide" chapters they are. They do a bit of reconfiguration to have the flashbacks be a bit more gradual, which I suppose is the closest thing to foreshadowing that we're going to get about Shinken Hakkyoken. 

We start off with young Kyoraku Shunsui, hanging out with his older brother (who's named by the adaptation, Shunzan) and his very sweet sister-in-law, Ise Isuzu. This is the origin of the hairpins and kimono that Kyoraku wears in his very distinctive design, and we get a pretty sweet scene of Isuzu giving Shunzan one of her hairpins as he goes off to fight Hollows. Shunzan and Shunsui get into a bit of an argument when Shunsui teases his older brother, but Shunsui also admits that the arrival of his sister-in-law has been such a great thing for their family. His previously-strained relationship with his brother is now a lot better.

We then cut to the present day, to the absolutely nothing cliffhanger from the previous episode as what Kyoraku is about to tell his sword spirit Katen gets interrupted by a gigantic pillar of light. Oh no, turns out that Lille Barro is still alive! 

We get some admittedly cool effects as Lille Barro rises up even with his head gone. Energy reforms into a bizarre outline facsimile of his head as Lille rants about 'sinners'. And it is at this point in the fight that Lille Barro's character design gets a complete overhaul -- and I think another reason why I didn't like this fight so much is how little of the no-nonsense sniper remained after his second transformation. There is, I suppose, a gradual change as Lille goes from "I'm a badass enforcer of his majesty" to "I'm the greatest messenger of god" to "BOW BEFORE GOD, SINNERS!" but we know so little about Lille as a character that it doesn't feel natural. 

The visuals also change a lot -- and it is admittedly based on a lot of mythology-accurate angels from Judeo-Christian lore. But such a drastic change in both Lille's visuals and anime villain ranting does make it hard to take the character seriously as a continuous entity. The anime, perhaps realizing this, goes all in on divorcing Lille's appearance in episode 35 and prior and his appearance in this episode. As Lille Barro transforms into the second part of Jilliel, the infamous "owl form", the anime changes the colour of his glowing reiatsu from green to golden, and had his voice go through so much digital processing that it doesn't even sound the same either. 

And, to be frank? I like Lille's bizarre cherub-owl form... in a vacuum. Had this been a brand-new character, or had the transformation been a bit more gradual, I would've liked it a bit more. But it's such a bizarre jump to go from badass military sniper angel to an angel-cocoon-centaur to a bizarre owl-snake-head thing. 

Anyway, Lille basically rants throughout all this episode about how he is god's immortal and invincible messenger, and... it's a Bleach thing. Whether a character starts ranting about the theme that Kubo wants to explore with the character, they go into several different iterations of 'fear' or 'death' or 'imagination' or 'experimentation' or 'strength' or 'names' or whatever theme that we're exploring. But there's absolutely nothing to explore with Lille's rantings, making him not even live up to other Bleach villains. 

The action scene is, at least, quite spectacular as rendered by the anime. Lille forms his super-long arms and starts shooting giant laser beams, leading to an impressive sequence of him destroying a huge chunk of Wahrwelt's buildings that blasts out even from underneath the floating city. All the heavenly wrath of Lille's gigantic beams are rendered excellently by the anime. The animation also makes Lille's owl-head a lot more fun to look at, with creepy blinking animations (those vertical eyelids!) and showing his head and neck contorting around unnaturally. 

Lille is able to track Kyoraku as he hides behind towers, alternating between praising his capabilities as Captain-Commander and also calling him sinful. We get an interesting sequence as Katen tells Kyoraku that she could take him to safety, since not even their Bankai was able to stop Lille Barro. It is a nice moment, but Katen's voice gets overlaid with Nanao, yelling at him to wake up. Kyoraku is happy that Nanao wasn't caught up in his Bankai, but then Nanao yells at Kyoraku to give her Zanpakuto to her and that this was no time for keeping the promise that Kyoraku made with her mother. 

Lille appears again and rants about sin and unleashes another blast of energy... but Kyoraku and Nanao disappear before him. We get a very cool visual shot of Lille's shadow being cast on the tower behind him... and then we cut to the shadow dimension of that Kyoraku can access with Katen Kyokotsu's Kageoni ability. This is very cool! Kyoraku is both impressed and a bit exasperated that Nanao 'knew all along' about her mother, and then summons the sword spirit of Kyokotsu to give Nanao her sword. Turns out that Katen 'gave birth to Kyokotsu' to keep Nanao's sword hidden, and Kyokotsu reaches into the negative space made by her ninja mask to draw out Nanao's blade. 

While this is going on, we get a rather well-animated sequence of Lille's owl head morphing and warbling into a gigantic radar disc. This looks so much better in the anime since it's a bit clearer what is going on, and having Lille's eyes actually visible move around the head like fishes in a pond is a nice visual effect. The subsequent visuals of the giant radar-dish head scrunching up and being compressed down back into an owl head is also quite neat. 

Lille realizes that Kyoraku is using Kageoni to hide, and explodes a ball of light to erase his shadow from the ground... only for Nanao to appear from the shadow cast by his beak on his face -- which, by the way, was a piece of action that I've only 'got' while watching the episode. 

At this point, we flash back to Kyoraku explaining to Nanao everything about the Ise clan. Which, again, I don't want to beat a dead horse here, but... none of these is foreshadowed or really had any tie-ins to other aspects of Soul Society's backstory. Turns out that the Ise Clan is matri-lineal, all the children have been born female, and all the men that married into the clan died from an 'Ise Curse'. Nanao's mother instead married into the Kyoraku family -- which would end the Ise name -- but turns out that Shunzan died anyway. Isuzu was taken back by the Ise clan, but before that happens, she approached Shunsui and gave him their family sword and begs him to keep it hidden... because she wants to keep her daughter away from the curse. 

(Oh, and a 'family sword' exists for the Ise clan, something that flies a bit in a bit of a conflict with all the talk about Asauchi and Zanpakuto that we learned earlier this arc. It's not irreconcilable to be an actual plot hole, but it's still annoying that this wasn't explained in any detail.)

Oh, yeah, this also the big revelation that Nanao is actually Kyoraku's niece, something that is kind of glossed over in all this revelation about the trauma in Kyoraku's life. It is kind of interesting that Nanao didn't react too much to this, but I suppose she did figure out the relationship that Kyoraku had with her prior to all of this happening. 

Nanao also confronts Kyoraku on his decision to hide the sword, and... it's not really brought up a lot in this fight, but Kyoraku does have a habit of getting Nanao out of the way of a fight. Kyoraku protected her from Yamamoto's aura back in Soul Society, and she wasn't present in any of the Arrancar/Aizen conflict, and even earlier in the fight against Lille, Kyoraku got her out of the way. But Nanao's grown up to be an adult and she has decided to 'accept the curse', whatever it may be... and we get a sweet line as Nanao mentions that 'the man she admires' would laugh off something like a curse to be ridiculous. 

We then cut back to the fight as Nanao reveals the Shinken Hakkyoken, who we learn via flashback exposition that the Shinken Hakkyoken is a ritual sword passed down the Ise Clan. It's a bladeless sword that is used for rituals, and has the bizarre ability that allows its wielder to 'disperse the power of a god' via mirrors embedded along the length of the sword. 

Again, I hope cour four gives us some tie-in between the Shinken Hakkyoken and the ancient times that led to the dismemberment of the Soul King or something, because this is just a random power that honestly came out of nowhere and is so convenient that Lille Barro is a god-like being that is made up of light. 

Lille comments that she can't see the blade since it reflects his light so much, and mocks it. Nanao explains that it reflects the power of the gods, and Lille muses that he doesn't mind being called a god. (This, by the way, would be something interesting if Lille's character goes from being god's most loyal worshipper to having a blasphemous god complex, but nothing so interesting happens). 

We then get another flashback to Isuzu giving Shunsui the Shinken Hakkyoken... but unseen by either adult is that little Nanao (who was born and raised after Isuzu was 'taken back' into the walls of the Ise household) is lurking and listening from a nearby wall. We get an explanation of Nanao's subsequent shinigami career -- she was also raised by distant relatives and not in the main household at some point. The young Nanao recognizes the Captain of the Eighth Division having a similar kimono and hairpins to what her mother used to wear. Nanao would find herself being unable to imprint upon an Asauchi. The official word was that her kido talents were exceptional enough for her to bypass this... but instead of the logical Kido Corps, Nanao was instead assigned to the Eighth Division. 

And we get to see Kyoraku addressing the new batch of his Eighth Division members, with his light-hearted jokes about how he's always going to take it easy with the ladies in his Division. However, Nanao realizes that Kyoraku switched out his kimono and hairpins, confirming her suspicion that he was, indeed, the mysterious man that her mother entrusted something precious towards. 

Cutting back to the present day, Nanao attacks with Shinken Hakkyoken. Lille mocks her, but then blocks the strike at the last minute with his left arm. Nanao's god-cutting sword proves able to cut through Lille's arm and it erupts in energy. Lille is surprised, but then comments that it's useless now that Nanao's shown her ability. We get a bit of an extended monologue from Nanao about how scary it is to be fighting with a sword, and how unused she is to being both injured and to be swinging a blade... which I really do find hard to believe since Nanao is a Vice Captain and has been in combat even if it's fighting with Kido before. 

While all of this is going on, Kyoraku gets a flashback to a time shortly after his last meeting with Isuzu. We get to see Ukitake telling Kyoraku that Isuzu was executed by Central 46 for misplacing a sacred treasure. (This also explains Kyoraku's disdain of Central 46 in the present day, I suppose) Kyoraku plays it off as nothing major to Ukitake, but gets pissed off and morose as he walks away. With his brother and sister-in-law all entrusting him with precious possessions before their deaths, in the present day Kyoraku muses how heavy it has been carrying all this burden with him, and Nanao's taken the burden away from him somewhat. 

All of this culminates with Kyoraku bursting out of Kageoni behind a trembling Nanao, and places his hands over hers, calming her down. Nanao reflects on how Kyoraku has always supported her throughout her life. Lille prepares for his final attack, the Trompete (based on the angels from the Book of Revelation), and unleashes a gigantic light beam... and as Lille looks down, he finds a line that begins to cut his strange form in half, which is a trippy visual effect. As cracks form across his body, Lille lets out one last 'sinful' remark before he explodes into a shower of golden energy and feathers that rain down from the sky. 

And as Sternritter "X", Lille Barro, shatters, Nanao also slips and falls from the blood dripping from her wound. Kyoraku catches her and sets her down, and is about to go off and join the battle before also collapsing into a sitting position himself. This is it for Kyoraku and Nanao, and for two of the Schutzstaffel-vs-Shinigami fights. 

And... yeah. It's still an entertaining episode to watch if nothing else because of the fun adaptation and the showcase of effects. But as my long ramble at the beginning of this review makes clear, I'm not impressed by either the handling of Lille Barro as an antagonist, or by everything surrounding Shinken Hakkyoken. I would still praise this storyline for giving us a nice backstory for Kyoraku and for giving us a nice resolution for the Kyoraku/Nanao relationship and the evolution of Kyoraku's protectiveness of his niece... but overall while there are a lot of fun action setpieces, I've always found this to be one of the narratively weaker fights in Bleach overall. 

Random Notes:

• "Shadows Gone" is the only episode in TYBW so far to have an anime-original title. The manga's arc title would be "The Theater Suicide", which would've worked better for the first Lille/Kyoraku fight. 
  
• 
  It really is unfortunate that Shinken Hakkyoken had absolutely no foreshadowing prior to this episode. Even some lines of dialogue on Nanao's part in the first Kyoraku/Lille episode would've gone a long way here! It's kind of weird since Mayuri being able to modify his Bankai actually got an anime-exclusive foreshadowing. Even giving an equivalent to the "Nemu looks at Mayuri mysteriously" scenes on the first part of their fight. 
• Shunsui's brother (Kyoraku Shunzan) and sister-in-law (Ise Isuzu) are unnamed in the manga, and are only given names thanks to this episode's credits sequence.
• Between Lille's gigantic beams and bombardment (that last Trompete attack vaporized almost half of one of the outer cities!), and Gerald Valkyrie about to go full-on giant-sized in the next couple of episodes, it is kind of funny that the most property damage done to Juhabach's oh-so-sacred holy realm is done by his own Quincies. 
• I do wonder what Katen taking Kyoraku away to safety entails? I don't think that Zanpakuto Spirits could actually influence the world around them. Unless Katen is able to do some kind of possession the way that White!Zangetsu took over Ichigo's body whenever he goes into Hollow form? 
• Actually, how did Nanao not get caught up in Kyoraku's Bankai? Was she just out of reach of the effects of Karamatsu Shinju from reaching her, and she just ran really fast afterwards to reach Kyoraku's position? 
• Back in the day, one of the chapter cliffhangers was Kyoraku about to give Nanao her sword, and Kyokotsu's spirit appearing behind her -- with the implication that the younger Kyokotsu is Nanao's Zanpakuto. Which I remembered spawned a lot of theories and ended up being kind of a huge cocktease since Kyokotsu was merely hiding Nanao's sword. 
• Another common theory back at the time was that Kyoraku lost his wife and daughter (hence the appearances of Katen and Kyokotsu) and that's the reason he's wearing a woman's kimono. Not quite the family members that he lost. 
• I do like that the narrative keeps it ambiguous on whether Shunzan died because of an Ise Curse (or if there is an Ise Curse) or if it's simply just the hazardous occupation of being a member of the Gotei 13 that got him. 
• I also really like the detail that when Nanao's in the academy, all the students are enamoured by Aizen but they find Shinji weird.
• So if Kyoraku took off the kimono and hairpins to not cause suspicion in Nanao, why is he wearing it again in all subsequent appearances? 
• No mention of Kyoraku also losing Lisa, Ukitake and Yamamoto? I thought the anime would pounce on at least showing some flashes of their deaths even if they don't add any extra dialogue.