Bleach, Thousand-Year Blood War, Episode 41: God of Thunder
_____________________________________________________
Anyway, 'God of Thunder' opens up the final cour of Bleach: Thousand Year Blood War arc. These first couple of episodes are going to wrap up the final Schutzstaffel fights, and the final properly-paced fight during Bleach's original last days. The episode starts off with an interesting bit of a recap. Juhabach 'dreams' and sees some ominous visions about Ichigo and Haschwalth, before we get an interesting way to recap things -- a CGI shot of Wahrwelt and the camera zooming through the battlefields to show where everyone at, from Gerald Valkyrie rampaging against the Visored, showing the other combatants facing off, until finally landing at Uryu and Ichigo facing off against Haschwalth.
In scenes that are still relatively consistent with the manga's counterpart of these events, Uryu tells Ichigo that Haschwalth and Juhabach switches 'The Almighty' powers, and basically sends Ichigo off to end Juhabach while he stalls Haschwalth. There is a bit of a back-and-forth while Haschwalth's shadowy powers explodes out of his body, and Uryu assures Ichigo that he doesn't planning on those being his last words.
Ichigo, Orihime and Chad run up the stairs until they are interrupted by random giant moving stone statues. This was an infamous scene in the original manga that really came out of nowhere and is unexplained, and just functioned to give Chad (and Ganju) the lamest reason to stand back and do something. The scene is preserved more or less in its entirety here, so poor Chad really doesn't do much but fight some unnamed statues.
What is changed, however, is that we do get some explanation as to what the statues are -- they are glorping with the same shadow-goop and eyeballs that animated some of the fake Soldats that attacked the people below in the Seireitei, as well as the false Soldat that fought Giselle and Liltotto, so at least we do get the explanation that these beings are tied to Juhabach. Chad, for his credit, does get a cool line talking about how Ichigo always watches the front, so it falls to him to make sure the path back is clear for him.
Of course, I highly doubt this is a fight that's going to get any extension, and I'd be happy just to see the resolution. Does Yasutora Sado actually beat some nameless stone statues? Find out after a nail-biting ten-year delay to this epic cliffhanger!
Instead of the very vague Antithesis-vs-Balance non-fight that they had in the initial manga (which played in the background of the Askin, Gerald and Juhabach fights and concluded in the lamest way ever), Uryu and Haschwalth are actually given some action. Uryu is trying to figure out how to fight someone who can see the future, and trying to push the limits of Haschwalth's (or the Almighty's) future sight. We get a flashback to Haschwalth's note that he is surprised from the last season.
While Uryu thinks about it, he keeps shooting his Quincy arrows, while Haschwalth dodges and Matrix-es around the battlefield. It is quite interesting to see Haschwalth smirking in a smarmy manner and actually showing more emotion than his normally emotionless look that he's had for essentially the whole series, for sure.
Haschwalth then gives an interesting motive speech, talking about how no one can take His Majesty's power away from him, since he's the Quincy born to be together with Juhabach. It isn't emotional or anything, but it's a nice description of why he does what he does -- and reaffirms the flashback with Bazz-B and why Haschwalth ultimately betrays poor Bazz-B. He really is essentially brainwashed and seeing that his life and existence only has value as long as it revolves around Juhabach's purpose.
Haschwalth then changes the topic, pointing at the ominous giant black orb-rift thing that was glimpsed very briefly in the previous season. This then cuts to a scene in the real world, where forgotten characters Tessai, Jinta and Ururu are beating up Hollows only to see a massive crack in the sky appear. That's quite welcome, and they identify this as a Distortion -- and Haschwalth notes that this is Juhabach's "True Wish". Juhabach's main goal, and this is something that wasn't fully explained in the original manga, is to use the constant imbalances of souls going from one realm to the next, to upset the three realms... and to utterly destroy the borders between the living world, Soul Society and Hueco Mundo so Juhabach can rule over everything in his own image.
It is something that the TYBW anime has been slowly hinting at, and wasn't present in the original manga unless you squint really hard (much of Juhabach's manga motive discussions has been more nebulous, and involves more about taking revenge and taking the throne away from the Soul King). According to Haschwalth, Juhabach wants to create a new 'Welt', a world only for the Quincy. Haschwalth boasts that Uryu isn't part of this future that he has seen.
And we get a rather cool (if cheesily ridiculous) scene of Haschwalth's sword taking forever to pierce Uryu's glasses, and doesn't even do anything but scratch it a bit before Uryu zips aside as he transforms back into his Vollstandig form. Surrounded by the CGI glowing arrows, Uryu delivers a bit of a badass boast... even if his 'to-do list' boast isn't really anywhere as cool as even Chad's in this episode. My boy's trying, though. Bless him.
Finally, the second half of the episode deals with a very faithful adaptation of the Askin Nakk Le Vaar fight, although the addition and extension of action scenes does make the fight a lot cleaner to follow. There's a fun comedic scene as Askin lies down on the ground and does some random monologues about how he doesn't have to move to avoid the giant pieces of rubble falling all around him. He converses with a paralyzed Yoruichi, who is disabled with a Gift Ball containing the spiritual pressures of common gases. Askin also notes that it's not that he's not trying to kill Yoruichi; anyone else would ahve been dead with all this fatal dose manipulation. Askin notes that Yoruichi is a 'freak', and he absolutely did not go easy on her.
But then, Urahara pops up and for an anime adaptation that has removed all instances of sexual jokes (and only leaving in just fanservice designs), it is actually a bit of a surprise that they retained Urahara's wedgie joke, and the fact that he administered the cure to Yoruichi by groping her butt. There's a bit of a comedy thing going on, and... and I actually buy that Askin is the type of guy to let this kind of nonsense happen.
Urahara, of course, cures Yoruichi and they run off. This is to the surprise of Askin, before he remembers the data about the 'special potentials' and how Urahara is one of them due to his sheer unpredictability. Askin, who prefers to outsmart his opponents, bemoans the fact that he's stuck with a troublesome opponent.
It is a cool (if, as always with Yoruichi, very fanservice-y... particularly with how the animation handles her lightning 'clothes') form. And just with Yoruichi's earlier Raijin Senkei animations, the animators had a lot of great fun animating Yoruichi zipping around here and there with lightning flashes and thundering explosions.
But let's take a step back from the huge flashy explosions, and note that the Raiju Senkei form has always been a bit of an ass-pull. The fact that Urahara gets to find the perfect solution to Askin's immunity (with some handwave about this functioning like influenza A antigens) isn't the problem. Heck, I didn't even mind that the story continues to refuse to give us Yoruichi's zanpakuto name or whatever and just keeps introducing new Shunko forms. That's all right. Her having a more 'beastly' form -- as eye-rolling as the gag of her purring up to Urahara at the end is -- is also something that kind of makes sense.
But to introduce it here after we already see Yoruichi have a pretty good showing earlier in the arc, just as a random last-minute power up before Yoruichi collapses anyway and doesn't really do anything beyond setting the stage for the Urahara/Askin fight? For all the screentime that Yoruichi got throughout the TYBW arc, it is a bit of a shame that the way that Yoruichi exits the arc (and the story, too, in the manga) is for her to be defeated and against her wishes be forced to take on a form that she hates... which proves to not be all that useful either.
That said, it is cool, and as the animation studio has shown last cour, they love Yoruichi. Both showing how she blitzes around and the effects of the lightning blasts slamming and blasting in the skies... it's good punchy-punch action stuff. Yoruichi zipping in and appearing in front of Urahara to bash Askin in the middle of an exposition is a really fun sequence, and I like the sequence where Yoruichi blitzes Askin on top of that spire.
After that cool sequence, we get the silly bit where Urahara distracts Yoruichi with some catnip, notes that Yoruichi can't transform back until the mood strikes her, and Yoruichi gets knocked out as the five-minute timer expires. But then Askin returns with a giant purple ball, 'Gift Ball Deluxe', as he finally engages his Quincy Vollstandig, Hasshein. And that's where the first episode of the cour ends.
And that's where this episode stops. It is a visually great episode, with Yoruichi and Uryu both having really cool, flashy action scenes. The weaknesses of Yoruichi's exit from the story still remains, and I am always never a big fan of the random new Raiju Senkei form. But a lot of the buildup to some other aspects of the show's final story is done pretty well, and I'm a fan of it. Moreso than the adaptations of the relatively straightforward fights, I'm just really excited to see what new additions and expansions they do.
Random Notes:
- The first three episodes of the cour were released in certain regions as a compilation movie a month before the airing on TV. Which means that through osmosis, I already know roughly all the major changes in the first three episodes -- making it a bit easier to write the first three episode reviews. The rest of the season would absolutely take a lot more time to review, though.
- Among the things shown by the CGI 'drone view' recap is, rather interestingly, Bazz-B's corpse. Out of everything else to show? Okay? Wonder if there's something they're going to do with Bazz-B?
- Using the imbalance of souls does tie in neatly with how the TYBW arc did start with the Shinigami killing a lot of Hollows offscreen, and something tying in to the upcoming serialization of the Hell Arc, the deaths of great Shinigami like Yamamoto and Squad Zero.
- It is from the source material, but I did find it a bit hilarious that the anime kept Yoruichi's 'sexy ass up' pose for when she's injured and barely able to move, while giving us a brief shot of her brother in a similar predicament but he's choking up blood and nearly dying.
- Also, just to rub the fanservice in more, the 'God of Thunder' title card is even shown on a shot of Yoruichi's ass, which got a loud chuckle out of me for its sheer absurdity.
- As much as an asshole Urahara is in this episode, the expressions he makes while he brings up flashcards, and how he responds about his role as doing exposition for Yoruichi's form to Askin, is hilarious and brings back some old-school Bleach vibes where there was a bit more comedy.
