Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War, Episode 2: The Blood Warfare 1: Foundation Stones
Anyway, we start off right where the previous episode left off, with Yhwach bullying the poor Arrancar soldier Luders Friegen with the whole 'you can give your report lying down... but I suppose you don't need your legs, then'. Yhwach basically doesn't really give two shits about the wellbeing of the Arrancar, and essentially pulls out flimsy excuses out of thin air ('are you a prophet?') to basically murder them, exploding them into bloody, gory corpses after they literally outlived his usefulness.
In the human world, we get brief scenes showing more of Ichigo and company talking to each other, particularly Orihime pointing out that Uryu and Ichigo had gotten a lot more buddy-buddy recently. Ichigo returns just in time for the two substitute Shinigami to receive a broadcasted call (which makes a bit more sense -- the manga had it to just be a call for them to return) that catches our heroes up on the events that happened in the Seireitei. Akon talks about the death of Sasakibe, the infiltration of the First Division office... and how a single member of these invaders killed 116 First Division Shinigami in 182 seconds. Okay, I did not remember that! Poor Yamamoto must be pissed!
After a brief few shots of our heroes being somber, Ichigo decides to patrol the area before the glorious return of Nel, who has the best and most ridiculous voice in the anime ever. She headbutts the shit out of Ichigo all the way to the ground... but then she begs Ichigo to help out Hueco Mundo. This segues nicely into Yhwach revealing that he has captured Harribel and held her in chains.
We then cut to the funeral of Sasakibe, which is a nice, somber scene intercut with a silent memory of Yamamoto seeing Sasakibe kneel before him and pledging his service. It's... it's very somber, very quiet... and it is interesting that the anime basically cut out Byakuya's eulogy for Sasakibe. Could you tell that I've been skimming through the manga while I'm watching this? I don't really think it's as simple as them cutting out scenes, though, and more like them saving certain parts of the manga for later? I assume a lot of this Sasakibe stuff will be more important when Yamamoto confronts Sasakibe's killer.
And then as Nel and Pesche inform Team Ichigo of the takeover of Hueco Mundo... we actually get to see it! I mean, we don't actually get like an anime-only Yhwach-vs-Harribel fight or whatever, but we actually get to see them about to clash with each other. Yhwach hovering above the burning blue flames and the aftermath of Harribel being smashed onto a stone slab... the two of them confronting each other as Nel runs away, before the Reishi explosions in the distance cut away the flashback... it's a small thing, but it's a hell lot more respect than the manga actually gave to Harribel! I don't think they'll go so far as to adapt that one light novel that dealt with their fate, but it'd be nice to get like, a short, abridged showcase of this at the end of the anime to show what happened to Harribel and the other Hueco Mundo residents since they kinda got ignored.
Our heroes arrive in Hueco Mundo to see the Quincies rounding up the surviving Arrancar while massacring large swathes of them, and Ichigo being Ichigo, he goes off to help the Arrancar despite the group not containing Dondochakka.
We then get to see Sternritter "J", Quilge Opie, overseeing the captured Arrancar before him... and we get a very nice flash to his name-card. They picked a pretty perfect voice actor to give him the sort of manic energy that his manga counterpart exudes, and he just hams shit up while taking any excuse he can to just keep impaling random Arrancars with a spear, all under the guise of selection.
Loly and Menoly show up and get absolutely fucked up as Quilge slashes Menoly apart and bitch-slaps Loly. It is interesting that Quilge makes it sound like he's expecting some Arrancar to show guts in this way, but I'm pretty sure he's just bullshitting. Quilge shit-talks Aizen for appointing such losers as his aides (which is a very fair criticism), before the Tres Bestia show up. And it happens pretty quickly, but damn, Apacci's chakram attack literally tore apart entire squadrons and leaves behind rivers of blood before Quilge catches it with one hand. Man, these Quincy goons suck!
Also, a neat little single-line addition to the anime is Sung-Sun noting that the Quincy invasion happened when they were away, explaining why they weren't around to defend their master Harribel.
We get some nice scenes showing Mila Rose tearing through Quilge's minions, as well as Apacci using her weird spiral green Cero and one-shotting a random Quincy with a badass, bloody back-handed punch. A neat little extension from the manga counterpart is having Quilge be a bit more involved in this, with Sung-Sun sneaking up on Quilge and trying to assassinate him with her weapon while Quilge makes his offer of surrender. Mila Rose also does a huge power-slam with her ax. The three of them face off against Quilge...
...but of course, get absolutely wiped out just as Ichigo, Nel and the others arrive over the ridge. I mean, again, it's kind of expected to see these lesser enemies from the previous arc get bullied by the lesser enemies from the current arc! But there's a pretty great moment because we briefly cut away to the Captains' meeting as Kurotsuchi Mayuri explains to everyone present that, yes, their new enemies are Quincies.
Again, pretty great animation all around. There's a nice bit where they're filling in the gaps here and there... and I am happy that they're not going to overbloat the season by having, well, entire filer episodes (unless they adapt the light novels) but give us just enough to help pad out some confusing plot holes here and there. Very much appreciated for sure! Now the Quilge Opie arc isn't the most interesting part of the manga (especially before the Seireitei invasion), but Quilge is a very entertaining, scenery-chewing bastard and I will highly enjoy his antics with voice-acting.
Random Notes:
- We get the opening, 'SCAR', and the ending, 'Saihate'. Very great visuals in both, and I'm particularly enamored with the monochrome-and-pink of the opening. It really is something that screams Tite Kubo.
- I will alternate between 'Yhwach' and 'Juhabach' because a lot of these anime reviews are kind of stream-of-thought. I'll try to use the official spelling of Yhwach, but I've been calling ol' mustache-man Juhabach for near damn close to a decade now, so.
- Ah, a brief little hint to Yhwach's powers when he talks about seeing the future and prophets and stuff! I didn't catch that at all, although I mostly didn't really care much about the Luders/Ebern sequence in the manga. Also, I wonder if Quilge's 'selection' is also meant to be foreshadowing... although it's probably just him being a loco.
- "You have done nothing worthy of praise or punishment" would probably be the best you could hope to receive from a stereotypical minion-killing evil boss. Unfortunately, Yhwach is much worse than most stereotypical minion-killing evil bosses.
- Jugram Haschwalth has a brief role, albeit hooded (he wasn't in the manga volume this adapts!).
- ...it is actually hilarious for them to actually have like, Quincy janitors mopping up the remnants of Ebern and Luders. At least, I assume they are Quincies and not more Arrancars. Either way...
- Minor point, but they de-censored Tier Harribel's Resurreccion form.
- I did think of reviewing the Chainsaw Man anime too, since I really did enjoy the manga when I read it, but I don't think taking up too many series at once is going to be feasible for my schedule in the near future.
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