Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War E04: They Can Steal Bankai!

Bleach, Thousand-Year Blood War, Episode 4: Kill the Shadow

Far more of an action-packed episode than the previous couple of episodes, though the past couple of episodes were admittedly mostly setup! This episode had around three-fourths of its runtime focused in the Soul Society. Which is fun! Man, I have a lot of problems with the Wandenreich arc, and this episode does have one of the more eye-rolling plot holes in the early parts of this arc, but... honestly, Bleach has always been about the smaller moments of high-octane action. I will still call out the 'idiot ball' when we get there, but still. 

We open up with Haschwalth splitting the discount Aizen (the 13th Division 6th-seat Kajomaru Hidetomo) in half after dryly mocking how he's shifted the demands from fighting to trying to get Haschwalth to stop. It's actually somehow a bit more explicit than the manga, I feel, where here we actually see the glasses and face get slashed in the middle, and then the shadow explicitly being split in half at the middle before his blood becomes the title card. 

We do get a couple of early confrontations between the captains and the Sternritter, and... I do wonder if any of these will at least get brief extensions in the anime? Rose and NaNaNa Najahkoop confront each other and Rose laments Kira's apparent death and vows serious, serious harm. There's also a pretty cool scene of a single nameless shinigami who sees the rest of his fellow soldiers get absolutely impaled and die screaming with As Nodt's flying thorns, and the rest of his teammates escape, and he's yelling about how the Gotei 13 are supposed to give their lives... and then Renji shows up with Zabimaru like a goddamn superhero. Also fun is the confrontation between Komamura and Bambietta -- Bambietta has the funniest comeback about how 'they let a dog be captain, man you guys must be understaffed!' We get brief shots of other matchups. Shuhei vs. Driscoll Berci, Kyoraku vs Robert Accutrone, Soi Fon vs. BG-9, Hitsugaya vs. Cang Du... 

But the focus of this whole sequence are, of course, the four captains whose Bankai get stolen, with special focus to the Renji and Byakuya fight against As Nodt and, very briefly, MASK DE MASCULINE. A lot of the dialogue of the other captains about using Bankai and swearing bloody vengeance against the Quincies are all just condensed into lines that Byakuya says, but that's okay. A lot of the battle at this point is just Byakuya and Renji's discussion, some more examples of the Blut Vene ability as As Nodt and Byakuya try and gauge each other's defenses... and the anime team really flexing at how the computer-aided animation of Senbonzakura's sakura petals now look. There is a very cool sequence of Byakuya unleashing a torrent of sakura petals that seemed to have absolutely ravaged As Nodt's head... only for him to reveal Blut Vene on his eyes to block one of Senbonzakura's petals. That's so cool! 

Also, in a very, very stark contrast to how As Nodt would be later on in this arc, I absolutely love -- and find it far, far creepier -- that As Nodt is completely silent throughout this whole encounter. His arrogant shrugging, facial expressions, and that 'creepy smiling' eyes... man, As Nodt is a much more effective 'the Fear' when he doesn't speak a word!

And, of course, we get the rather... questionable decision of four of our captains immediately deciding to go Bankai, while poor Kurotsuchi Mayuri has just finished decoding that the Quincies are stealing Bankai instead of sealing them. There's a nice, very subtle anime addition of Mayuri taking readings and investigating Sasakibe's sword Gonryomaru, realizing that the Bankai contained within is gone. 

What is interesting in the anime, though, is the fact that we actually see the captains at least try to fight with alternate means. And just like Bazz-B's Burner Finger getting a bit of an early appearance compared to when the specifics of his powers are revealed in the manga, we get to see Bambietta kicking a Reishi bomb towards Komamura, then Komamura slicing the bomb and the halves exploding. Soi Fon tries to use Suzumebachi's two-hit-kill against BG9 and finds out that it doesn't work (is it because of Blut Vene, or because BG9 is a robot?) before BG9 whips and draws blood from her. Hitsugaya freezes Cang Du's arm, and in a very cool sequence, Cang Du just speed-blitzes Hitsugaya and uses the iron underneath the frozen arm to parry Hitsugaya so badly he gets bashed into a wall. Really great that we get hints at Bambi's Explode powers and Cang's Iron powers before they get highlighted later on, making it less of an ass-pull why they didn't use these powers earlier. 

All of these are extended and helps to at least give a bit of a reason to why all the captains decide to use Bankai all at once. But... I don't know. I understand that there's not much they could do without severely changing what happened canonically in the manga, but still, I do have umbrage at why they all decide to use Bankai all at once. To wit, here are several reasons I can think of:

• No one tries to use Kido. We've had a lot of showcases of Captains using Kido before as alternate means, and Byakuya at the very least would be super proficient at using it as we saw in his fight against Zommari. 
• Soi Fon doesn't try to use Shunko, another non-Zanpakuto related ability. I know she's not as good as Yoruichi, but still. 
• Byakuya and later on Kyoraku notes that someone will have to be a 'sacrifice' so Mayuri could understand what's going on. Fair enough. But shouldn't you guys designate someone to be that sacrifice? Like, just a single captain -- maybe Soi Fon, who hates her Bankai -- use it and no one else does so?
• For Byakuya and Renji specifically, Byakuya goes 'observe the fight, and when my Bankai is sealed, use yours to defeat him'. There's the assumption that As Nodt can only seal a single Bankai at a time, which is flawed. But even then, wouldn't it be smarter to use the weaker Renji's Bankai as the sacrifice, and then Byakuya can use Senbonzakura Kageyoshi to defeat As?

I do think that this is particularly egregious for Byakuya and Soi Fon in particular. I get that throughout the entire series, Hitsugaya and Komamura go Bankai at the slightest provocation, but Byakuya is a lot smarter than that, and as I mentioned above, Soi Fon isn't someone who likes to use her Bankai. 

But, of course, the four of them do go Bankai. We sadly don't get all four captains yell 'BANKAI' all at once, but we do get to see all four of them activate and call out the names of their Bankai and... I'm sorry, I just kind of geek out at hearing all of these. Everyone's favourite Bankai, Senbonzakura Kageyoshi, of course, gets animated beautifully. 

And the subsequent Bankai-sealing by the Sternritter is also done rather beautifully, too, particularly the showcase of Jakuho Raikoben and Kokujo Tengen Myo'o being absolutely disintegrated as the medallions absorb them. (Actually, is this a version of Sklaverei?) The other captains are informed with Matsumoto activating a Kido spell, they're all shocked, and then we get a fun inversion of Bleach monologuing tropes because it's Kyoraku that monologues... and then Robert Accutrone just charges in and shoots Kyoraku point-blank, blowing off the man's hat. And then Robert goes into his Vollstandig form, Grimaniel, and shoots out Kyoraku's right eyeball. 

It's a pretty short, quick scene, but I actually do really like this confrontation between Kyoraku and Robert! Shame it didn't really get a follow up later on, but what a great, fast-paced scene! 

Akon ends up contacting Ichigo -- and the anime does cut out a whole lot of explanation on how Akon manages to track Ichigo's substitute badge and all that jazz -- and ends up calling Urahara. There's an interesting bit of dark trolling as Urahara starts off with a cheerful "moshi-moshi, how are things doing over there?" before Akon realizes that Urahara and Ichigo are dealing with the same threat as each other, and then Urahara throws the same question back at Akon again. 

The focus of the scene is still in Urahara's conversation with Akon, but we get a fun sequence of Ichigo still fighting Quilge Opie who gets more and more frustrated that he can't steal Ichigo's Bankai, while Ichigo just keeps Getsuga Tenshou-ing the dude. There's a fun bit where Ichigo asks Quilge why they're stealing/sealing Bankai, then Quilge doing the smart thing and shutting up... but then Ichigo mocks Quilge for being afraid of Bankai and Quilge going all berserk and screaming about how the Wandenreich fears nothing...

...then he gets a hole blown through him by Urahara! That's fucking hilarious. Apparently when Quilge's all hamming shit up, he got so agitated that he dropped his Blut Vene ability.

As Ichigo runs through the Garganta, Urahara starts giving some exposition about the data he's been collecting about Quincy abilities. Vollstandig, Blut Arterie, Blut Vene, Bankai-stealing... but Urahara, for once, got outsmarted because Quilge isn't dead yet! He uses the power of the Jail to seal away the opening of the Garganta gateway, and wrap Ichigo up in a jail-bubble. And there's a surprisingly shocking scene of Chad with several holes blown through his arm and stomach in Hueco Mundo, which I didn't remember at all!

Pretty fun episode, overall. The action feels pretty smooth, and while I'm still not the biggest fan of how the 'Bankai stealing-vs-sealing' stuff is going on, at least the action in the scene and the animation and voice-acting and everything feels pretty damn great. 

Random Notes:

• 
  Yes, it is "Äs Nödt", technically, but it's a bit hard for me to type in his name like that all the time.
• No new Uryu/Ryuken scenes this time around, but considering how much more action-packed and focused on Bankai stuff this episode is, it's understandable. 
• NaNaNa, Bambietta and As Nodt all get the pink title cards in this episode.
• The anime adds an extra scene of a Hell Butterfly landing on Rose's shoulder and relaying the casualty report of Kira to him. The manga does have a scene of Rose receiving the message, but it was telepathic. 
• The manga has Rose alternate between referring to his guitar as just his guitar, and as the specific model -- the Gibson Flying V. Here all of Rose's lines are changed to just 'guitar', which ends up making some of the dialogue between him and NaNaNa a bit repetitive.
• Who did Ukitake fight? We get to see the hints of black hair. Is it Askin Nakk Le Vaar? I don't think the manga ever made the identity of Ukitake's opponent clear. 
• It is pretty dumb that Mask De Masculine gets taken out by Byakuya dropping him down a floor. He can't just fly or jump or climb back up? But then it is Mask. He probably got distracted by a butterfly or something.
• Okay, the animation team really likes that scene of Bambietta kicking a Reishi ball towards Komamura, yes? It's not just me? 
• It is interesting that from Histugaya's reaction, he doesn't seem to be able to contact to Hyorinmaru... but it can't be that the Sternritter seal the Zanpakuto spirits, because the captains can still utilize the Shikai.
• The removal of censorship in Bleach TYBW is the most evident in scenes of characters massacring nameless goons. Bambietta literally butchering some Gotei 13 guards in this episode, and also Apacci and Mila-Rose killing the Soldats in the previous episode. 
• NaNaNa talking about defeating Rose within 'five minutes' is also in the manga, and I wonder if this was meant to be a hint about his 'Underbelly' powers? Not that it's going to really matter down the line, but still.