Bleach TYBW E16 Review: iaknaB s'ijnihS

Bleach, Thousand-Year Blood War, Episode 16: The Fundamental Virulence

Slightly late with my reviews to these. I'm kind of playing catch-up! But 'Fundamental Virulence' did admittedly have a fair amount of changes from the source material. We even start off with some brand-new scenes of minor Gotei 13 characters like Iba, Momo and Isane fighting a bunch of Soldat. Again, lots of these scenes really do help make the war feel like a proper war!

The first half of the episode deals with the ramifications of the previous episode's fight. Sternritter "I", Cang Du, arrives to claim his fight against Histugaya, and drops the body of Matsumoto onto the ground from his cloak. I've always wondered, back in the day, if Matsumoto was really killed off here? She does come back later to life, but under the powers of the 'Zombie'. The hollow look in her eyes and the nasty slash on her neck, plus Cang Du's serious personality makes me highly doubt it, but it is honestly rather odd that the death isn't really played up that much. Cang Du then activates Daiguren Hyorinmaru, preparing to kill Hitsugaya with his own Bankai. 

We then get a good chunk of the Mayuri/Urahara conversation, and I've always found it hilarious how Mayuri was absolutely willing to turn off the communication out of spite just so Urahara doesn't get the credit, potentially dooming the Soul Society in the process. We get most of the explanation about the Shin'eiyaku pills, and how the Hollow reiatsu is poisonous to Quincies... but we get an additional line of explanation that fixes a plot hole in the source material, which is "J" Quilge Opie being able to use Sklaverei to absorb Ayon into his body. Where back then the fandom assumed that Quilge's able to integrate Ayon's Hollow form due to his "Jail" powers or something, but turns out Quilge being transformed into that monstrous form is a sign of his Quincy nature rejecting the Hollow Reiatsu. It's a nice new bit of tying up the loose ends on this front for sure!

Again, a lot of these Mayuri/Urahara scenes are streamlined but most of the funniest lines are retained, like Mayuri being petty and Urahara being like five steps in front of Mayuri, Shinji talking shit about Urahara's line about 'if you don't know me, I'm Kisuke Urahara', or that one random generic 12th Division goons briefly being impressed by Urahara and being shushed by his buddies. We actually get to see the spy insects that were only mentioned in the original manga, which are hideous insects with baby faces. Some of them are conjoined together! That's nasty. 

Again, a lot of these explanations were already in the source material -- like Urahara's observation about how the Quincies never stole the Resurreccion of the Arrancar -- but the way it's shown here is so streamlined and minimalized that it's a bit easier to swallow. 

I still do think it's kind of a shame that we don't get anything about the Visored Captains and their already Hollow-form Bankais, or that the stolen Bankais subplot just get wrapped up rather quickly like this, but eh. 

We wrap up the remaining fights, then. Hitsugaya touches the pill and causes Cang Du's stolen Daiguren Hyorinmaru to partially explode in blood. BG9 is about to use a gigantic mass of tendrils to stab and skewer Soi Fon in so many parts when Omaeda speed-blitzes in and takes Soi Fon away, before giving her the pill. Good job, Omaeda! We get a hilarious line of BG9 asking Omaeda to 'speak up' because his robotic ears are still ringing from the previous explosion. Soi Fon, however, just summons her Bankai, Jakuho Raikoben, and in a pretty amazingly-animated explosion, unleashes the mother of all gigantic explosions that engulfs BG9. This anime does know how to make pretty explosions!

We get a bit of a martial arts fight between Cang and Hitsugaya that's a bit extended from the original material, including a barrage of kicks from Cang that is a bit more similar to his showing in the first cour. There's a nice contrast between the two, too, with Hitsugaya's Daiguren Hyorinmaru being light blue, while Cang's stolen one is purple. Each of them also has one wing, and Hitsugaya's got a hollow-eye partial-mask on his face made out of ice, which resembles an eyepatch. That's cool!

And then... I'm honestly not sure if the subsequent exchange makes a bit more sense in the original Japanese? Hitsugaya constantly talks about how Hyorinmaru can't attack itself, causing Cang to get angry at Hitsugaya for personifying his sword spirits and Bankai spirits and the like... which... isn't like, an opinion that the Shinigami have but an actual fact that is observable throughout the series. And the Quincies have been watching from the shadows, so Cang doesn't really have an excuse! But then he randomly talks about how he "does not believe in pantheism", which is defined as the belief or worship of multiple gods, which... I think is meant to be a jab at Christianity, but it's just such a non-sequitur in a completely unrelated discussion that it just makes Cang Du's line here sound rather nonsensical. 

Anyway, we get a badass voiced line by Hyorinmaru as the giant ice dragon spirit briefly shows itself behind Hitsugaya, before we get the final clash. Cang Du launches a 'She Jin Zhao' attack (a blast of reishi shaped like a snake, which isn't very clear in the anime) but Hitsugaya just unleashes a gigantic pillar of ice shaped like a cross, snarking that he can't make it a pentacle to fit the Quincy. 

...and then Hitsugaya falls, while a dark shadow walks towards him. Sorry, Hitsugaya, this is it for you for a while!

We get to see Bambietta and As Nodt see their own Medallions break and the Bankai leave them, while Uryu and Juhabach observe from their throne room. But far more cooler (and unexpected) is the anime-original scene hinted at in the trailers, and taken from the quasi-canonical sequel novel series, Can't Fear Your Own World... which I finished reading earlier this year! Shinji is faced down by several dozen Soldat, and Shinji talks about how he's pissed that his own soldiers are killed... but then talks about how some of his abilities can only be used without allies nearby.

And then as some fancy jazz music happens, and some upside-down nonsense goes on with the shots of Shinji, he says the words he never said in the canon manga... BANKAI. Sakashima Yokoshima Happofusagari. 

Absolutely love the jazz music that plays here. We get several shots, in a pop-art style, of the Soldat shooting their own comrades in their heads, and Shinji even gets to slash the neck of one Soldat that just happens to fall into his lap. It's a very random showcase of Bankai, but it's definitely much more welcome in giving Shinji something to do instead of being one of the prominent captains that never does anything in the source manga. Now dealing with 'all the Soldat' does seem rather underwhelming, but it is actually convenient that around the time of the second invasion, the Soldat really cease to matter as it all comes down to the Sternritter versus the captains/vice-captains. The idea that Shinji just murdered almost all the Soldat in this scene, and the fact that this cour does emphasize the Soldats running around a bit more in the earlier episodes, does help to make it a bit more important. 

Now the question is... is this it for Shinji's Bankai? Is this just the anime going 'yep, you guys get to see the Bankai that's shown up in novels and video games', or are we going to see Shinji use it in a subsequent fight? There are a lot of lesser Sternritter like Meninas, Liltotto, NaNaNa, Robert and some others that didn't quite get the most dignified deaths, and I definitely wouldn't mind if Shinji got to wipe some of them out. 

Meanwhile, we get an extended fight sequence between Ikkaku, Yumichika and Shuhei against Mask De Masculine. In the manga, we just see the opening of this fight and then later on once the three guys are taken down, but we actually do get a proper action scene between them! Mask gets to really ham things up a fair bit, and he's definitely a character that comes off better with a voice yelling English words like SUPERSTAR and COMEON! and IMPOSSIBULLL! The actual action scenes are fun, if basic enough, like Mask slamming Ikkaku and Yumichika together before spinning Ikkaku around with his spear. Shuhei then returns the favour by saying that it's a 'chain deathmatch'. The fight seems to end with Shuhei tricking Mask by releasing his chains and allowing Ikkaku to get a good shot in with Hozukimaru, drawing blood from his face. 

We get a nice little anime addition of Bambietta looking at the now-useless medallion, turning it into a bomb, and blowing up some random nameless shinigami on a building -- a nice little expansion that does add to her flippant attitude. Bambietta rampages when her four cliques leave her behind and start blowing shit up, complaining that she looked like a fool, and that her target, the 'doggy' (wan-ko) isn't around for her to murder. 

And then we get Komamura's badass aerial entrance, slamming down in his fully-armoured, newly-helmeted masked form. And I absolutely love the addition of several lines and to remove Komamura from the initial part of this fight (where he already doesn't do anything anyway). Knowing what we do know about Dangai Joue and the time limit, it never really made sense in the manga for Komamura to stay behind and fight a relatively lower-ranking member like Bambietta. The anime adds several lines of saying Komamura's main priority is to avenge Yamamoto's death and how he's hunting down Juhabach's head right now... but he's going to only take time here because Bambietta's attacking the 7th Division. 

We get a cool one-liner from Shinji when Bambietta talks about the entry of 'heroes', and Shinji says that they can't really be heroes. Komamura actually leaves in this fight, while Shinji uses Sakanade to fuck with Bambietta's senses. The funky jazz music returns, with some fun uses of perspective, cutaways, and even a spiralling effect to really get Shinji's Sakanade release be fun. 

And, hell, Shinji even speaks backwards when he introduces himself as Hirako Shinji, Captain of the 5th Division, which is creepy and cool! We get some fun psychotic-angry expressions on Bambietta's face as she just unleashes her Explode powers while Shinji gloats, and... I do really think that Shinji looks less like he's prolonging the fight out of pride in this one and just trying to find the time to sneak in a deathblow. 

And then we get the badass scene as multiple Sternritters unleash their Vollstandig, including Bambietta and Mask (who are in a pinch)...  and it leads to the badass shot of the Seireitei with six Vollstandig pillars exploding up into the sky, which is always one of my favourite panels in this part of the arc. 

And then a lot of the beaten Sternritters seem to get a second wind. Bambietta is ready to lay down the smackdown, while Cang Du explodes from his icy prison (which never amounts to anything in the manga). 

We get another post-credits scene, where Ichigo is still wandering the Irazu Sando -- the Road of No Entry. We get a lot of ominous visions which I assume will be explained in full in a subsequent episode, but those that read the aforementioned Can't Fear Your Own World novel would know that the shots do correspond to the backstory of the Soul King given in that novel series, where his limbs were torn apart and imprisoned by nobles. None of the shots are clear enough to really understand without pausing the shots and piecing things together with foreknowledge of the novels or the rest of the manga, but we do get an ominous shot of Ichigo's eye gaining multiple pupils... which, again, doesn't really mean anything beyond being ominous, but manga readers will know that this is the sight of Juhabach and the Soul King's Almighty powers!

Overall... I do really like this a lot. A lot of the chapters that were adapted into this episode has had their contents changed, but mostly for the better. The jury's still out on whether this is a good enough showcase of Shinji's Bankai (who knows, he might use it in a more major way in a subsequent fight, either with Bambietta or against some other Quincies... but I do really like the more sensible explanation of certain plot holes like Komamura's objectives and the Quincy/Hollow poison thing. Adding more shots of what the more minor characters are doing is also always welcome!

Random Notes:

• The anime keeps the plot-continuity error line from the manga, where Cang Du talks about how this is 'the first time Hitsugaya saw his Bankai from the other side', despite Cang Du being one of the two Sternritters to use the stolen Bankai in the first invasion.
• While previously Mayuri's sunflower cloak just glows in rippling white, later on it glows in rippling rainbow colours. 
• Ikkaku and Yumichika are shown receiving two Shin'enyaku pills, which led some people to speculate that Yumichika has Bankai. While Shuhei and Ikkaku do have Bankai, it's also telling that Omaeda also got a pill (which he gave to Soi Fon) so I assume just everyone that is at roughly vice-captain level got a pill. Notably, Ikkaku consumes the pill and Yumichika doesn't. 
• We still have no idea if the weird dome-shaped structure that BG9 summons is the robot-man's Vollstandig. It still disappears after he decided to stand back up again, but it's not given the same glowing animation as the other Vollstandigs were in the anime. 
• Actually, poor Yumichika doesn't get to do much in the action scene, huh? He just gets bashed against Ikkaku and thrown into a building, and doesn't even get to release either Fuji or Ruri'iro Kujaku. 
• We get to see seven Vollstandig pillars by the end of the episode. We do know that two correspond to Bambietta and Mask De Masculine, and another one to Candice (who we'll see next episode). BG9 and Cang Du also activate their Vollstandigs to escape death, though Cang's Vollstandig was initially blue and we don't get to see a blue one in the next shot -- that might be an animation error, though. Not sure who the other two are?
  
• Thanks to the skies being red and the lighting being relatively consistent, the line about Ikkaku and Yumichika discussing that it's night and the shadows are darker has been removed. 
• It was actually rather nonsensical that Komamura would just stand around while Shinji fought Bambietta and not do anything but save Momo, especially considering that we know about the time limit. So it's nice to see that he goes off to hunt Juhabach and presumably only goes back to fight Bambietta when there's a clear danger to Shinji's life.