Bleach, Thousand-Year Blood War, Episode 18: Rages at Ringside
It's honestly the same argument with Bambietta beating Shinji last episode... I don't mind that the Visored still lose to their respective opponents in the canon manga since the story that needed to be told was Komamura's and Renji's respectively, but it's still kind of a disappointment that none of the Visored actually show up with their Hollow masks after all of the focus this anime adaptation made towards the 'Hollow and Quincies are the antithesis to each other'. Even a simple one-line explanation of why they're not using their Hollow masks would've sufficed. Hell, even if they do use their Hollow masks and they still lost anyway to Mask, I wouldn't have minded! It wouldn't be satisfying, but it would suffice, y'know?
Again, the status update is a nice scene, but I really do wish that this was... something else? Maybe even an acknowledgement about Shinji's Bankai taking out the Soldats, or even showing what other Sternritter (like NaNaNa or Robert) are doing at this point?
Of course, we get the activation of Kensei's Bankai, Tekken Tachikaze. Still one of the coolest non-prominent Bankais in the series, and while I do appreciate that the animation we get here is cool, it's kind of a shame that we didn't get a bit more? I do like that they still focused a bit on Tekken Tachikaze's gauntlets, and how it changes from blades to brass knuckles and the like. Again, a lot of Kensei's regretfully short moments like him getting pissed that Shuhei was beaten by such a 'weak attack' is kept... though also his explanation about his Bankai is also kept. It's a bit less egregious for Kensei, though I am genuinely surprised that they didn't change this into an internal monologue or kept it for the eyecatchers.
We get the beginning of the 'theme' of the Mask De Masculine fight, which I actually thought they would emphasize a bit more -- that Mask is a 'superstar' and a 'hero', and Kensei (and later Rose and Renji) muse that they are the 'villains' of this fight. Again, I really do think that this could've been emphasized a bit more.
James, however, gets sliced up by Rose's Kinshara, which is surprisingly censored a fair bit to be a cleaner cut compared to its manga equivalent... but still bloody? Eh. We then get the activation of Rose's Bankai, Kinshara Butodan... which, admittedly, Rose's dialogue has been revised to make him sound like much less of a schmuck in talking about how his Bankai's effect is caused by music-based illusions. Rose's dialogue is revised to make him sounds more poetic, and while he's still monologuing about his powers, I do appreciate that the dialogue does make him look a bit less of a moron.
We get to see 'Sea Drift', 'Prometheus' and 'Ein Heldenben', but Mask catches the idea that the music causes the effects of the Bankai by stabbing his fingers into his ears, which ruptures his eardrums.
Mask then unleashes a 'Star Flash', before zapping a star-shaped hole into Rose's chest. Mask is about to shoot Rose again before Abarai Renji finally arrives with his brand-new clothes. Renji introduces himself to Mask as 'a villain', something that, again, I really do wish that Mask's hamminess would lead him into yelling that he's a 'hero' or a 'superstar' a bit more. Rukia shows up and carries the two near-dead Visored captains out... and, yeah, really did wish that they had done a bit more.
Mask brags about how Renji should've ganged up with Rukia and fought him 2-v-1 because villains are free to use any dirty tricks, and kinda remembers Renji from before (and subsequently backtracks to say that a 'hero' doesn't remember all the villains he's beaten). But then Mask proceeds to ignore all of Renji's subsequent replies because his eardrums are ruptured and James needs to cheer for Mask to regenerate from his wounds.
...wait, how does Mask hear James's cheering if his eardrums are shot? Eh.
I also find it surprising that this sequence isn't played up as much for comedy as I thought it would. Anyway, Renji slices up James again with Zabimaru, before the horrifying sequence as James, this eldritch being, just keeps regenerating and smaller James-es keep popping out out of the mouth of the corpse of the original one.
The anime actually removes a fair amount of the earlier fight between Renji and Mask, including a pretty cool sequence where Renji elbows Mask's head into the ground when he does a headbutt, as well as a lot of visual comedy with the star on Mask's mask transforming as he tries to remember who Renji is. While I can understand removing a lot of the comedy moments to go straight from the intensity of the Kensei/Rose beatdown to Renji overwhelming Mask, I really do think that this does reduce the buildup and the 'oomph' of the fight.
Renji and Mask continue to fight, leading to a new anime scene where part of Mask's mask being ripped up and Renji mocking that a 'hero' would hide their mask like a petty criminal. In addition to mocking around 90% of Western superheroes, is Renji subtly making a dig at all of the Hollow masks in this series? Always loved the sequence of Mask just flexing his stomach wound shut.
We get Mask unleashing a Star Lariat, and this sequence is played out to be much quicker than its manga counterpart. Mask just unleashes attack by attack and claims that Renji will not survive the fall to the ground. Mask then goes full Vollstandig, creating a gigantic energy star construct and unleashing Star Flash: Supernova and vaporizing... well, all the clones of James-es on the ground. I do like the brief look of confusion, and Mask at least notes that James will come back to life due to the nature of their powers. The anime alters Mask's line a bit to make him sound a bit more callous, with lines like 'more importantly, the villain is dead'.
And then Renji activates his Bankai, and Mask thinks that Renji has activated his Bankai before dying. I guess Mask actually took As Nodt's advice in the first invasion and actually researched Renji's Hihio Zabimaru from the 'Daten'? But, of course, we get the debut of Renji's true Bankai. The snake part is cool enough, but the anime gives special attention to the baboon arm as it clatters into place around Renji's body like a goddamn skeletal demon.
Well, we get the showcase of So'o Zabimaru. Renji unleashes parts of his Bankai, using Hihio to expand the size of the skeletal baboon arm and grab Mask's and crack his bones. Mask then gives a generic rant about 'justice and evil' is pointless and what he's going to do is to kill Renji... which, again, I really wished that Mask's obsession with being the 'hero' or the 'superstar' was a bit more prominently shown with his monologues.
Renji stabs Mask with Orochio, plunging his blade into Mask's chest before activating Zaga Teppo -- creating a gigantic snake head made out of Reishi that causes crackles of blue lightning to appear, which slams down on Mask and reduces him into ashes.
From a distance, Juhabach views Mask's defeat and muses that "James is dead", and praises his performance before absorbing the remnants of Mask's ashen form. This... this exchange is actually explained by Bleach's author Tite Kubo online, which I didn't find out until during the process of writing this review -- the true Sternritter is actually James, and 'Mask De Masculine' is the manifestation of the 'Superstar' schrift as James's ideal 'Superstar'. I actually am surprised that there wasn't a bit more clarification about the enigmatic 'James' line from Juha.
Juhabach blorps into a shadow form and leaves (which I think is anime-original), leaving a conversation between Uryu and Haschwalth about Juhabach's sleep and how necessary it is to his status as the Father of the Quincy, and how it'll relate to Uryu's status as Juha's successor. We get some of Uryu and Haschwalth's hostility be cut down a bit, before Haschwalth offers to explain something that even Soken doesn't know... a nice little nod to the greater Ishida clan as the last living Quincies. And... we don't get any Ichigo post-credits training scene, but having Uryu as the alternate one is neat enough. This one will presumably build up a bit to BG9 and Cang Du's execution, and I do kinda hope that that scene is explained a bit on what it's all about.
And... that's really it for me for this episode. Unlike the Komamura episode, where they didn't remove anything but added just enough for the event to feel improved from a Komamura character standpoint, I really did think they could've done more. Even if Renji himself is just being cool and badass in this sequence, I really did feel like they could've highlighted Mask as 'the Superstar' a fair bit more here.
Random Notes:
- Between his TOOOOH yells and one part of his animation showing the light glowing from his belt, Mask De Masculine is really channeling the Showa-era Kamen Riders a bit, huh?
- Meanwhile, him yelling sei sei SEI SEI SEI SEI SEI ('star' repeated many times) brings to mind JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. We even get a ora-ora barrage against Renji at one point!
- I do really find Kyoraku and Mayuri's snark-to-snark combat to be charming, especially the lines about sipping tea and sipping blood... but it does ring a bit hollow when they're discussing about how they've lost almost 70% of their forces.
- It is always cool to me that Tekken Tachikaze's basically a continuous stream of explosive impacts whenever Kensei brings in the gauntlet portions of his Bankai in contact against the enemy... but why the fuck would you punch Mask away from you, Kensei? Just keep your gauntlet in contact with Mask until he dies!
- With the sheer amount of effects that some Bankais have, and such a minimal involvement of 'elements' in this franchise, it is rather odd that Mask treats it as such a confusing thing that Kinshara Butodan can utilize flames and water.
- Kinshara Butodan's weird golden humanoids being CGI is 100% appropriate.
- I did giggle a bit when I saw that Rukia just uses like, strips of cloth to transport Kensei and Rose. I get that it's efficient and whatnot, but in a series where people display superhuman strength all the time I did find it hilarious.
- They obviously survive this, but I actually find it funny that Rukia doesn't evacuate Ikkaku, Yumichika and Shuhei, leading one to presume that they got caught up in Star Flash: Supernova.
- Rather interestingly, comparing this to the manga, they removed the line where Renji and Mask recognize each other from the first invasion, leading to the grudge match rivalry... which is definitely a regrettable loss.
- A bit more interesting is kind of reducing the amount of explanation to how Mask's "Superstar" power works, which, if you take the information at face value, ends up making Mask seemingly recover quickly and gain temporary power-ups from James's cheering instead of constantly doubling in power or whatever and breaking the power-scaling of the series.
- After Hyorinmaru's spirit's appearance a couple episodes back -- and I realize that's in the manga -- I'm actually disappointed that Zabimaru's spirit didn't have a cameo here in either her original beastly form or the humanized woman from the filler arc.
Damn, they really made the Visoreds look incompetent. It really is a shame that the Visored captains ended up being subject to the 'Worf Effect'. Utlized properly, they could have been an actual force to be reckoned with. For instance, the inability to use Bankai, which as you said was a plot point too rashly abandoned, would have been the perfect place for them to utilize their alternative power. It's so weird that for all their unique advantage and all the big deal made about Hollowfication being a means to attain great strength that the Visoreds rarely use that trump card. It'd be one thing if there was an explanation like they're not allowed to use it on Soul Society but there's just no reason for them not to especially when the stakes are the highest they've ever been.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the Mask vs Renji fight, I agree that it was sort of underwhelming but I think it may also be due to the fact that Mask's power is also absurd. The exponential nature of his strength and overall cartoonish nature just makes him less of a threat and more of a Looney Toon character, which makes Kensei and Rose look more like a joke. Renji does get to look cool for sure but it felt more like he was beating up Bugs Bunny more than anything, and given that Mask is not the only Quincy with absurd exponential power increase or seemingly limitless power (Gerard, Lille, Gremmy, and Pernida come to mind), this problem may persist to ends of the arc.
As for Uryu and Yhwach, I really hope that they explore give the former a more prominent role this time around and the latter some backstory or even motivation. Yhwach always seemed lacking in the motivation department when compared to the other villains like Ginjo/Tsukishima and (especially) Aizen, despite technically causing the most devastation. wanting to just kill the Soul King and 'reunite the worlds' just for the sake of it instead of any personal motivation.
As we reach the more shaky parts of the story, it does make me wonder how much of the source material they are going to stick to. Like you said, this adaptation will likely extend the source material instead of changing it and so far they've stuck to it quite well, but it can't be denied that Bleach was rushing to a conclusion in the final days of it's run which left more than a few unsatisfying results as the arc reached it's end. If they plan to fix the things they didn't do quite right this time around, then I wonder if a few changes from the manga will be implemented if not out of necessity.
I really do wonder if they couldn't remove or alter too much of a fight that was already depicted in the manga? It did feel weird that they extended the Shinji/Bambietta Sakanade fight, but didn't at least give him a token effort to use his Bankai after establishing it in the same episode?
DeleteI mean, I still get it -- the Visoreds needed to lose for this fight to go on, and they were simply unfortunately subjected to the Worf effect, as you said. And as I said in my review... I don't even mind the fact that they lost, it's how they lost that was rather galling.
And it's the smaller plot problem compared to the ones that the anime adaptation *did* fix (which would be the lack of context on the Soul King, Ichigo disappearing and Uryu having zero screentime until the end) but I would still maintain that the whole stolen Bankai subplot... really didn't go anywhere. Heck, other than Cang Du and As Nodt, no one even tries to use the stolen Bankai. And Nodt didn't even get to use it against Rukia!
Even a simple line about 'using Hollowfication here would upset the politicians/would throw the reiatsu into havoc' would've sufficed, which is what I expected to be added in this episode. Again, they were happy to add a full scene of Mask beating up Ikkaku, Yumichika and Shuhei... couldn't they have Kensei go hollow-mode before he got defeated by Mask?
I personally don't mind the ridiculousness of Mask, it's just that the power of the Superstar really did honestly come out of nowhere and the limits are so poorly defined (which is a common problem in all of Bleach). I do think that at the end of the day removing a lot of the comedy moments on Renji's part (not on Mask's, a lot of his is kept inside) does kind of make this fight flow a bit more hollow than it did in the manga. Renji just shows up, shows off his cool new form and that's it.
I really, really am hoping we get a lot more for Uryu. What we've gotten has been minimal screentime but has improved Uryu's agency and character by leaps and bounds in this arc, when in the manga he was reduced from basically being Ichigo's most prominent human friend into a glorified plot device. Juhabach has some motivation in the manga, but it was delivered so haphazardly and lacking context about the Soul King's backstory that was only ever revealed in the spin-off novels (which they seem to at least be covering here) did really make him come off as a generic doomsday villain.
I've always thought that the moment that Bleach was abruptly rushed was around the time that... there was a chapter that ended with Zombie Cyborg Kira showing up, and everything seemed to be paced relatively well around then, but then in the last four or five chapters everything just rushed to oblivion as the plot amounts to 'uhhhh the Sternritters die anticlimactically, here's a magic arrow, Ichigo does a slash and we do a time skip'. I remember the frustration of that month, and more than anything, I really hope they change almost everything about that sequence. The specific scenes from the last couple of chapters could stay, but there needs to be a lot more context and more of a resolution towards the defeats of characters like Juhabach, Gerald and Lille.
In defense of Shinji's Bankai, it is rather more potent with multiple enemies while his Shikai is excellent for one-on-one combat. In the novels he mentions that his Bankai for weaklings while his Shikai for strong opponents, though theoretically you can just drop Shinji amongst the strong Sternritters and have him go Bankai. I did wish his efforts were at least acknowledged like what you said about Shinji maybe eliminating the majority of the Soldats, giving the surviving Soul Reapers room to retreat. It ties back to the underutilization of the lack of Bankai, since Shinji has a more practical Shikai than Bankai but also Hollowfication on top of it.
DeletePersonally, one of the biggest problems in this arc for me is how underutilized each faction's combat abilties are. The Soul Reapers who have plenty of tools in their arsenal are overly reliant on their Zanpakutos and barely use their other skills like Kido, which is a viable alternative offense, or Hollowfication in the case of the Visored captains (Is it too much to ask to have Shinji at least use a Cero against Bambi or Gerard?).
The Sternritters on the other hand just use their Schrifts and Vollständigs when pressured. That isn't necessarily bad but it's a missed opportunity that they didn't use the techniques displayed by Uryu before. Quincy techniques like Blut Vene/Arterie (which was only estabilished in this arc to be fair) are used only a few times and Quincy equipment like Seele Schneider or Reishi capsules just disappear. The only person who displayed any of the Quincy's reishi manipulation techniques was Quilge, who used Ransotengai and showed the Reishi absorption capability of his Vollständig.
With these two things combined, it does make the battles in the arc feel less dynamic because you know you're waiting for the next Schrift/Vollständig or Shikai/Bankai upgrade to even the odds in either favor. It's still awesome to watch Bankais we haven't seen before in action but it does mean that every battle will follow this pattern (Gerard vs 3 captains was particularly egregious with two captains getting Bankai upgrades and Gerard's hax ability).
Yeah, I get that. I did read the Can't Fear Your Own World novels, and I do like that Shinji's character is themed with such contradictions that his Shikai works better on a stronger opponent, and his Bankai works better on a bunch of weaklings. It's just a shame that it's not called out in this expanded anime. Ditto for the Soldats -- it's rather weird, too, because this episode would've been perfect with the (IMO otherwise unnecessary) sequence where Mayuri and Kyoraku organize a retreat for the Gotei 13's footsoldiers.
DeleteI *am* still holding out hope that Shinji gets to use his Bankai to screw over the quartet of female Sternritters, since none of them other than Giselle really got a good 'out'. Candice gets a beatdown from Ichigo but otherwise she, Liltotto and Meninas just kinda disappear from the plot before they kinda-sorta defect and get killed by Juhabach in the most anticlimactic way? Eh.
I absolutely agree that a lot of the other lesser abilities that aren't Shikai, Bankai and Vollstandig are basically under-utilized, but I've honestly felt that this was the case ever since the Espada arc. I really do think the only times that characters use a lot of Kido is when they haven't had their Bankais revealed yet -- so characters like Urahara, Aizen, even Rukia in the filler arcs in the anime. But there is at least a couple of rather clever usages of them, with the highlight being, of course, Hachigen's fight against Barragan.
I've always found it rather bizarre that Blut Vene, Blut Arterie and Sklaverei are never used by any of the Quincies. I think someone, it could be Quilge, note that the techniques used by the Ishida clan are a lot more archaic, and that's fair... but it's still rather disappointing that we don't at least acknowledge some of the items and abilities that Uryu had used before. It really did feel that other than Quilge Opie, a lot of the other Sternritters are just Kubo going 'what funny abilities I can turn into a villain?' With the Bluts, it really is extra-confusing because why even introduce them in the arc if they're only going to be relevant in the first couple of fights and forgotten? The same complaint goes to the Bankai-stealing plotline, which I still find had a rather terrible resolution for the impact it initially had.
And honestly, while I do get that at least three captains do try and work without Bankai (Hitsugaya improving Shikai and teamwork; Soi Fon perfecting Shunko; Komamura using a forbidden technique) it is rather disappointing that we don't get to see a bit more. I guess Nanao uses a Bakudo to block Haschwalth?
...the only way I feel this could be fixed is if Juhabach actually *uses* Yamamoto's Bankai in his fight against Ichibei or Ichigo. After all, that is the only other stolen Bankai that Urahara's deus ex machina couldn't possibly take back!