Bleach TYBW E22 Review: Double Undead

Bleach, Thousand-Year Blood War Arc, Episode 22: Marching Out the Zombies

Trying to get caught up with reviewing Bleach episodes, and... thankfully, episodes 22 and 23 are relatively straightforward battle episodes. The previous one did cram a whole lot of chapters at once, making it be a bit more of a struggle to talk about everything concisely. This one adapts a majority of the first part of the Giselle fight, which... it does admittedly stand up a lot more watching the anime, especially since we didn't really get an extension on the mass Quincy-vs-Shinigami melee that the end of episode 21 seemed to set up. 

The anime is a lot more clear that the shockwave from Juhabach's pillar to the Soul King's realm is truly massive, knocking down the combatants before they can fight. We get a brief (anime-original) shot of Shuhei fighting against Liltotto and Meninas, which is a short, small shot but I did appreciate this, at least. Far more appreciated is yet another line of Kyoraku and Nanao observing the events, with Kyoraku once more emphasizing that Squad Zero is really doing something strange in allowing all this to happen, noting that them shooting Juhabach down is an actual possibility that they are foregoing. Kyoraku notes that this might all be part of Ichibei's plan, and I do really like all this added focus to Ichibei having his own weird-ass plan going in the background.  

By the way, I still find it really weird that Kyoraku's just standing there in the castle other than the brief piss-off stand-off fight with Haschwalth... but there is something to be said for the previous Captain-Commander charging into battle to take heads and getting his own head taken by the enemy. 

We then cut to Ichigo, Orihime and Chad discussing about Uryu's current seeming betrayal, and while I've been on the side of not really liking a lot of the compressed adaptation that they've been doing, cutting out pretty much all the jokes in this scene surprisingly improved it. It really would kill the intensity of the Ichigo/Uryu scene (which I admittedly didn't find super impressive in either version) if we go straight to Chad trying to get Ichigo to notice Orihime's fanservice outfit, or for Ichigo to literally be unable to calm down unless Chad lobs him into a building. It's all stuff that gets cleared in the span of a single page in the source material, which is a bit less distracting, but in an already fast-paced anime it's appreciated that those scenes were trimmed. The scene ends with Ichigo proclaiming to 'beat up Ishida' to listen to his answers, leading Urahara to show up with his umbrella and his devil-may-care attitude and offer our heroes a way back up to the Royal Palace. 

We get to see the start of a fight scene that was offscreened very disappointingly in the manga -- NaNaNa, Candice and Robert all gathering around Kuchiki Byakuya as he disperses the Senbonzakura shield he made around himself. It's always kinda bullshit that in the manga we cut away from the big Quincy/Shinigami melee being interrupted to the whole Giselle arc, focusing on a single Sternritter, we cut away to Byakuya having defeated three off-screen (and three far more interesting ones) before we get the terrible Pepe arc. At the time of writing this I haven't watched episode 23 yet, so I don't know if we'll actually get an extended fight scene with Byakuya against these three... but it's nice to see this fight set up.

Surprisingly, in an episode following one where a lot of scenes were cut, we get a whole new original scene and it's not one that's action... but a random scene of Iba and doggy!Komamura recovering from the blast and walking around. This is especially interesting because... Iba and Komamura never do anything relevant in-canon after this, so I do wonder if this is setting something up. I don't want to get my hopes up to get them dashed, but some resolution to the Komamura stuff would be appreciated. 

Rukia and Renji free themselves from the rubble, only for them to face off against Bazz-B. Bazz-B, in his terrible, cheap-looking Vollstandig, hovers up and badmouths Uryu in response to Rukia's question about why Uryu had defected. While, again, a lot of the comedic elements of this chapter is cut, I absolutely appreciate that Bazz-B and Renji's back and forth about 'chicken head', 'mohican haircut' and Renji's eyebrows, which I thought was a well-timed comedic moment between the two. They clash with Bazz-B forming a giant sword with Burner Finger Four, and we cut away to the beginning of the main fighting arc of the chapter.

Ikkaku and Yumichika corner the seemingly defenseless Giselle Gewelle, and I always found this to be a bit bullshit but funny -- the audience already knows what Giselle's powers are (or at least, her pre-established powers) and Yumichika somehow figures all of it out because Giselle's dialogue is somewhat baiting Ikkaku into slashing her... and that deduction spirals into him knowing that something about her blood splashing onto others will be dangerous. It's honestly rather ridiculous considering how varied Bleach powers can be, but oh well. Yumichika also expresses disgust and 'outs' Giselle about being a man, which... I'm not about to get into the discussion of this whole scene, or Yumichika's reaction about it, but Giselle gets absolutely pissed off. I really do appreciate the anime adapting Giselle's glorious facial expressions, which goes from shocked to mean, and then she summons Zombie Bambietta, who begins to rain bombs down on Ikkaku and Yumichika. 

We cut away from this to the Twelfth Division laboratories, where Urahara has set up a replica of the Kukaku clan's giant cannon. We get a fair chunk of exposition about how Mayuri built that cannon, and a nice little moment where Urahara admits that Mayuri's a great genius... just second to him. We also get a very compressed version of an already thin subplot in the source material. Yoruichi arrives (we cut all the sequence of her... awkward entry in the source material), and some exposition about Hiyori and the three Visoreds left in the human world closing up random dimensional distortions that the Quincy have been creating. It really does feel lacking, but the original subplot in the manga really didn't leave the anime adaptation team much to work with. I suppose it needed to be left in to explain why the Visoreds aren't helping and why Yoruichi is late, but otherwise it really is pretty evident that this whole sequence is definitely an afterthought. 

All of that takes place in the first half of the episode, and the second half is just the whole 'Marching Out the Zombies' storyline. Yumichika once more figures out the nature of "The Explode" faster than Komamura and Shinji did, which is honestly both kinda impressive and simultaneously kinda... makes Komamura look rather bad in comparison, huh? Anyway, Ikkaku charges in to stab Zombietta immediately, while Yumichika uses Hado #57: Dai'ichi Ten'yo to launch a bunch of rocks into the air to absorb the explosion-inducing reishi. Ikkaku manages to pierce Bambietta's neck and Yumichika slices off Bambietta's arm. But then Giselle announces that Bambi is already dead, and she just creates an explosion that blows away Ikkaku and Yumichika despite the horrific neck-wound. 

Giselle merrily skips around and notes that she can't turn living Quincies into zombies, and how she had to oh-so-sadly throttle the life out of Bambietta's neck with her own bare hands... and then we get a shot of her noting how the look on a dying Bambietta's face made her 'so excited'. Yes, I really do think that the back-to-back fight between Giselle and Pepe was really meant to show as much depravity from the villains that they could get away in the manga. It worked for Giselle, if not for the latter. 

There is an odd sequence, though, where Giselle notes that Shinigami can be turned into zombies if splashed by her blood... and then bites into her own finger and seems to prepare to turn Ikkaku and Yumichika into zombies... which really begs me to wonder why she doesn't do it immediately and instead had to goad Ikkaku (and the nameless unranked Shinigami last episode) into stabbing her and spraying her blood anywhere. I guess she is a lunatic, though. 

At this point, the bright light of Kurotsuchi Mayuri's light-suit surrounds the area, and I absolutely love how this changes the red-skied tone of the fight initially. Giselle and Mayuri exchange some barbs, with Mayuri talking himself up as usual. Giselle then sweet-talks Bambietta like a doll, and Bambietta, with saliva drooling down her mouth, keeps talking about how she 'wants Gigi's...' before Giselle beats Bambietta up and berates her for constantly wanting Giselle's blood. Yeah, Giselle's a lunatic. It flows on a bit quicker in the manga so the whole 'wait, is she talking about sex' undertone isn't as obvious, but the added voice acting really does make Giselle sound insanely unhinged; a psychopath who's basically turning Bambietta to a yes-woman zombie slave. We get a glorious nightmare face out of Giselle as Zombie-Bambi begs to be a good minion to Giselle.

And this is kind of meant to mirror, I think, Mayuri's relationship with Nemu -- who he also treats like nothing better than a tool/slave despite being his daughter and vice-captain all the way back in the original Soul Society arc. Mayuri actually praises Giselle's dynamic with Bambietta. We get a couple more barbs between Mayuri and Giselle about 'outstanding' and 'ordinary' people. Zombietta activates her Vollstandig and launches a bunch of bomb-reishi at Mayuri, leading to the hilarious visual image of Nemu jumping away while holding a rigid, unmoving Mayuri like a cardboard cutout. 

Mayuri tells Nemu to activate some gadgets they prepared, which have the fancy proper name of "Reishi Kotei Sochi" but I always refer to them as Reishi pokeballs. Again, of course Mayuri has prepared countermeasures against Bambietta, and these Reishi pokeballs basically capture Bambietta's Explode projectiles and delayed their explosions for a couple of seconds... long enough for them to explode in Bambietta's face as she flies right into the pokeballs.

Giselle then reveals her full zombie army, which consists of a lot of random Shinigami that she's been creating ever since the start of the invasion. In completely mocking concern, Mayuri talks about how he 'doesn't have the heart' of fighting members of the Gotei 13, because he is so 'full of love'... and he summons people with no attachment... which is the arrival of Mayuri's Zombie Squadron: the random arrival of a bunch of dead ex-Espada, namely Cirucci Sanderwicci, Dordoni Alessandro Del Socaccio, Luppi Antenor and Charlotte Chuhlhorne. 

This was always a big 'wtf' moment in the manga, especially since I didn't even realize that there was the 'mystery' around what Mayuri found in Szayelaporro's laboratory in the Espada arc. But while that accounts for Dordoni and Cirucci's bodies, which were established to be gathered by that one Exequias guy, it really doesn't explain how Luppi survived having his upper half atomized, or Charlotte being there but none of the other Espada/Arrancar in Fake Karakura Town were. I guess Charlotte wins out because he's the most popular and flamboyant of the Arrancar? But I never really got the feeling that Luppi was all that popular. 

Ikkaku and Yumichika react in shock against specifically Luppi and Charlotte respectively, who they fought... and Charlotte, of course, is the most entertaining one out of the four resurrected Arrancar and immediately pisses off Yumichika by pretending to forget Yumichika's name. This leads to another fun moment as Yumichika prepares to murder Charlotte again. Dordoni and Cirucci are being the two sane people in the group -- initially looking for the people who defeated them (Ichigo and Uryu), before telling Luppi to not be calm since they are at the tender mercies of a lunatic. 

...said lunatic proceeds to blast them with jolts of electricity, shocking them in some fun black comedy. Mayuri gives some quick exposition about how he got his bodies on them, and we get some brief comedy of Charlotte pointing out that he's not from that vault... and he's also immune to the electric shocks. 

By the way, there are some inconsistencies at this point as Giselle's shinigami soldiers go back and forth between being CGI and hand-drawn... and I honestly wouldn't have minded them all being CGI until the action scenes. I felt like it would've been more consistent.

Luppi, Dordoni and Cirucci show off their fighting skills against the generic zombies, and... it's mostly just pretty cool action stuff. It's neat to see Dordoni's wind-kicks and Cirucci's Golondrina weapon, but I really did wish that they added more with the Arrancar's Resurrección? There was a cool shot of a zombie literally split in half by Cirucci's weapon, which I thought was neat.

I did really like Ikkaku and Yumichika's brief protests about Mayuri demolishing the bodies of former Gotei 13 members... and Mayuri gives this whole speech about how the Gotei 13, especially the 11th Division, shouldn't make such comments. The Gotei 13's sole objective is to protect the Seireitei, and any Shinigami that harms the Gotei should be killed, or even take their own life... and that these are the words of a man they all respect, who is Yamamoto. It's a surprisingly nice speech and probably one of the few words out of Mayuri's flamboyant bragging throughout this episode that's not entirely horseshit. Despite the arguments that Mayuri had with Yamamoto at the beginning of the arc, I always felt like, at least, in some way, he's paying homage to Yamamoto's ideals even if he doesn't care for the cause itself. 

Giselle fixes Bambietta's arm, as Charlotte arrives to fight her. And, well... I won't really discuss about the actual topics being breached here with Charlotte saying that Giselle is 'similar' to him, but if nothing else the anime team made the comedic timing with the voice-acting and the whiplash from Charlotte's sparkling to Giselle's tranquil-fury face done pretty well. 

More odd, though, is that Bambietta activates Vollstandig and attacks, only to literally be repelled off-handedly with a single hand by Charlotte in the same way that a newly powered-up Dragon Ball character shrugs off blows. It's particularly bizarre power-scaling which I think was done just for comedic effect, because... it took a whole new upgrade for Komamura's Kokujo Tengen Myo'o to defeat Vollstandig Bambietta before. And while this is a zombified Bambietta and presumably weaker than the living Bambietta that fought Komamura, Charlotte is also... not the strongest Arrancar. I don't even think he's 'captain-level', whatever that means, since he was beaten by Yumichika. There could have been something about Hollow reiatsu being stronger against Quincies or whatever, but no such explanation is offered.

Anyway, Charlotte grabs Bambietta's face and lobs her into a building, and the anime keeps the brief comedic moment where Bambietta smashes right next to Mayuri, causing Mayuri to comment that Charlotte 'missed' him and Charlotte does a hammy 'ah, no, my hand slipped' sequence... before we get Charlotte unleashing "Hissatsu! Beautiful Charlotte Chuhlhorne's Final Holy Wonderful Pretty Super Magnum Sexy Sexy Glamorous Cero Revive!" to basically... blast Bambietta away, I think for the rest of this battle.

The episode ends with the arrival of Zombie Captain Hitsugaya, all gray-skinned and red-eyed and dressed up in Quincy regalia. 

And... I've never been the biggest fan of the "Marching Out the Zombies" arc. I really did think that the Zombie and the Love arcs that follow Ichigo's arrival to be really... off. We just came off several okay-to-excellent 1v1 fights, and we're promised something epic with Ichigo as he arrives on the battlefield, only for the story to ram the brakes and then give us two extended multi-people mind-control Sternritter fights. The 'Zombie' fight is a bit more neat because Giselle is a much stronger character in terms of holding the story as opposed to Pepe, and we do get some nice moments for Mayuri and Yumichika. I also appreciate the anime actually giving this a bit more time to breathe, because this fight is just a reveal pileup. The Arrancar randomly showing up is some interesting fanservice in that I can't say that I hated the reveal, but it was always just kinda random. Still, that's more of the fault of the original source material than anything, and I do feel like this episode was competently adapted. 

Random Notes:

 

• The subtitled streaming versions of this episode removes Yumichika's line of dialogue about how Giselle smells like semen, a line that was kept in the original television broadcast.
• It's always weird that the Shinigami and Hollow could become 'even more' undead, but eh, whatever.
• 
  Until I actually compared the episode to the manga itself, it really is shocking just how much "comedy" moment is removed from the Team Ichigo scenes... though I can totally understand the rationale that all of these are removed. For Ichigo and company reacting to Uryu being gone, it puts the focus sorely on the dynamic of the group reeling at the shock of one of their friends 'going bad'; while the sequence in the 12th Division labs really honestly is just some awkward forced fanservice that's rather shoehorned in even by the standards of awkward forced fanservice. 
  
• In the manga, Chad just straight up throws Ichigo into a building to 'wake him up' and get him out of the shock of Uryu's seeming betrayal. 
• A line about Orihime noting that Uryu would be annoyed about being referred to as 'stubborn' is also removed. 
  
• Chad also randomly mentions Orihime's new outfit to Ichigo, causing him to get flustered over how more 'daring' it looks... which I always felt was always rather random coming from Chad. 
• Yoruichi also makes her entrance to the scene somehow shoving her hand between Orihime's breasts without anyone realizing, before berating Ichigo about his lack of reaction to Orihime's outfit, which was always bizarre.
• And we get the revelation that Urahara tricked Orihime into wearing the outfit, supposedly in a bid to impress Ichigo. 
• There's also a couple extra (and admittedly redundant) scenes about Mayuri explaining the true nature of the electric shocks (they just simulate pain) that is cut, but I really did feel like the scene of Dordoni and Circuci complaining for being shocked, and Luppi going "I barely said anything!" with his face drawn identically to them is kinda funny and am slightly sad to see them go.
• When NaNaNa, Candice and Robert surround Byakuya, there's a brief, lingering shot of Robert glancing behind at the remnants of the light pillar that Juhabach used to ascend. Considering Robert's last scenes would be the revelation that he knew about Aushwalen and is trying desperately to be chosen, it's a nice little foreshadowing. 
• I am pretty disappointed that the shot of Mayuri with the four zombie Arrancars doesn't have some Espada music playing to herald their arrival. 
• Wait, Nemu had a whole light-suit back when the light-suits debuted. Why did she take it off? This is also admittedly true in the source material, but it's kinda weird regardless. 
  
• Thanks to the anime cutting out the Bazz-B/Shinji sequence, we do miss out the debut of 'Burner Finger Three', and go straight to 4. 
• Yeah, Cirucci and Luppi bragging that "there's no way that we're losing to Shinigami!" is... patently not true, considering Dordoni and Charlotte were both killed by Shinigami, and Luppi was defeated by one. 
• We do get a lot of flashback sequences to the old Bleach anime, huh? Flashbacks to Uryu's adventures with Ichigo and company, flashbacks to Mayuri getting the corpses, flashback to Luppi and Charlotte's fights against Ikkaku and Yumichika...