Bleach TYBW E43 Review: horn of sAlvAtion

Bleach, Thousand-Year Blood War, Episode 43: Blood for My Bone

This episode is nicely divided into two aspects. One adapts the titular 'Blood for My Bone' chapters, continuing Ichigo and Orihime's fight against Juhabach leading up to Ichigo accessing his half-Hollow Bankai form, the 'Horn of Salvation'.

But what improves this fight a lot, and what improves Inoue Orihime's character a lot from the last chapter, is the focus on her scenes beyond just tugging on Ichigo's clothes one time. Orihime continues to cast rejection and having her shields shattered by Juhabach. And Juhabach actually takes the time to mock Orihime as well, noting that due to the similarities between the power of him and Ichigo, Orihime unconsciously can't reject the full attack. We get a badass scene of Orihime constantly trying to get up, casting shields to protect Ichigo. And while these proves only a delaying tactic, Juhabach even compliments her, noting that a 'mere human who overstepped her bounds' could even be here in the final battlefield between gods. 

And Orihime does not care. She stands back up.

All she wants to do is protect the man she's in love with, and actually manages to reject one of Juhabach's soul king attacks long enough for Ichigo to attack. 

Again, something that didn't exist in the original fight is the cutting away to the Uryu/Haschwalth fight, where both Juhabach and Haschwalth are monologuing to their respective foes in a thematically similar way. The Soul-King-powered-up Haschwalth continues to fight Uryu, boasting that he could wield Juhabach's powers as long as those powers are split to him. We get a nice dizzying sequence as Haschwalth floods the arena with the black shadowy goop, while Uryu summons a swarm of arrowheads before creating a giant D20 dice shield to protect himself. That's cool! He then turns it into a weird machinegun thing that can snap shut into a shield again. That's cool!  Haschwalth continues to monologue, about how killing Juhabach might destroy the world.

But even as Uryu is impaled by shadows, he stands defiant, and says 'something that Kurosaki would say if he was here'. And we cut from Uryu saying those words to Ichigo saying how he'll still take Juhabach down, before going into a bit of a spiel about how Juhabach is trampling over the world that everyone else is trying to protect... and if defeating Juhabach might destroy that world, then so be it. Ichigo unleashes a Getsuga Jujishou at Juhabach, which doesn't really work either. 

We cut back and forth between the two monologuing villains, but Juhabach and Haschwalth basically tell Ichigo something that was merely implied in the original manga, and only confirmed by Kubo's comments and tie-in novels later on. Haschwalth asks Uryu what would happen to the balance of the world if the Soul King disappears, and Juhabach tells Ichigo that Ichibei Hyosube has been doing some sinister plan all throughout the time that he's been essentially grooming Ichigo. 

We get brand-new scenes of Ichibei in the room with the seals of Squad Zero (everything is empty now since Shutara was killed as well... by Uryu!). Ichibei creates a ring of ink, which becomes a weird lizard that flows down into a sakazuki cup that Ichibei drinks from. Weird!

Juhabach notes that Ichigo is a son of miracles, a combination of human, Shinigami, Hollow, Quincy and Fullbringer. This is something Juhabach brings up in the manga. The next bit, though, is a description of why Ichigo 'clads himself in black'. Black is the colour of chaos, and chaos is the power of the Soul King. The colour without colour, and the Soul King's reiatsu... and as the animations show while this is being spoken, Juhabach and Haschwalth wielding the Soul King's shadowy black powers... and Ichibei Hyosube's own black ink. 

The big revelation? Ichibei Hyosube intends for Ichigo to be installed as the next Soul King. 

Again, it's a 'big revelation' of sorts, and Orihime at least is surprised. Ichigo... doesn't really give a shit, really. Neither does Uryu, who gives a 'so what?' to Haschwalth, and noting that it's what Kurosaki would say. I love this new focus on Uryu as a main character, and setting up the two of them as essentially being super in-sync with each other. Ichigo doesn't give a shit if he becomes the Soul King or not, since he's more interested in protecting the world and the people he cares about. Ichigo charges in and slashes down on Juhabach in a scene lifted from one of the manga panels. 

There's a bit of a cutaway to the Gerard fight, but the Ichigo/Orihime/Juhabach fight continues. Juhabach recovers from the massive blow, and then starts bashing Ichigo around with his shadow powers, while Ichigo blindly continues to charge in over and over again. We go back to Orihime's POV, where she's just seeing Ichigo attack in manic succession, before grabbing his sleeve and telling him to calm down. This was a scene that really didn't land on me in the manga (the frustration at the pacing probably didn't help), but the small Orihime focus scenes in the past couple of chapters, and the music actually building up as Orihime and Ichigo makes eye contact, is really well done. 

Juhabach continues to taunt Ichigo, but eventually Ichigo slides back, Orihime summons a gigantic shield to protect Ichigo, and the two have a brief conversation where Orihime notes that Ichigo doesn't look like he's lost himself, and he clearly has something in mind. Ichigo reveals that he had wanted to 'wake someone up', i.e. Old Man Zangetsu, by bathing him in Quincy powers. And as his swords turn (are bleached, ho ho) white, Ichigo enters his 'Horn of Salvation' form. Neat!

Again, no complaints about the Ichigo/Juhabach stuff and the Uryu/Haschwalth stuff going alongside it. It really does help to really go deep into the psyches of the five main combatants -- Ichigo, Juhabach, and especially Uryu, Haschwalth and Orihime -- all three who really didn't get much in the original manga. The action scenes are admittedly a bit samey with a lot of giant shadow waves roiling around and hitting out good guys, but I appreciate very much the additional context and character development being done here. 

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The Gerald Valkyrie fight is intercut around the halfway mark of the big final confrontation, and... and unfortunately, despite the big promise at the end of the last cour, the Visored really didn't do anything all that much or all that cool before being all summarily taken out. The scenes are a bit expanded, yes, and I didn't expect something as over-the-top as the new Ichigo/Uryu or Uryu/Renji or Ichigo/Bambis fight. But I had thought that we'd at least get maybe an early showcase of the Visored harming Gerald enough for him to activate the Miracle. 

Instead, Gerald continues on his 'finding you guys would be a miracle!' before we get the expected adaptations of the Visored trying to do stuff and fail. Hiyori fires a three-Cero beam. Hachigen, Lisa and Love do a triple attack with their kido and zanpakuto, and fail. We do get a couple of extra scenes, since Shinji uses Sakanade to flip the world around and stab Gerald in the back of the neck... but it's actually a lot less cool than the thing he did with Momo last season. Rose uses Kinshara to hold Gerald for a bit, and then Kensei (in Bankai) and Mashiro does a combo attack on Gerald. And then all the Visored do a rainbow Cero blast together...

...before Gerald just does a lariat and knocks everyone out in one punch. 

And here's the thing. I don't mind Gerald defeating the Visored. I don't mind the Visored being defeated. What I minded is the manner that they were taken out. It actually feels worse here since Rose and Kensei were revived from zombification to do essentially nothing. Again, having them trigger the Miracle early wouldn't really be all that bad, would it? 

Eh. Anyway, the three more marquee captains show up. Hitsugaya freezes Gerald's arm before he can bring this whole part of Wahrwelt crashing down onto the Soul Society. He activates Bankai and freezes Gerald's giant body. Then after we cut back and forth to the Juhabach fight; Byakuya shows up with Senbonzakura Kageyoshi to back Hitsugaya up. We still get the same joks about Hitsugaya being hypersensitive about his height, which is... it's always less funy than the reaction the show probably expected me to have, but the voice acting is always good.

Kenpachi comes to slice off Gerald's right hand, before the Miracle restores it. Kenpachi, the big idiot, then tries to just cut Gerald and dice him up, and Hitsugaya stops him before he can make Gerald overly powerful. There's a fun sequence as, again, Hitsugaya gets insulted when Byakuya mentions Gerald's height; and Hitsugaya also gets frustrated at Kenpachi's insane troll logic about how he'll deal with Gerald getting more and more powerful the more he is cut. 

Gerald knocks Kenpachi away and draws his sword Hoffnung, while Kenpachi unleashes his shikai, Nozarashi. They clash, and Nozarashi manages to chip Hoffnung. In a bit of an expansion of the manga's version of this fight, we get Byakuya and Hitsugaya combining their Bankai attacks to push Hoffnung away, also chipping the sword. In the manga version, only Kenpachi gets the reflected damage from Hoffnung, but here all three of them do. The Gerald fight was infamous for essentially not having a proper ending, and having Byakuya in particular feel like he's just not doing anything... so hopefully in place of a Visored fight, we get a more proper conclusion with the three marquee captains.

Anyway, my slight saltiness about the Visored's handling, I really did enjoy this episode with the Juhabach, Ichigo and Orihime sequences. I really didn't expect how much more impact Orihime (and Uryu, too!) would have with some small, extremely targeted and purposeful extra lines. But at least on that end, with the main characters, we're getting a lot of nice moments. 

Random Notes:

• While Ichibei wanting to install Ichigo as the new Soul King isn't that much of a revelation (in the original manga, the scene of Kyoraku giving tickets to Ichigo's human friends is a bit of a foreshadowing), the idea that the black powers used by Ichibei and Soul King Juhabach being tied to Ichigo and the Soul King isn't something that I think was established... but a very cool one. 
  
• And, of course, it finally gives a proper meaning to the otherwise nonsensical title of 'Bleach'. Whether it's the black of the Soul King's reiatsu, or Ichigo turning his swords white, these powers are bleaching each other. 
• Yeah, the moment that the cold open of this episode begins with Kenpachi kicking the stasis pod open, you know the Visored isn't going to be the focus of the Gerald Valkyrie fight. 
• I do wonder if Ichibei is going to be confronted about this particular fact of him trying to groom Ichigo for the position of the Soul King, of if it's going to be brushed away as like Can't Fear Your Own World? 
• While the scene focuses more on Ichigo's desire to protect and his willingness to sacrifice himself, we also have to note that while Juhabach condemns Ichibei's manipulations... he himself is much worse in that regard, going around, you know, killing Masaki for his own grooming. 
• Haschwalth's anime-only Soul King super form is called 'hAschwAlth', which I thought was funny since I've been spending the last couple of seasons styling all of my own Bleach reviews by capitalizing all the A's and making all the other letters lowercase. 
• It does give the Haschwalth fight a nice extra oomph, since Haschwalth isn't a character capable of utilizing Vollstandig. 
• In the manga, Momo's commentary at Hitsugaya arriving has her supporting an unconscious Shinji. Here, at least, she's not doing so... but I'm not holding my breath for Shinji being relevant in the rest of the cour. 
• Soi Fon, like her manga counterpart, is back to being MIA when she should be either around in the Askin or Gerald battlefields. I think in the anime she was last seen near Gerald. 
• You know what? For as much as I spent the Gerald portion of the review talking about the Shinigami, I did like Gerald's insane over-the-top ranting about how 'this is impossible... it's a Miracle!!!' throughout the fight.