Anime Lovers

This week’s episode of BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War, Part 3: The Conflict featured a bevy of anime-original scenes and a brief stay in the disasters headed for the Soul Society. Last week’s episode was definitely the most pivotal of the few that have been released from Part 3 thus far; the beginning of the episode featured a flashback into the primordial sea that existed before the Soul King divided the world into its three parts and showed a vignette of Yhwach’s growth and progression from that world to the one we recognize. The episode also brought us a rematch between Yhwach and Ichigo, ultimately ending with Yhwach tricking Ichigo into bifurcating the Soul King.

This week’s episode immediately follows up on those events and primarily dealt with the various responses to a now completely desperate situation for the Seireitei. Overall, it was an entertaining and engaging one, featuring some lore about some characters and the long-awaited return of another.

Spoilers ahead for BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War, Part 3: The Conflict Episode 3 THE DARK ARM

Anime-New Flashback

This week’s episode starts with a flashback unique to the anime, featuring Ukitake and his parents and showing some touching backstory between him and Shunsui Kyoraku. This resulted in a much more organic communication of the plot of the episode, especially since Ukitake performing the Kamikake ritual otherwise comes completely out of nowhere. And, like with the flashback during last week’s episode, this one captured that same otherworldly, primordial atmosphere and aesthetic that we can now come to expect with anything involving the Soul King (or his scattered body parts, apparently).

Skipping ahead to its latter portions, even the combat of this flashback was quite well choreographed and altogether satisfying to watch, both for the swordplay between two dual-zanpakuto users to see some early characterization of Kyoraku as someone who doesn’t hold back against any opponent. I felt this was a quick and concise way to communicate the level of mutual respect between the two from an early stage. The slice-of-life scenes with gentle music were a nice little break from all of the chaos and suffering going on in the present as well. Finally, the conversation between Ukitake and Unohana was a nice touch, though whether that particular scene was meant to convey what I think it did will probably stay a mystery for quite some time.

Honor vs. Life

This episode’s weakest trait was that it was a little bit scattered; while the pieced-together flashbacks and alternating perspectives gave the scenes some variety and created a sense of moving through time leading up to the present, it also meant that not too much time was dedicated to any one section so they only stood strong as a sum of their parts. Its strongest and most noteworthy trait, in my opinion, was its continuation of some themes that have been present in BLEACH since its very first arc, notably the existential chauvinism of the Soul Reapers and the question of what a life is meant to be used for.

During the first cour of BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood WarYamamoto was berated for not making use of Orihime’s powers to restore his lost arm and fight at full strength. The reason he didn’t do so was because he felt that Soul Reapers shouldn’t rely on humans to handle matters that didn’t directly concern them, positioning Soul Reapers at the top of the spiritual hierarchy and seemingly considering himself above such an action. The same type of thinking likely would have led someone like Yamamoto to reject the idea of going to Aizen for assistance in a time like this; his pride, and the pride of the Seireitei by extension, wouldn’t allow it. It’s also the sort of thinking that led Soul Reapers to feel justified in their annihilation of the Quincy 1000 years in the past.

I appreciated the brief look at Unohana, Ukitake, and Kyoraku grieving Yamamoto together, especially since they now are the three who have cast aside something in order to achieve safety for the Seireitei, their lives in the case of the first two and honor for Kyoraku. All three have made use of unconventional means to create security. It underscores what “type” of battle this one is and what is ultimately needing to be protected.

Ultimately, this episode marked a turning point for some of our recurring characters in a lot of ways. For Yhwach, we learned that his precognition was not able to see the future involving the Soul King’s arm restoring his body, creating an exception to this overpowered ability that seemed without any weakness previously. For Ukitake and the Soul Reapers on the ground, we have a captain making the ultimate sacrifice just for the small chance of keeping the worlds stable. And for Kyoraku, we have the abandonment of pride in order to maximize the odds of survival and the protection of life. All three point to some ground gained for the Soul Reapers, and I’m excited to see what more will come of their attempts to survive next week.

© TITE KUBO / SHUEISHA, TV TOKYO, dentsu, Pierrot