Anime Lovers

This week’s episode of BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War, Part 3: The Conflict was probably the most impressive adaptation of the season thus far. Combining some scenes that were absolutely faithful to the manga and a long series of extra scenes, the episode delivered some hard-hitting animation and art that I think fans have been waiting for, possibly since even before BLEACH returned for Thousand-Year Blood War.

Last week’s episode featured an enhanced flashback sequence for Ukitake, more or less paying homage to the character as he waved his own death flag and gave his life in order to protect and (re)stabilize the Soul King. The episode tied themes about the meaning of battle from way back during the BLEACH original series, reinforcing the importance of battles for life and doing some setup for how characters like Kyoraku view the stakes of this conflict and what’s worth sacrificing in order to secure safety.

This week mostly moves away from the events in the Seireitei over to the Soul King palace, examining how Yhwach and the characters located there react to the sudden stoppage of the Soul King’s death and, as a result, preservation of their odds of survival.

Spoilers ahead for BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War, Part 3: The Conflict Episode 4 “THE BETRAYER”

The Soul King Saved?

The beginning of the episode starts with a short recap, one that felt altogether a bit unnecessary considering there wasn’t a break and the events of this episode immediately follow from the last. Following that though, we get a few revelations and some showcasing of abilities.

Yhwach, both in this episode and last week’s, has some dialogue that explains both to the characters and the audience that (1) this right arm is truly a power of the Soul King and (2) that Yhwach’s Almighty is unable to see the futures involving the Soul King, something Yoruichi noted in last week’s episode but Yhwach confirmed again in this one.

We also saw a strange, negative-visual forcefield-like application of The Almighty and saw some defensive abilities from Mimihagi (with an aura that I couldn’t help but notice has the same color as Ichigo’s). In this BLEACH anime version of the story, the right arm of the Soul King seems to be implied to be operating using Ukitake’s will and not necessarily the will of the Soul King himself.

The characters down in the Seireitei consistently refer to Ukitake as “fighting” and he rather conspicuously convulses as if he’s in battle, making me wonder if this is Kubo-sensei’s way of clarifying that Ukitake is making use of the Soul King’s power rather than merely subjugating himself. Lastly on the showcasing side, there was a change to how Ichigo rejected Yhwach’s Blut — in the manga this happened via Ichigo simply gripping his own wrist.

But, in this episode, it looked almost as if Ichigo was actually rejecting Yhwach’s Blut via his own will, a sign that he’s perhaps learning to master some of his Quincy abilities and a small detail that I love how the anime portrayed. It works both as a showcase of power and on a thematic level; Ichigo is literally defying the destiny Yhwach insists is baked into his Quincy heritage.

The other thing I found most conspicuous about this section was that, even once he regains control of his arm, Ichigo makes the conscious decision not to use the smaller of his dual Zanpakuto. More specifically, he doesn’t use the one that represents Old Man Zangetsu, or his Quincy powers.

This pattern continues briefly into his fight with Uryu to an extent that I think has to be intentional. Considering Yhwach’s own chiding at Ichigo’s inability to try to kill the man who effectively killed his mother, I think it was a good way to showcase his hesitation as he attempts to reconcile the million different species he’s turned out to be.

Friendly Fire

The meat of this episode, and the part that was almost entirely new to the anime, was definitely Ichigo vs Uryu. This is the fight that’s been getting teased via the opening and all of the promotional material for this season of BLEACH so I’m glad to finally see it in action. The fight between the Schutzstaffel and Chad / Orihime / Ganju was interesting, but honestly it felt a bit shoehorned and the Quincy clearly weren’t trying so I’m not going to focus a lot on it.

From the very beginning of Uryu and Ichigo’s fight, the choreography evolved to a whole other level and the animation quality did too. The beginning of the fight featured a surprising amount of melee-range combat, something I’m surprised the anime was bold enough to try and execute considering one of the combatants fights with a bow and arrow. From the outset though, it’s quite clear that Ichigo isn’t approaching the fight with the intent to kill Uryu, especially shown as he throws away his best chance to take him out early and fights almost entirely defensively (though his dodges and blocks were animated beautifully, so there’s a plus).

The real battle began when Uryu revealed his Voll Stern Dich, something that was wholly absent from this confrontation in the chapter that most of this episode adapts. Personally, I’m glad that the anime made it clear that Ichigo is on a different tier of strength than Uryu without this power, if only because I don’t feel like enough has been done to characterize Uryu as a powerhouse outside of him using power from Yhwach.

Even his defeat of Senjumaru, to me, felt somewhat unearned. This new power he displayed, which basically felt like the Quincy equivalent of Senbonzakura, was interesting to see though. I appreciated the evolution from him firing arrows without manifesting his bow into him controlling the arrows freely. But, admittedly, I would have liked to see something a bit more unique in terms of a special power. Obviously there’s ample opportunity to show more new abilities from him, but this one felt similar to Byakuya to the point that slightly soured what was otherwise a beautifully directed bit of animation.

Ultimately though, the fight and this episode were fantastic from start to finish, especially with the complete reversal of circumstances from last week. Ichigo and Yoruichi have been knocked off the Soul King’s palace, Yhwach has absorbed the Soul King, and all seems to be lost. Considering the changes and additions from the manga, and the fact that this week’s ending poem was read by Aizen, I’m looking forward to next week quite a bit.

BLEACH: Thousand-Year War topped the first two weekly rankings, falling down to second place in Week 4. You can vote for it every week on our weekly polls.

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