Attack From Behind: A Sober Review of Ch. 518

These last chapters have been all about forgotten characters reappearing in unexpected places, and Chapter 518 is certainly no exception! With totally consequential cameos from Kon, Ganju, mystery voice, Mangapanda, and even tertiary characters like "Yasutora Sado" and "Inoue Orihime," who knows who else might pop up!!

The following is a sober and not at all sarcastic review of Ch. 518.

The first beloved character to return is, naturally, index finger

"You wanna be a man!?"

This only deepens the mystery behind the index finger, a broad theme of this masterwork manga. As we remember from the epic confrontations of the past (especially the one where they clash swords and smirk, and that other one where they clash swords and go UOOOOOOOO and smirk), Aizen's index finger deserves enormous panel space, and loves to stroke Ichigo's big black weapon, which is now unrepairable except by some technique in the King's Realm. Ergo, Aizen is the King's Realm.

Many mes theorize that Ichigo's sword will now be unlike the Zangetsu of the past (since he's clearly now going by the moniker of Yuha Bach) and, instead of compressing his power into an easy to draw small black sword, it will expand his power into an easy to draw gigantic black sword. This is corroborated by the following meaningfully huge panel.

Foreshadowing for the design of Ichigo's next Aizen finger rest, an obscure and esoteric Japanese cultural code word that that can only be expressed by the unique Japanese concept of "sword."

Note how the clever reader who's paying attention can juxtapose this imaginative imagery with the heart-pounding Aizen index finger moment

Sound, sound advice.

Could it be that Aizen will craft Ichigo's new bankai to contain more ridges on which to rest his pointer? The answer is undoubtedly yes.

The best sword design for scintillating finger stroking action.

omg meaningful

Let's just say there's a reason Aizen aimed to slice away Ichigo's lower half for himself.

And in any case, clearly Aizen will be foremost amongst the hax beasts who will most richly color our worlds and

This guy seems awfully familiar, could it be because he is history

Urahara's installed a screen projector into Kon, so as to justify Kon's being there. He tells Ichigo everybody's okay (including Chad and Orihime, who will soon after crawl back into their specially crafted irrelevance boxes), and he can just go do whatever now. But no one knows better than Ichigo he'll always choose to protect--

FOR PROTECT

Silly Ichigo, thinking he has any agency in a world that's just a hot potato tossed between Aizen, Urahara and Shuu-chan. Some might say Shuu-chan wouldn't have retained his Fullbring now that he's a mere soul, but look at what at the man could do to doors!

"Tonight. You."

Anything is in the realm of possibility for the mighty Shuu-chan, but his prowess at badly warping the perspective of doors was actually hard earned. After all, he invented the door alongside Aristotle.

And Ichigo went home with a renewed appreciation for Mr. Presley's unique life flipping through his copy of the king of swing's  tour de force autobiography, "Tsukishima Shuukurou Is All That I Am."

Shuu-chan's having been the progenitor of all doors is cleverly implied by his appearance as the skeletal guardians of the Gate of Hell in Chapter 12

Why didn't Tsukishima go to hell after being such an unnice anus? Shuu doesn't ever recall saying he didn't invent hell.

It's also utterly brilliant for Tsukishima to have been reintroduced with his back facing the reader, as Tsukishima likewise invented the human back.

"I don't recall saying I never crafted all of your individual atoms to look like my bust, Ichigo."

In fact, Tsukishima loved making the beast with two backs with Amelia Earhart, who is currently chilling with Don Kan'onji at Shuu's happening ice fortress on Venus.

Forgotten character reintroduction blitz notwithstanding, Don Kan'onji probably isn't going to be reappearing anytime soon, so he's on Venus with Amelia Earhart (otherwise known as Shuu-chan's number 14 historical love slave).

You can't see it, but the ice fortress is made of dead Byakuyas

However, these issues are merely sprinkles on top of a far more serious issue: The true timeline of Tsukishima (or should I say the Tsukishima of the true timeline?). There is ample debate amongst academians as to the exact date of Tsukishima's first entrance into history. Some say he made his debut by befriending an Amorite caveman named Og, whom he taught how to make fire via penis fencing; others say his first traces are found when he helped Caesar subdue those pesky feather-helmeted Gauls (Sextus Julius Africanus, History of the World, The Ides of Tsukishima), also via penis fencing. Still others proclaim he was an instrumental inspiration behind D.W. Grifith's Birth of a Nation (Thaddeus Stevens, Scourge of the South, p. 1-123), as, really, he's that sort of bastard, isn't he. Furthermore, his alleged affair with Wallis Simpson is claimed to have sparked the Succession Crisis in Britain, (Historia Brittonum V. CXXIII), though there is evidence of a good relationship with Buckingham Palace in the coming years (he was even considered a possible suitor for Princess Margaret, however the pair had a nasty falling out due to an issue involving excesively high carpenting bills, as well as Tsukishima's shameless parade of historical love slaves).

Of course, a complete in-depth analysis would take far too much space here. For those who are interested in our one and only master of the universe who is everybody's friend, the University of Toronto will have a course on this subject starting in 2019, along with the famous "Rebuttals of "Common Sense" arguments regarding the Tsukishima case and a lecture by the esteemed historian Niall Fergusson called "Why Dates Aren't All That Imporant."

Meanwhile, the physicists at CERN have discovered that each and every mathematical equation governing the behavior of the Higgs boson looks like ASCII art of a man in suspenders, proof that the theoretical Tsukishima Maxim is on the fast track to global consensus. Biologists have concluded through decades of focused research that all living things are intrinsically friends with Tsukishima. And finally, to make a fine point of all of this, it would seem as though Tsukishima has literally replaced the sun.

There's also the Tsukishima of Tsukishima and Shuu-chan shuu chan shuuuushishimagawara tsuki sukiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

ma

Shut up, feet!

[This post was written in collaboration with contributor D. Jones, alias No Ma'am on Arlong Park Forums.]
[For more of my Tsukishima crack, read my magnum opus, "No One Doesn't Love Friend Time with Shuu-chan"]

"But you'll always hate ME most, right, Ichigo!?"