Hole of Reproach: Juha Bach (Up to Chapter 536)

To start out this corner, let me just say this:  I know I've barely done anything recently but others are doing such a good job I felt a bit at a loss what to do. But I finaly thought of a fitting topic.

The state of Juha Bach's character 52 chapters after he was introduced. I realise It would be better to do this when Bach would actualy show up next time, but since Kubo's extremely ill-placed flashback seems to be going into it's second phase now at 8 chapters in and, knowing Kubo, it's likely the following chapters will have extremely slow pacing as he tries to shock his readers by having a single thing happening be the ending stinger as usual when he gets Aizen/anything involving the use of dialogue involved and I just want to get this out there before the next ice age sets in.

Starting off, we got out first glimpse of Bach at the end of chapter 484 where he proceeds to maim one of his lieutenants out of nowhere, all because

....right. The chapter ends there. The next one picks up with Bach telling the guy who'se arm he just ripped off that he can give his report lying down....but that he'll cut off his legs if he does.

But this shining example of compassion is immediately outdone in, in my opinion, one of the most infamous scenes Bach has been in so far. You see Bach and his army are planning a military invasion of Soul Society. So naturaly the last thing Bach would want to do is plan ahead in any way.

....No, I'm serious, he berates the guy for talking about the future, spouting hippy-esque crap like "I don't care about the future, I want to know about now !"....

only to then immediately kill the guy. Apparently for not only issuing an ultimatum, but for doing the job he sent him out to do.

And for an encore, he then kills the guy standing next to him, not even for a stated reason, simply because he "finished his objective" by stallig Ichigo previously. Of course having a guy around who actualy knows how he fights seems like a smart idea, but that's planning for the future so of course it probably never crosses Juha's mind. I wonder if when Ichigo beats his Quincy guards who never fought him before he'll still think it was a good idea.

Also when Bach first showed up he had a habbit of talking about peace, which is of course perfectly in line with military invasion and genocide. But then again what do you expect from someone wo speaks such a cold, harsh language as german ?

Anyways Ol' Desert Fox then hears about Ichigo fighting Opie and decides to go to Soul Society, saying Opie will keep him busy for a while....I love that this sort of thing is only thinking about "the future" when others do it.

Thereafter, well, Juha Bach doesn't actualy do anything we thought Juha Bach was doing due to the whole Llory/Rroyd business which means Kenpachi's incredibly poorly designed hax power of "being stronger" got beaten by a random flunky and not even the main bad guy. This is revealed after the shocking reveal of our Beloved Okkiba. Though it was apparently recently revealed he's not dead so that's a major relief. Problem is it sets up alot of dialogue between "Bach" and Yama that now has absolutely zero meaning behind it. Which is why I think it was actualy Bach until Kubo had one of his "briliant" ideas.

Then we have Bach come in front of Yama, say how he met Aizen (which is the extremely contrived reason for why he has to fuck off later), then kills Yamamoto and leaves after a pointless fight with Ichigo which does nothing but reminds the audience that yes, Kubo is still to explain Ichigo's backstory at 514 chapters into the series when Isshin promised to do that two years ago, in story.

So....what have we learned about Bach's character between chaprers 484 and 514 ? Well in those thirty chapters he killed off Yamamoto unceremoniously, maimed his own troops and kept talking about peace while killing people for doing the job he ordered them to do, for no discernable reason.

And he also manages to be realy boring. The slight bit of non-smug behaviour we thought he showcased in the battle with Yama was actualy someone else, so all this character is reduced to is someone who kills his own men, while being overly powerfull, utterly invincible and horrily smug while doing it. Now who does this remind me o-

Yeah. Except that he doesn't have the excuse of completley nonsensical powers (yet) so all he does is cut people. And this during 30 chapters wherein he's mostly in the spotlight or at least at the helm.

Final verdict: Waiting to see if our Quincy overlord might get shafted for Aizen completely in the second part of the Isshin flashback and then I'll tell you.