Hello, everyone. It's been some time since the last article, so I have lots of ground to cover (...or do I?). In any case, I have quite the checklist of meaningless occurrences to cover in a humorous fashion, spanning from that time Riruka reappeared to basically no consequence. And, in much the same way that BLEACH has essentially devolved to crossing off bankais and reveals in an uninspired, perfunctory manner, so I shall strive to get through all of it as quickly as possible.
To that end, I've invited Lille Barro, the sniper of the Vandenreich. Greetings, Mr. Barro.
Pictured: What refugees look like to Republicans
I am God’s prophet! Do you hear me!?
Yes, yes. You’ve been screaming as much since back in the other-dimensional green room. Now tell me, what was it like being the sniper of the Vanden--
I’m NOT just “the sniper of the Vandenreich!” Take back that blasphemy at once! I am an envoy of God!!
I apologize. But wait, didn't Yhwach hate guys who thought they were prophets?
"Can you predict the future of my mustache?"
Kids, I’m here to tell you that you can be anything.
...Well, that’s lovely, except that there won’t be kids anymore after you destroy the unive--
Shhh. You’re confusing them. Kids: You can be anything. Your personality can be anything, at any given time.
Uhhhh… a lovely sentiment. I guess?
Nothing about you is set in stone. You could be screaming your head off one minute and then be the picture of stoicism the next. You could be a sniper dude and then have nothing to do with sniping. Isn’t that wonderful? God commands you to be free! You are free to be you, and also about fifteen other character designs cycled through randomly!
Hi, readers. It's been a while, mostly because I've been lazy. But also because the mysterious men of Bleach have also been a bit lazy. They haven't really gotten around to doing much besides be mysterious, you see.
Things'll change, after just forty or so of the fights he hates! He won't be sitting anymore, he won't be sitting in a blank featureless room! He's looking to advance his station in life!
Oh sure, Yhwach slurped up the Soul King and became even more omnipotent, but only after dozens and dozens of chapters of truly heady stalling.
"Now, uhhh... Hmm. You wanna go out, Haschwaldt? Maybe, I dunno, grab a bite? Long day. Yeeeep."
What happened to the boots, Bach my man? They were fetching!
Can you blame them for wanting to take it a bit easy? A solid ninety percent of this whole war saga has been about commuting between various planes of existence. Bopping between heaven, hell and three or four other goddamn pocket dimensions a dozen times in a day has got to be an exhausting itinerary. Besides, the whole of reality is about to receive a fresh new paint job; any sightseeing they might have been able to do on their wild Chutes and Ladders ride through space has been rendered thoroughly un-Tripadvisor-able!
So there's only one thing left for us. Let's all take a page from the clear vital moral this series is trying to tell us, sit down with a , and ramble about inconsequential filler fluff in a disorganized fashion!
BLEACH hasn't
been faring very well in the JUMP Table of Contents for a while now, and its volume sales, while still respectable, are slipping as well. And yet it seems like, as a series, it's simply rolled into so much
moss that the editors have let it continue rolling down the hill on
the condition that this is the “last arc.” Oh, they've attempted some life support. There was a stretch where BLEACH got color pages every other week, but by now
they've probably realized that first aid spells, far from helping,
only succeeding in doing bonus damage to the undead. Here are all the
color pages since the beginning of the Quincy blitzkireg, complete
with my snarky ass captions.
"The final war us readers have been toothing after since the beginning--can Ichigo finally defeat Zangetsu!?"
BLEACH was a manga all about holy wars up until now, but you didn't figure that out because it was a fourteenth level secret (it was scrawled in microwriting on Rangiku's nipples in every panel, including ones without her in them. It read "WHY ME cruSADe").
Hello, everyone. I've been playing a lot of Luigi's Mansion recently, and I figured I'd use my soul vacuuming skills to keep As Nodt around for a spot of tea coming off his stirring defeat this week. This chapter's developments were so exciting I nearly popped an emotion! It was scary--
Did someone say"SCARY"!?!?!?
Pipe down, you. Anyway, how are you for discussing some of the tactics in this epic clash of dumb vs. dumber?
CAN IT ALL BE BOILED DOWN TO A SINGLE EMOTION??
Maybe...?
Is that emotion...
Don't.
...FFEEARRR!?!?
I think we're starting to see the main issue with the Vandenreich already!! They are a military force of simpletons.
I know it's from a bygone time, wee lads, but massage your mind and try to remember, a time when Quincies were actually human! It seems like that conception of Quincies was from around roughly the era of Australopithecus at this point!
Please, tell us about your tragic past
Now I'm not sure what bizarre, tortured automatons they might be, but they sure as fuck ain't human.
Let's tackle the rest of this quaint little fic we're all far superior to
When last we left off
More random ghost sex from extremely forced pairings
Senna from Movie 1 helps the our men in uniform
Ichigo's family held to ransom him to unlock Soul Society for slaughter! They should have just waited for the following Tuesday, SS was already naturally due for another apocalypse
Russia in turmoil from civil war! Will IMRAN ZAKHAEV's name sound even eviler, now that the ultranationalist insurgency has reached its apex?
The military of the nation of heroes mounts its attack on AL-ASAD's jihadist compound, but he managed to slip away! Meanwhile, insanely powerful gods among men Kariya, Gin and Aizen twiddle their thumbs as they watch their puny human comrade in awe.
Hinamori is Hitsugaya's new lieutenant, as paperwork is a foremost priority during a time of crisis and leaving a division without a captain or a vice captain is an amazing idea
The Gotei 13 discovers Aizen's illicit stash of nuclear warhead blueprints and... and...
PICTURES OF THE RUKONGAI NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Although I can see why they'd want to censor such photos
More shock and terror and ghost boobs after the jump
When last we left off, Ichigo was given a reason to fight the evil jihadists when his points of vulnerability, otherwise known as sisters, found their kawaii faces rammed into dark spaces for gunpoint ransom. Meanwhile, the evil shinigami are inexplicably terrified by the terrorist boss, and his base is attacked by Marines whose exploits I don`t care enough to describe!!
Also Kariya
Haven`t you heard that old adage, to get the WIND KICKED OUT OF YOU
I love that I get to use the vampires tag for this review series.
Rangiku had been banished so that she may become entangled with Ichigo SEXUALLY
Aizen, Ichimaru and KARIYA had seen fit to lend their aid to Russian secessionists with a taste for jihad, for reasons yet unknown but probably diabolical in nature. SS doesn't know Aizen and Ichimaru are bad guys yet, so this is set before the SS Arc??
The US and British governments had sent their best and brightest soldiers to rescue their Russian informant in the wake of the assassination of the "President" of Saudi Arabia at the hands of the jihadist leader, the evilAl-Asad.
The scalps of Syria's Bashar Al-Assad and Kariya Jin are both exceedingly flat.
"Ahaha, you are silly and likely Western trash-dog spy. Your shoulders are like runway of my jet"
"Yeah well at least *I* don't look as though anybody could come over and lift and detach my face by cupping my ears."
Place your bets for what happens next before the jump, we're diving into Chapters 5-8!
In this column, we will explore what in the fuck kind of twelvefold mongrel Ichigo has become over the course of the series. No, I'm not talking about the art evolution
HELLO! LIVING INSIDE SKIN IS A HUMAN ACTIVITY, CORRECT, YOU FRIENDS? BODIES ARE NOT CURRENTLY SNATCHED
For all Ichigo interacts with his friends, this would seem perfectly normal to them
No, I'm talking about Ichigo's greedy assimilation of essences!
My friends, it's time I pitched a throwback to those glorious old days I riffed badfic. I'm in a jovial mood and a certain horror must be mocked for our amusement.
After fighting enemies in every arcs, and every thing that they
overcome, the Soul Society faces a new and powerful enemy. That enemy...
is terrorism. Welcome to the world... of Modern Warfare. Based on the
video game. Ichigo/Rangiku. Another couple.
Hey, remember when Kubo teased a Ginjou and Tsukishima flashback, only to never deliver?
"Don't worry, kid, that bulge is just some ramen I stuffed in there. You know, in case I need some tripwire to delay the other reapers of death from collecting my head. Say, would you like some pants ramen?"
Let's fill in the blanks of all the Fullbringers' pasts using every bit of information we have at our disposal, as Kubo clearly intended. The following reasoning will be totally beyond reproach, and therefore canon.
When the Vandenreich pay Soul Society a visit, they mean business. Why, Seireitei was torn asunder by the Sternritters' ruthless scheme of standing around and mouthing off. The carnage was so grievous that Kubo couldn't show us all the Captain vs. Quincy fights he had lined up, and their blitzkrieg was so destructive that every captain came away with a scratch, or even two scratches. The following is a in depth analysis of how each of those fights must have transpired before Aizen's subtle perception hiccups made Bach think it was Daylight's Saving Time, forcing their retreat.
Fight 1: Kyouraku vs. Colonel Sanders
Long summary: Kyouraku gets shot a bunch of times, and once in the eye. They then trade quips flash expressions and stare at each other.
"I see you're still sharp despite my having shot you in the head. I must make a note of this in my Soul Nazi strategy guide."
Analysis: This is undoubtedly because the eyeblood was keeping Kyouraku's face slippery and well lubricated, which would make any further bullets simply slide away. Kyouraku invented this strategy to keep the number one thing he treasures the most, his appearance, from getting disfigured too badly.
Missing an eye? He's met the prerequisite for the label Big Boss
He got hurt in a sexy way, making this brief battle an overall victory for our brave new Captain Commander.
"Wait, you're supposed to take the bullet out first?"
Of course, the eyeblood couldn't make it down his neck in time to defend against the other bullets.
Kyouraku went on to produce several albums of gangsta fo sheezies.
On the other hand, Kyouraku may have taken those bullets on purpose in order to snap him back from the distraction that is Yamamoto's upwelling reiatsu. After all, it's not as though he hasn't ever fought a foe who wielded dual pistols. Against Starrk, Kyouraku used his sword's unique shikai ability to make children's games lethal, and since Starrk was a deeply boring man with no imagination, he succumbed to Kyouraku's impressive skill at describing basic colors and went down fairly easily. Colonel Sanders, on the other hand, is deeply boring in an altogether novel way that caught Kyouraku off guard. Either that, or a Soul Nazi is far too adept at listing the shortcomings of the various colors a human can be (e.g., black, not white, very black) to fall prey to such a technique.
The white shall NOT bow down to the mocha!!
One might argue that even with the eyepatch nothing happened that will have a lasting impact on Kyouraku, but this simply isn't true. Without his hat, he's much more prone to get skin cancer on his scalp, a development that would shock readers to their absolute cores.
Fight 2:NaNaNa Najahkoop vs. Rose
The hypothetical fight of the century
Long summary: NaNaNa and Rose trade quips and stare at each other. Then NaNaNa rushes off to ambush Yamamoto alongside fellow elite Quincy warriors Äs Nödt and Mohawk Dude.
These three were the best and brightest kindling the Vandenreich had to fodder.
Äs Nödt and you shall receive.
Analysis: NaNaNa begins his relentless onslaught by standing still and boasting that it will take him less than five minutes to kill Rose. This sheds light on the sense of superiority shared by the Quincy invaders. One can liken them to children who are finally allowed to talk smack once outside of the earshot of a boss who would kill a loyal soldier for deigning to speak in the future tense.
Rose, to his great credit, chooses to respond to words with words, despite his anger at all the lives reaped by this formidable squadron of exceedingly eccentric humans. Rose reflects on how rocking his guitar tunes were when he was with the now late Kira. This is clearly the psychological strategy employed by a sociopath who thankfully cares so little about his subordinates that he can condense them to a guitar tune with nary a tear in sight, and it successfully sends NaNaNa to his death as he decides to tear down a decrepit old man to boost his own shattered ego. As Rose stated, "Don't think you can go home alive, Quincy." He never said it would be himself who killed the invader.
Why didn't Rose employ his mask or his shikai?
It's because those must be reserved for playing his Flying V on stage with.
Fight 3: All the Quincies Who Stole Bankais Don't Bother Using Them
"All right, which one of us ended up with the shitty missile launcher?"
Long summary: These four Sternritters gleefully snatch away the bankais of Komamura, Soi Fong, Hitsugaya and Byakuya because the captains were merely under the impression that their bankais would be sealed, not stolen. The Sternritters proceed triumphantly to do nothing with them.
Analysis: Both Soul Society and Quincies are very, very stupid. I blame Tsukishima for this one.
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
Was it any wonder why he wore a mask, with an eyebrow like that? The
real criminal is the cad who broke off the rest of his mask.
Now that the Vandenreich have seemingly contracted the sniffles and decided to evacuate Soul Society without rounding off their ectoplasmic cleansing scheme, I think it's fair to examine what's happened so far in this amazing, bone-chilling THOUSAND YEAR BLOOD WAR, the scope and emotional charge of which makes our paltry two-year spit skirmishes seem shallow and stupid by comparison.
The sheer number of plot threads that have shot through our hearts in a mere bajillion chapters, the astounding confluence of shocking brilliances, the other sentences that sound like machine-assembled blurbs! It would take a thousand blood lifetimes to analyze everything, like:
*A beloved mysterious masked man got off a bed
*Several beloved tits-having Numeros reappeared, with Halibel in chains because Orihime can't be allowed to do anything competently
*Five beloved bankais swiped
*Sasakibe, the most beloved Okikiba, and Yamamoto all dying with varying levels of spectacle
*The revelation that the Gotei 13 used to be MAD PACK KILLERZ out of a Tarantino movie
*Some ultimately non-mattering but nonetheless beloved Vandenreich soldier getting stabbed by a mystery foot in Hueco Mundo
*Ichigo's heart-wrenchingly mild peeves about his mom being a belovedly inept Quincy and his dad being a young Otto von Bismarck
You don't want to know what he can do with his mustache.
I wasn't originally going to review the more gaggy episodes, but after learning that Chizuru rapes a female Arrancar, I'm afraid my hands became tied to the keyboard. I held off before because many are already gag episodes, not meant to be taken seriously. But upon inspection, there's some that are worth talking about.
If an episode is worthwhile (marked by a **), I won't spend too much time on it, since you should really just watch it yourself. If an episode is just okay or plain bad, I will mock it.
So, I watched the anime up to where it abruptly sputtered to a close. I wonder when they'll make OVAs of the manga stuff after the Fullbringer arc, but as it stands now, the anime-only public must settle for a single-episode denouement of a 360+ episode series.
Yes, I watched the anime treatment of the Fullbringer arc, a serious contender for the worst, most slapdash and nonsensical arc of all published mainstream fiction. The only reason I haven't declared it THE worst is because I haven't read all of fiction. But I'm pretty sure that it's got to be at the very least #3 on the list.
I'd heard the anime pitched in some effort here or there to salvage this fivefold abortion of a storyline, and decided to give it a shot. The following is a comparison. And an excuse to fling my own shit at the Fullbringers--especially Riruka! Read the Daz's hilarious takedowns of the Fullbringer arc's absurd black hole knots of logic HERE and HERE and HERE.
