AfB: I Am Also Good at Crossing Checklists

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!

AfB: Mysterious Men Who Like to Sit

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!

AfB: Black People Are Wacky! Laugh!

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

AfB: Use Your Brain Bleach

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").

AFB: In the War Room with As Nodt!

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.

AFB: Quincy Queries

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.

Attack From Behind: What the Fuck Are You, Ichigo

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!

Attack from Behind: Yuha Bach Is Zangetsu, and Other Soul Nazi Musings

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.

Militarize me, ohh