Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War Season 2

Episode 16

Let's talk for a minute about how Bleach handles fights. I figure this season is going to be a good 90% battles moving forward, so I think it's a good idea to tackle the topic in a broad sense, as the second phase of the war gets going.

There are a lot of different ways that anime – and media in general – handles fights. Sometimes it's for spectacle, other times it's to develop or punctuate character drama, and often the best remembered and beloved fights manage both. Think Ichigo vs Byakuya in the Soul Society arc – a climactic battle that had both sides showing off their coolest and most devastating powers, where Ichigo's victory wasn't just a triumph, but represented a toppling of the strict authoritarianism that defined his opponents at the time. It's well remembered as one of the franchise's crowning moments because it delivered something as meaningful as it was thrilling to watch. Not every fight can be like that, but even “smaller” battles can thrive when they have solid action fundamentals and a firm dramatic purpose. The key is to give each of those fights tension and some level of stakes – if either the outcome or the consequences don't matter, you wind up with something that might look cool, but won't stick with viewers.

Bleach has struggled with that as it's gone on. It has so many characters with so many different powers, that it simply can't resist giving some of them a chance to show off, even if that means pairing them up against disposable opponents with relatively minuscule stakes. That can leave certain fights feeling devoid of tension, especially once the series developed a pattern of ending face-offs with a Good Guy revealing a new power or technique to win. Eventually, it became a rut for the series' storytelling mechanics, where you could always tell who would lose by who revealed their second form first. That was what made Aizen such an aggravating antagonist by the end when the whole cast was selling out every trick they had, and he walked away with barely a scratch. When it feels like one half of a fight is outclassed – and just doesn't know it yet – the battle becomes a chore to watch.

That's more or less the problem we've run into with this episode. Taking Bankai out of the equation was seemingly meant to take that narrative crutch away, but in fact, it was a bit of stage magic, making us think that our heroes couldn't pull the same old trick, only to reveal the Bankai had been hidden behind our ear the entire time! On the level of pure spectacle, it's cool to see Soi Fon and Hitsugaya win (Soi Fon's final attack delivers a delightfully hellacious explosion.) but these are also powers we've seen in action before, taking out villains who had little character outside of “is a robot” and... I don't remember what Cang Du's personality was. So we end up spending an episode and a half on fights that feel like anti-climaxes – especially when it turns out that this was all part of Ywach's plan.

Yep, it turns out that not only did Ywach factor in the possibility of the Captains un-Nerfing themselves but stealing Bankai had been weakening the Stern Ritter to begin with. Now they can pull out their Voll Stern Dich and go to town, which...honestly begs the question of why they bothered with the first plan. The most charitable reading is that stealing Bankai was a conservative Plan A, hoping to wipe the Soul Reapers out while they were flailing without their trump cards, but it's far too reminiscent of all those times Aizen revealed that everything was secretly going exactly as planned for him. Much like the one-sided fights where you're waiting for the hero to pull out their secret weapon, when the villain seems so totally, impossibly in control, it makes the entire narrative feel like killing time until Ywach reveals his true hand.

Perhaps that wouldn't be the case if this was the first time Bleach had pulled this card, but it's a frustratingly familiar move that made so much of the battle against Aizen feel like wasted time and energy. If there's no tension, no sense that the heroes might get one over on their enemies, then all we're left with is some cool fights that mean shockingly little. Combine that problem with our enormous cast of combatants – there's still nearly 20 Stern Ritter to get through – and suddenly this war feels a lot less tense than it did just a couple of weeks ago.

That sucks, frankly, so in the hopes of staving off that worry I do want to point out some of the fun bits and pieces in this episode. I already loved the goofy Luchadore Quincy, before I even knew he came with his bell-ringing sidekick, and it was great to see him call out Hisagi, Ikkaku, and Yumachika out on all hiding their powers. He's right boys, this is a war! Stop being so damn prideful/loyal and bring out those secret Shikai/Bankai already! On that note, it was neat to get an anime-original reveal of Shinji's Bankai here and I also enjoyed how they portrayed his Shikai's ability against Bambietta – complete with reversed audio. The music for that standoff was an odd choice, but it at least caught my attention. The scene went on a bit too long, but it was fun to see Urahara annoy the hell out of Mayuri as he explained how to return Bankai – there's just something inherently funny about seeing this deranged scientist get pissy because the one person smarter than him is in the room. It's great. I'm also intrigued by our latest glimpse into Ichigo's training with Ichibe, though explaining why would involve going into pretty heavy spoilers – for now, I'll just say that it's trippy and surprising compared to Ichigo's past training sequences.

Still, for all the charm or entertainment in these individual moments, it's hard to concentrate on them when the tension of this larger arc feels cheapened. I suppose my hope now is the same as it was last week – with the playing field evened out, we can at least get some cool individual bouts. I'm just clinging to that hope even harder, now.

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Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War Season 2 is currently streaming on Hulu.