Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War Season 2

Episode 20

Back when I first picked up Bleach in high school, Kenpachi Zaraki's fights were always my favorites. In a power system increasingly defined by new forms and extrapolated power sets, he was the gigantic, blunt hammer looking to make nails out of every opponent he faced. Where others got Bankai or Hollow masks, Kenpachi just learned to use both hands when sword fighting. He was such an indomitable force that the series went out of its way to never let him fight Aizen. We all knew the only force capable of overpowering that villain's unending array of impossibly genius plans was Soul Society's barely-trained berserker, and by god, we had to leave something for Ichigo to do.

There's still a part of me that appreciates that blunt simplicity, but as the series wore on and I expanded my own tastes beyond what looked the most immediately “cool” I kind of fell out of love with Kenpachi. It turns out that having a character who's just always The Strongest makes for some pretty simplistic, low-tension fights. Outside of watching how much more damage Kenpachi could shrug off before slicing his opponent in two, there wasn't much to his character or his battles. With the revelation of his Shikai's name and his training with Unohana, I'd hoped that would change. Yet “I Am The Edge” proves to be a microcosm of everything that once made Kenpachi Zaraki the ultimate edge lord, but now feels oddly dull.

His opponent this week certainly doesn't help. Maybe it's just that I'm sick to death of Natsuki Hanae's typical cadence after that last season of Demon Slayer, but I had to force myself to pay attention to Gremmy's constant blathering. As Nodt wasn't a well of personality, he at least had a unique aesthetic and eye-catching form, and MASK DE MASCULINE was nothing but personality. In comparison, Gremmy spends the entire fight standing still in his over-sized coat like a teenager loitering outside a Michigan 7/11, making painfully forced allusions to the power of imagination while Kenpachi steamrolls his way through every attack this Gremmy can think up. He's irritating when he should be intimidating, and has an ability so narrative-destroyingly powerful that, if he used it to its full potential, this war would have been over the moment he stepped onto the battlefield. So of course he instead uses it in shortsighted, obviously surmountable ways until basically beating himself. That's surely part of the intended irony – a villain powered by limitless imagination, toppled by the one man whose limits are truly unimaginable – but the execution fails to make that intended poetry land.

This episode is also where TYBW's speedy adaptation finally hits a wall. I get why they'd want to condense this fight into a single episode, and frankly, I'm glad such a simple and repetitive bout didn't bleed into next week, but that doesn't stop this installment from feeling overstuffed. We speed through a whole parade of attacks from Gremmy – guns, missiles, lasers, clones, giant hands, meteor, the vacuum of space – until very suddenly arriving at Kenpachi revealing his true Shikai with such scant fanfare that it leaves no real impact. Sure, there's something thematically appropriate about his power-up just being a bigger, cut-ier sword. And yes, there's some hint at a long-theorized reveal about Yachiru as the captain finally calls his sword's name, but it goes by so fast that it doesn't have time to land. That's to say nothing of the reveal that Gremmy was a brain in a jar this whole time, which is such a weird conclusion that it makes the whole fight feel like a fever dream.

In all, this isn't a terrible episode, but it features every weakness that's been threatening to drag down this stage of the arc, with little to counterbalance it. It still looks nice – though the early scenes are defined by a sickly green lighting that doesn't survive streaming compression very well – and moves fast enough to avoid being a chore. If you're a mark for Kenpachi, then I'm sure this is a hype match-up, but without that investment, all I can do is shrug at this mid-card match and hope that the next one has more going for it.

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