Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War Season 2
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malvarez1
Posts: 1950 |
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The review was kinda harsh…but I get it. If you don’t like Mayuri or any of the Arrancar guest stars, I could see how the appeal would be limited. I thought the whole zombie thing was interesting myself.
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Sirsumsrince
Posts: 17 |
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Yeah, they cut the audio of the Yumichika "You reek of semen" bit. It's a bit awkward because he's still holding his nose the whole time. I thought they would've censored the scene entirely honestly. |
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John the Dark Lord
Posts: 253 |
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It's actually even better than just cutting the audio: They had Yumichika's VA record two lines: "You stink of semem" in the Japanese version vs. "It's so obvious" in the Western release.
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Unculturedman
Posts: 57 |
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The only thing I disagree on for this episode's review is giving any and all praise to the Main character bits. Not only is the conflict between him and Uryu incredibly forced and horribly written, the plan now is just to simply have ichigo and friends go back to the Royal palace almost immediately after coming back and accomplishing virtually nothing. The most significant thing he accomplishes here is opening a gateway allowing Yhwach to invade the palace. Keep in mind, this is now the second time this arc Ichigo has arrived late to the battle, comes in, and accomplishes virtually nothing just as the villains are about to make their escape. Ichigo didn't even need to be here. Instead of having him come in to fight the bambies, have the other shinigami do it. Have Ikkaku and Yumichika bankai up and come in to protect Kenpachi. The entire Ichigo arrival scene is just pointless. He could've just stayed at the palace, but no Ichigo had to come down because The villains needed a way in. Just bafflingly terrible writing all around. Kubo was clearly trying to channel other, better shonen with this moment and failed spectacularly. Everything else is just a lame fight with minor side villains and a pathetic, forced emotional moment between the main characters that had no proper set up.
But yes, this was always the worst part of the final arc for me and they seem to have kept it all in with maddening accuracy. Nonsense zombies, Mayuri always somehow prepared for every eventuality, pointless classic garbage c tier arrancar characters returning, terrible mid fight banter between all parties involved, and oh noez! Toshiro is a zombie too?! Whatever will we do? Add on top of all this that they removed the infamous yet harmless fun fanservice scene with Orihime and Yoruichi and that's a recipe for easily the worst episode in the series. Man this arc is bad, and the anime really has not done a very good job of improving the source material at all. One thing I've come to understand over the years is this: Bleach is a dumb fun, style over substance series with little to no depth and not much good writing to be found in any of its aspects. The worst part of it all is that it pretentiously purports itself to be some mature and philosophically rich shonen masterpiece above all others but this so far from the reality that its almost comical. No matter what the fans claim, this is the absolute truth. As a story, it is truly awful. One of the absolute worst in the genre. If you can't enjoy dumb, mindless fun, constant poorly conceived fights designed with the sole purpose of getting all the characters to reveal their abilities, cool character designs without a hint of good character writing, and a narrative that you have to turn your brain off to enjoy, you won't be able to enjoy the series. |
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FilthyCasual
Posts: 2316 |
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Was that part ever confirmed or is it just implied? |
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AksaraKishou
Posts: 1412 Location: End of the World |
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Unless Yumichika is smelling semen directly from inside Gigi's balls, i'm pretty sure it's implying necrophilia...?
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Nonaka Machine Gun B
 Posts: 825 |
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The review didn't even bother to mention Yoruichi's return, which I completely get as the anime staff cut the scene down significantly. Cannot imagine Satsuki Yukino walking in the booth for that, but she probably recorded multiple episodes.
Outside of that, however, the episode was just about everything I would want from Bleach. Free-for-alls and fun character banter. I'm the guy asking for more Cirucci Sanderwicci. If the show can deliver on those fronts, I'm not worried about aspects such as "the outcome doesn't matter." The show doesn't really concern itself with that either, so I see no reason to put that onus on it. I'm not accusing the reviewer of doing this, but this series has been a big target of plotpilled "if it doesn't move the story along, it's bad" critique for years. I can't view it as anything else than a refusal to engage with media on its terms, which I believe is kind of first and foremost to entertainment. If it sucks or you don't like it after that, oh well, but very rarely do I see people not being incredulous when we get these "side fights". I love the Arrancar characters, but even putting that aside, Kenta Miyake as Charlotte stole the show. Everything that makes these characters pop is on the page already, but certain actors taking it to the next level is a treat. |
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Matros
Posts: 306 |
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Judging by social media people are more upset about the "censorship" than Kubo writing an obviously problematic line. Shonen fans...
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tintor2
 Posts: 2006 |
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Honestly, this arc really lacks a proper usage of the protagonist. The first cour has been preparing his new abilities a lot to face the Stenritters yet the most he has done so far is talking with Orihimine and Chad. His fight against the girls was the most underwhelming usage of the Number One song and it doesn't help that all the other Shinigamis are replacing him.... again. It's like the opposite of what Toriyama did with Goku in most Z arcs when he needed to make his protagonist show off.
The fact that the visuals are like the same it's still night also makes tiring and it doesn't help that next episode might focus again on Hitsugaya who already had two episodes dedicated to his fights against Stenritters. The one who needs to fight again is Rukia due to her big importance in the story (at least if Kubo cares about the old times) and the fact she actually ended up becoming one of the strongest thanks to her bankai. |
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db999
Posts: 311 |
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Yeah, I’d also say the problem isn’t really whether or not the fight moves the story forward, but whether A) you’re interested in the characters fighting or B) the fight is actually good. The problem is that if A or B don’t apply then the former criticism, that the fights don’t move the story forward, comes into play. For me specifically, very few fights in the latter half of this arc fit either of those criteria. The problem is that the side fights in the latter half of this arc are mostly just bad. If they were good I wouldn't be complaining about the plot not being moved forward. Especially because the main plot of this arc is really good, but it's continually dragged down by the boring and overly long fights with literally every character spoiler[except for Chad and Orihime who I don't remember getting fights of their own in this arc.] That's the real reason why fights not moving the story forward as being a big issue with this arc. |
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Unculturedman
Posts: 57 |
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It's because the series doesn't even bother to get you invested in all these characters and handles many of them very poorly. People tend to enjoy anime and manga for all sorts of reasons, but I'd imagine shonen fans prefer a smaller more focused roster of characters to an excessively bloated one. Or at least a series with hard and easy to see separations between main and side characters. In most series, the line between side character and main character is very clear. In Bleach, as soon as the soul society arc, the focus shifted from the human world characters to a massive brand new group of characters that Kubo insists we should care about even if the vast majority have nothing about them worth caring about. I'm all for subjective opinions and all that, but Bleach's approach to storytelling and progression is just awful. Look at the arrancar saga, Aizen spent several volumes sitting around for no reason to allow fights to happen, then reveals it was all pointless anyway and that he barely needed any of his cronies. Several volumes of story spent on spending time with characters you have no reason to care about because the character writing in Bleach is downright bad. Am I supposed to care about Mayuri and Giselle's goofy zombie fight here? |
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we love lain
Posts: 145 |
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What's this problematic line again? |
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4725 |
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Yeah, one of Bleach's core issues has always been Kubo dumping large batches of characters into the story and then proceeding to do absolutely nothing of note with the majority of them. I remember watching the Soul Society arc on [as] back in the day and seeing all sorts of image macros floating around that named all of the captains and lieutenants, because there was no way to keep them all straight otherwise. Even so, less than half of them wound up having any sort of personality other than "single exaggerated character trait," so I'm not sure why I bothered. After sitting through over 350 episodes of the original anime there were still a handful whom I couldn't name if you paid me. And then Kubo proceeded to do the same thing with the Visoreds...and the Arrancar...and the Fullbringers...and, well, you get the idea. It would be one thing if they were all treated as throwaway mooks, but the story seemed to want the audience to care far more about them than they'd actually earned. Kubo also has the bad habit of using the incredibly tired shonen trope of only giving backstories for his mooks just before they're about to die, as if that would make us give any more of a damn about them.
This isn't to say that adding large groups of characters to a story can't ever be done right. Oda infamously came up with the designs of all the Supernovas on a whim in the span of a week or two, but almost all of them have wound up playing significant roles in the second half of the story...hell, Law's pretty much a Straw Hat by this point whether he admits it or not. Then again this is the author who got his audience to shed tears over spoiler[a weird pudgy guy wearing baby clothes and sucking on a pacifier], so clearly he knows what he's doing. Likewise, HxH's Phantom Troupe could have easily been a bunch of throwaway villain obstacles, but Togashi gave them enough personality and intrigue that we were quickly invested in them. It's all a matter of execution. |
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jdnation
Posts: 2057 |
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I agree that it is extremely stupid to see Ichigo make it down, only to go, whoops, lol, gotta go back up!
And why'd Ywbh have to wait for Ichigo? Why not Rukia, Renji or big bro? Does Ichigo just make a bigger hole? Was it because the staircase was still open? How then did Rukia and co make it down then? It's dumb. If anything I'm more interested in the Mayuri fight, because it's an entertaining comical spectacle to see the weirdos go at it. Couldn't care less for the Uryu switched sides thing as it feels half baked, especially if we can guess that there's more to it than just some Quincy loyalty building up to a reverse card moment.
I'm pretty sure he just said that as a witty insult. |
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theotheranimeman
Posts: 74 |
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Apart from Giselle being absolutely despicable, this episode was a lot of fun.
I'd say Bleach's greatest strength is its abundance of likeable characters, so I'm pretty sure that a lot more than "a microscopic section of fans" enjoys the return of those four arrancar jobbers. They were never terribly important for the story, but they were memorable and their quirkiness really shines through in this episode. |
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