Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War Part 3 - The Conflict

Episode 35

Swiss cheese, anyone? Or maybe a nice donut? Or perhaps bagels are more your thing? Last week it was spirals, but this week, we got a whole lot of holes. Come to think of it, while I'm not sure I'd go so far as to call Thousand-Year Blood War a fully-fledged body horror series, there's definitely been a not-insignificant-amount of it, this season especially. And honestly, I like and welcome that. While it's not to say that it's the only one like this, Bleach has always been one of the more brutal long-running shonen series—certainly the goriest of The Big 3 (Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece). I'm the flavor of horror-lover who likes plenty of blood and guts, so personally, I like seeing it lean into this aspect of itself as much as it has been for Thousand-Year Blood War. In fact, I hope it continues to do so—if not amp it up even more.

In any case, to the tune of this anime's usual but excellent soundtrack, this episode almost entirely consisted of Shunsui fighting Lille Barro, who later transformed into what I can only describe as a biblically accurate stern ritter. Lille seems all right as an enemy; it's a shame we're only now really hearing much about him, despite his being so high up the ladder. That said, I can't not mention how absurd it was when the fight started and he started talking about how much of an advantage he was at because he knew a lot about how Shunsui's bankai worked, but Shunsui knew next to nothing about him. He literally said he had no intention of having a fair fight with Shunsui! But then, moments later, what does Lille do? He explains his powers to Shunsui anyway. Like, on one hand, I'm glad he did because I'm not sure I would've been able to intuit the specific nature of what he was doing all fight long without this. But at the same time—my guy, what happened to that advantage you were just bragging about? You fool!

That said, my god. For the 50th time this season, I must say, what a visually spectacular fight; or to be more specific, a visually spectacular bankai. I'd be extremely interested to learn just how much money went into this series'—and this season's in particular—visuals budget, and by extension of that, how much the remarkable animators working on this series have been getting paid. Infamously, animators don't usually make a lot of money—and working conditions don't tend to be great either. MAPPA is, of course, the quintessential case study here, but they're hardly alone. While I wish that animators would get paid and treated better across the board, Thousand-Year Blood War has looked downright cinematic at times, so more than usual, I really hope those animators were paid and treated well.

But getting back to this week's episode of Thousand-Year Blood War, overall it was solid. I didn't enjoy it as much as I did most of the other recent episodes, but it was a good watch all the same. It was mostly a fight episode—an incredibly stylish fight, though, as always for this series which is always finding a way to one-up itself. Lille's writing was pretty questionable, but aside from that, he seemed like a pretty worthy foe, even for Shunsui—who, by the way, we finally got to see in action for the first time since his promotion. In any case, while he's a worthy foe, I'm not sure I think of Lille as intimidating an opponent as, say, a giant CGI Soul King hand that can form other giant CGI Soul King hands, or Uryu. As cool as this fight was to watch, it came less from the tension and excitement of it all, as much as it did watching Shunsui's bankai in gorgeously animated action. So at this point, among plenty of others, we've seen Ukitake, Shunsui, and even Mayuri all take center stage on the battlefield in this season, in one way or another. Makes me excited to see who's going to be next.

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Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War Part 3 - The Conflict is currently streaming on Hulu and Disney+.