Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War – 14 – 9 Days

The eighteenth season of Bleach begins with a 2001 style trippy dream sequence in which a Star Child-like babe is born and then uniformly, fanatically adulated by the masses. Just another day inside the head of the King of the Quincy. It’s a vision of the past, but also the future, when the honor of the Quincy is restored. All it will cost is Soul Society, and the World of the Living as we know it.

In other words, No Pressure, Ichigo. Sure, he’s a shinigami again and has a shiny new zanpakuto, but Hyousube Ichibei makes sure he’s aware that he still has a long way to go. In his current form, he cannot defeat Yhwach. And at this point, Ichigo isn’t even aware that Ishida has chosen blood over friends and turned his coat. The return on that betrayal is considerable: Yhwach names him no less than his successor, confusing and infuriating many of the Stern Ritter.

No one’s sterner or ritterer or frikkin’ pissed off than Bambietta Basterbine, who has a terrible name but I still love her to bits. This is no doubt thanks in large part to Taketatsu Ayana having every word she utters drip with contempt. But also, “Bambi” has a penchant for picking a hot guy out of the rank-and-file, inviting him to her room, not to fuck, but to just kill him. The other members of the Female Quincy Caucus take exception to this, not because it’s serial murder, but because the guys are hot.

Like Bambi, the mohawked hawthead Bazz-B is also none to pleased with Yhwach’s baffling decision to name Ichida his successor. For one thing, he thought His Majesty already had one: the Teutonic Haschwalth. When he confronts Haschwalth, calls him a coward, and they draw their weapons, a fight is broken up by their comrade, who refers to Haschwalth as “their future emperor”. Could a Stern Ritter squad really be a match for their king?

Meanwhile, Yhwach has Ishida in a position of subordination, with the camera often placing Ishida’s head right in the center of the king’s crotch before Ishida drinks blood from a cup and it stains his lips. Perhaps I shouldn’t read too much into any of that, but it’s clear Ishida has made his choice and is going all the way into Quincyland.

I don’t think this means he was never friends with Ichigo, Inoue, Chad, and the others. But he’s now putting his destined mantle as the Last Quincy ahead of those relationships…and the general well-being of at least two major realms of being. Blood runs thicker than water.

After a call from Shinji, Hiyori announces to the other assembled Visored that they’ll forthwith be forming the “Fixing the Super-Pain-In-The-Ass Distortion Between the Living World and Soul Society. Her comrades are generally less enthusiastic, but one can’t underestimate a crew of captain- and lieutenant-level fighters.

In without doubt the most adorable scene of the episode, Rukia and Renji are locked in a sweaty staring contest while their wooden swords are drawn. No, it’s not foreplay; it’s training. Renji says it’s tough because he doesn’t like staying still or pointing a weapon at an ally. The chemistry between these to continues to be lovely.

Even lovelier is Rukia’s face upon learning that her brother has recovered from his injuries. Byakuya is well aware his powers aren’t anything he can let get to his head, but he fully intends to obtain the strength to let it very much get to his head, which is very Byakuya.

Another nice scene involves Kyouraku paying a visit to Ichigo’s secondary school friends of Tatsuki, Keigo and Mizuiro, and letting them know they need to be prepared to say goodbye to their boy. He makes clear it’s only a 1 in about 10,000 chance that Ichigo’s training will result in him gaining a power that will keep him from returning to the living world. But it’s still a chance.

Faced with this courtesy, Keigo curses Kyouraku for once again using their friend for their own convenience. All Kyouraku can provide in return are tickets to Soul Society for the three of them, should the need arise for them to say goodbye to their friend forever. These are now Chekhov’s tickets to Soul Society…I expect them to be used!

Finally, we check in with Inoue and Chad, still training with the Arrancar Comedy Troupe. This makes for a quieter, warmer, and more contemplative atmosphere after all the drama and pomp before it. Inoue thinks it’s nice that they can exist in Hueco Mundo, helping out the Arrancar. Chad agrees. Both of these characters prefer the more peaceful route, so this tracks.

Unfortunately, the Quincy are not in a negotiating or forgiving mood. They were nearly wiped out by Soul Society, and now they’re returning the favor, plain and simple. Yhwach amends the timing of this rise by stating that the King of the Quincy shall regain control of the entire world (which is to say, all of the realms living or otherwise) in nine days.

The good guys have a lot of work to do, but I’m looking forward to them completing their training, getting back out to the battlefield, and getting into some very complex rollercoaster-y battles. Bleach has aged like a fine wine, with its cinematic direction and full orchestra operatic score. Every episode is an event, and this was a worthy prologue.

Reign of the Seven Spellblades – 01 (First Impressions) – Freedom and Results

Oliver Horn is a new first-year student at Hogwarts Kimberly Magic Academy, a school with the design of a breathtaking castle perched upon a hill. While walking through the cherry blossoms to the opening ceremony, he encounters his classmates, and they encounter one another. The one that makes the biggest impact on all of them is a petite samurai girl with a bright smile and a complete disregard for the dress code.

The assembled classmates are greeted by a parade of magical beasts, but one of them gets pissed off when a troll is part of the parade, believing it to be a wrong, even racist practice. She butts heads with her male classmate, and it’s here where I note that she has huge brown hair and he’s a redhead, just like Ron and Hermione! Probably a coincidence.

What likely isn’t a coincidence is when someone in the crowd casts a spell that makes the brown-haired girl’s legs run even though she doesn’t want them to. She’s on a collision course with the troll, and it doesn’t look like he cares whether she’s pro- or anti-troll. Who should come between her and her sudden and unncerimonial demise but the magical samurai girl.

Here, Oliver not only shows his ability to herd cats and get the classmates to execute his plan even though none of them know each others’ names (and neither do we—we don’t even know Oliver’s yet) but also his penchant for spell customization, creating a decent facsimile of a dragon’s roar.

That roar distracts the troll, giving samurai girl the perfect opening. As she leaps into the air, she’s covered with glowing mana and her hair turns white. Her magical katana slams against the crown of the Troll’s skull, knocking him out.

Immediately after looking cool and badass as hell, the girl turns around and acts like a big goof, as her hands are still shaking from the skull impact. But her classmate is safe, and so is she thanks to Oliver and the others’ magical teamwork.

When Kimberly’s headmistress Esmeralda apparates into the auditorium with a flourish of lightning, it’s made clear that incidents like the one we just saw are relatively common, as the academy has a student attrition rate of 20%. And by “attrition” I mean death by myriad means both magical and otherwise.

Esmeralda minces no words in making her point, which is surely to sharpen these first-years and get them used to the fact that while they have extraordinary freedom, with it comes responsibility for their own lives and futures. The curt sobriety of the headmistress’ speech is followed by the samurai girl not asking Esmeralda a question, but just recommending a way to reduce headaches.

Once the classmates are magically wafted to the banquet hall, the classmates finally introduce one another. This should feel like last-second infodump—and in many ways it is—but allowing each student to introduce themselves also allows gives us an efficient Cliff Notes of who they are and where they’re from, it also allows for plenty interaction between these six different personalities.

You have the cordial aristocrat oujou-sama Michela McFarlane, complete with drill curls, the mousier animal lover Katie Aalto, the outgoing farm boy/botanist Guy Greenwood,  the introverted tsundere Muggle-born Pete Reston, and Oliver, who has two older cousins at the academy. They all come off as likeable, though Guy is the closest to being grating.

Finally, there’s Hibiya Nanao, the samurai girl, who is far more far-flung than anyone else, and also didn’t have to take any test to enroll. Instead, she was discovered by a faculty member (who happens to be Michela’s dad) and received a special recommendation.

With all the intros out of the way, everyone heads off to their dorms. Oliver is roommates with Pete, and makes sure he’s tucked in before heading out on an pre-dawn stroll. He’s confronted in the garden by a “covert operative” named Teresa Carste, sent by his brother Gwyn to watch over him.

Oliver gets another taste of Hibiya Nanao’s whole fish-out-of-water deal when he finds her topless, purifying herself with water from a fountain. Oliver warns her about the nearby boys dorms, but Nanao doesn’t possess the same Western modesty as he does. What she does have are a lot of battle scars, suggesting she’s no stranger to leaping into death’s jaws.

The reason she was able to save Katie was that she also harbored a healthy, if almost unconscious trust in her peers to back her up and, incidentally, save her from getting killed by the troll. It’s a group I’m looking forward to watching as they grow closer as friends and make each other better mages.