Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War – 26 (Part 2 Fin) – Ant Trap

At first, it looks like Yhwach’s Auswählen ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. Squad Zero takes the upper hand in every fight, while Ichibei unleashes his zanpakuto, Ichimonji, which he uses to paint things black. Anything painted, like Yhwach’s sword, loses its name, thus rendering it useless. Another point to Squad Zero.

But, as has been so often the case in these high-level battles, the Quincy manage to turn the tables and take down the Squad Zero members, one by one. As for Yhwach, he simply steals Black from Ichibei and envelops him in blue flame. Another point to Team Quincy.

Finally, Squad Zero stops playing around. They reveal that they’d only been using a small fraction of their power, the rest being bound by one anothers’ lives. But when Kirinji, Hikifune, and Nimaiya all kill themselves, the blood oath seal on the surviving Shutara is broken, and she’s able to wield her full power, causing earthquakes on all three worlds.

She summons her Bankai, which has a very long name and takes the form of a colossal loom. The Royal Guard members plus Haschwalth and Uryuu are all surrounded by various patterns of cloth, chosen by Shutara to eliminate them in unique, trippy ways, all while uttering highfalutin poetry describing their demises.

Finally, the blue flames around Ichibei dissipate. Turns out Black wasn’t Yhwach’s to steal. The moment Ichibei released Ichimonji, anything and everything in the three worlds is fair game to be painted black. Ichibei then releases his “Bankai”, which I put in quotes because it technically far predates that concept.

The ink on his brush turns from black to white, enabling him to write a new name for Yhwach on his black ink-covered body. Ichibei chooses “black ant”, and Yhwach becomes so. Ichibei first stomps on him with a gigantic foot, then as he’s falling through the sky he smashes him between two giant palms.

We cut to credits from this apparent but almost certainly premature victory, and afterwards we get a very tonally dissident omake sequence featuring Kon, whom we haven’t seen in quite some time, and whom I wasn’t that interested in seeing anyway.

The weird, out-of-place omake aside, this finale, while featuring plenty of bombastic battles and table-turning, didn’t have quite the luster it could have had for the simple reason that of the eleven combatants, only one was a character I actually cared about: Ishida Uryuu. There’s no freakin’ way he’s dead, either, so we’ll have to wait till next year for his showdown with Ichigo & Co.

Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War – 25 – Spring Rain

Sarugaki Hiyori and the other Visored show up to find Urahara preparing…er, something, and Hiyori chastises him for sending Ichigo, Yoruichi and the others before they arrived . Yoruichi’s little sister also shows up; I don’t believe we’ve ever met her, but she’s too late to give her sister a large care package.

Then again, perhaps she and the Visored will eventually serve as reinforcements for Ichigo and the others, whom we don’t see this week. Instead, Ichibei scolds and battles Yhwach, using a painted seal to conjure a giant hand that blasts the Quincy King 1000 ri (or roughly 2,500 miles) away, then slaps him back to where he started.

Nimaiya fights a still-alive Askin in a battle of poisoned blood, Kirinji seemingly beats Haschwalth in a duel of blades, and Ishida’s reishi projectiles bounce gently off of Shutara’s hastily-sewn umbrella like droplets of spring rain. Hikifune remarks that Squad Zero isn’t messing around anymore.

Ichibei seems to indulge Yhwach in a bit of melee fighting before using his brush to cut the very name of Yhwach’s arm, reducing it to “ar-” and halving its strength and speed, then shortening Yhwach’s own name to “Yhw”. All in all, it looks like an overwhelming victory for Squad Zero…but I knew it would be fleeting, because 1.) this is Bleach and 2.) there’s one episode left.

Here I was, taking small comfort in knowing Bambietta Basterbine’s suffering was at an end, but nope, here she is, being sucked dry of the blood Gigi gave her in order to heal herself. When she begs for her life, Gigi is again enraged and violent, then snapping back to swooning over Bambi’s lifeless corpse. What did Tite Kubo have against Bambi?!

Lili finds Gigi, and reports that Candice and Meninas and her faced off against Pepe, with mixed results. Lili wants to ensure Quincy forces are stabilized by the time His Majesty returns to Soul Society from the Palace. It seems all Gigi really wants to do is not die and keep fucking around with what’s left of Bambi.

Neither of them get their wish, as Yhwach—sorry, Yhw—seemingly has enough strength in him to activate Auswählen—German for “select”—which draws all of the powers of the Quincy down below (including Lili and Gigi’s) and redistributes it to the Quincy who need it most (Uryuu, Haschwalth, and the Royal Guard).

The lesser Quincy who have their powers and very souls stolen turn into skeletons, but the Sternritter seem to remain alive, if significantly weakened. I wonder it that means Yhwach can still draw from them should the need arise. And I assume if Ichigo’s party and Visored make it to the Palace in time, they’ll be able to re-tip the scales Yhwach just tipped in his favor. We’ll find out in the big Part 2 finish.

Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War – 24 – Upper Echelon

The lesser undercards down in Seireitei are all but finished. Yhwach, Haschwalth, and Ishida have arrived at the realm of Royal Palace, and are met by Zero Squad Captain and Royal Guard Shutara Senjumaru, who cuts a regal, aloof figure as she summons the Soul King’s Blade.

But before that, we get a brief flashback to centuries earlier, when Hyousube Ichibei was proposing a non-aggression pact between the Soul King and the Quincy. Turns out Yhwach is the Soul King’s erstwhile son, and basically tells Ichibei to shove his pact.

While this is going on, Shiba Ganju joins Ichigo, Orihime, Chad, and Yoruichi aboard the cobbled together rocket to take them up to the palace, claiming to have been given info on the place by his sister. Orihime warmly comments how this feels like when they went to Soul Society to rescue Rukia. Now it’s Ishida-kun they hope to bring home.

Yhwach counters Shutara’s guards with the “W” Sternritter, a two-tongued weirdo who can’t be touched, but when he’s dispatched, the Quincy King summons his own Royal Guard: Askin plus three other powerful Sternritter we hadn’t seen in action before.

One of them has a big-ass rifle, which he uses to shoot Shutara in the head and then destroy the five Squad Zero’s floating islands. This is looking too easy for the Quincy…and it is. All of their gains were an illusion weaved by Shutara.

In reality, Yhwach and his people are trapped within a giant cage made of trees grown forth from Hikifune Kirio’s body. Kirinji Tenjirou shows up, as well as Nimaiya Oh-Etsu with a new prototype zanpakuto that’s so sharp that no amount of strikes can can dull it and no sheath can hold it.

Nimaiya uses this ridiculously powerful sword to defeat the three Quincy Royal Guards with one stroke; I won’t bother with their names since they simply didn’t last long enough to note them. Askin manages to just barely survive the one stroke, but he doesn’t survive a second.

Yhwach, apparently unfazed by the hasty fall of four of his top generals, manages to slip outside Hikifune’s tree cage. This makes Hyousube “Osho” Ichibei, whom he met with and did not defeat back in the black-and-white flashback, the only one between him and the Soul King.

Fortunately, Ichibei doesn’t seem any less capable of repelling Yhwach as he was back then. And even if Yhwach does manage to kill or get past him, Ichigo and his friends are on their way.