Bleach: Sennen Kessen-hen – Ketsubetsu-tan – 08

「The Headless Star」

Ichigo finally returns in the latest episode of Bleach: Sennen Kessen-hen – Ketsubetsu-tan. But even with his new zanpakuto and skills, there are new obstacles ahead of him that he couldn’t have predicted would plague him as he advances toward Yhwach.

SHOWING OFF

After Kenpachi’s fight with Gremmy, it wound up being an excellent opportunity to show off the Sternritter girls’ abilities against the poor Squad 11 soldiers. It wasn’t exactly an impressive display for Candice given how much she kept trying to show off her moves against Ichigo while he was on a roll. Same thing with a lot of the dudes like Bazz-B who showed up out of nowhere to openly embrace being glory hounds, but are quickly blockaded by other Soul Reapers.

That being said, the showcase of the other girls wound up being exactly the kind of showboating that makes the fights in Bleach entertaining. Meninas is a treasure because she has this cute, fluffy design and soft voice, yet brutally crushes a group of soldiers into paste with a giant rock slab. Liltotto is also quite fun because of her deadpan snarkiness and her ability to stretch her mouth and eat large crowds of people.

I need to gush about Giselle. I love how morbid her ability is with how her blood can control people, and how gleefully violent things get when she’s on-screen. There’s almost an Evil Dead quality to the macabre humor whenever Giselle’s abilities come into play, whether it be manipulating cartoon skeletons or being brutally maimed by her friends and foes. There’s an infectiousness to how enthusiastic Giselle is about the prospect of killing her foes or manipulating her friends, going so far as to flash puppy dog eyes at the prospect of using her blood on Candice. I know that future fights will elaborate more on their abilities, but if Giselle’s is anything to go by, I’m looking forward to seeing how some of the more intimidating Sternritter opponents can get.

DON’T CALL IT A COMEBACK

The hugest scene in the episode was definitely Ichigo returning to the Soul Society to charge through to Yhwach. It’s always a good time to see him solo large crowds of enemies as he tries making his way towards his destination, and this was no exception as he had blocked, slashed, and Getsuga Tensho’d his way through his latest opponents.

If there is one downside to it, it’s that there wasn’t enough time to embrace all of the different skills and techniques he was able to pick up from his training since his main goal is to get to Yhwach before he uses the newly opened rift in the sky to get to the Soul King’s territory. Additionally, this was also the moment when Ichigo found out that Ishida had defected to Yhwach’s army, so much of Ichigo’s attention was swayed towards why his friend would join up with his foe. Although it was nice to see Ichigo’s friends return, including Orihime with her outfit’s massive boob window, I imagine the next batch of episodes will center mostly around how they handle Ishida’s decision to be a part of Yhwach’s crew.