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EP. REVIEW: Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War Season 2

Again with this name, as if this dude is singlehandedly responsible for why every shonen fan doesn't like Bleach. Bleach would be universally hailed as a brilliant work if only that dude hadn't made that video. Except that just isn't true. I came to all of my conclusions about the series on my own, but of course you can continue to believe what you want to believe. Like how it seems you and many other hardcore fans have convinced yourselves that this series is anything but a mess of inconsistency, poor writing, terrible storytelling and wasted potential.

The hilarious thing about this is how during the fullbring arc, Kubo tried to make it seem like Ichigo was an active protagonist by force feeding the audience nonsense about how he supposedly was the factor that "changed Soul Society" for the first time in a MILLION years. The truth is not only was soul society almost completely unchanged, as the laws of Central 46, the rukongai situation, and everything else that makes Soul Society a hell hole is still intact, only now, old man yama is getting soft! He's offering to send shinigami into the human world to help out Ichigo. How wholesome! Give me a break. Ichigo did the bare minimum, didn't actually care about or have any truly meaningful interactions with almost any of the characters he met, and he's praised for it. Then again, the world building in Bleach is so poorly done and the world feels so shallow and unlived in that I could believe it. Nothing has happened in this place for hundreds of thousands of years. No wonder they love Ichigo, he finally brought some excitement to the place.

Hell, in that very same arc we find out that apparently not only was there a previous substitute shinigami who went rogue (the entire arc is a very bad attempt to replicate the Chapter Black storyline in YYH), but the initial plan for the Soul reaper badge was to use it to monitor Ichigo and eventually lead him to confront Ginjo, where the two would hopefully kill each other and rid themselves of the substitute shinigami issue, since they couldn't detect him in the living world. When did Ichigo receive the badge? Immediately after saving Rukia, fighting Byakuya and attempting to confront Aizen, the things that the gotei 13 worship him for. And even though it was Ukitake who gave it to him, it would've had to have been authorized by old man Yama, who apparently immediately loved him after Soul Society arc and considered him a fellow shinigami and part of their forces. Not only that, but Ukitake barely interacted with Ichigo at all, so this "betrayal" revelation fell extremely flat in almost every way. Sheeesh. The story is heap after heap of garbage contrivances and bad writing.

...the Soul Reapers as a whole could have absolutely solved this problem. In fact it's fairly simple: just start a registry for newly-arrived souls. Just ask them what their name was, where they lived, and when they died, and start matching up corresponding souls. Y'know, get some King Yemma bureaucracy in there. We know that souls retain memories of their former lives, so this would have worked just fine. But nah, the Soul Reapers were too busy locking themselves in the ivory tower of their uncomfortably-fascist organization to actually go out and help regular souls.

And what's so weird about that definition? The history of battle shonen is full of main protagonists who willingly take on a heroic role and stand up to evil and injustice. I daresay that it's a huge part of why the genre is so popular, since it hits that basic wish fulfillment of being able to make the world a better place by punching some not-so-nice-people really really hard.

You mean like how Byakuya, in his free time with zero support, was able to find his dead wife's sister and officially adopt her? Presumably only working off the information "She was a baby back then and I left her in a cardboard box on 8th street. She probably looks a lot like me if she's still alive" and just had to search for a needle in a haystack for like, decades? Man, I bet that would have been easier if anybody bothered keeping any kind of records for the poor folk. Hell, they might have even gotten the chance to be reunited before she died of Flashback Waifu Illness!

This is not an organization strapped for manpower or time. They've got the free time to publish multiple lifestyle magazines for each other, ffs. There are hundreds of grunt soldiers just sitting around their headquarters doing jackshit nothing until the rare occasion where somebody actually manages to make it into the gated community where all the cops live. If one of the smarter and respected captains like Ukitake or Unohana or especially Byakuya, who's not only got firsthand experience trying to find someone in their dogshit system but is also the head of one of the most powerful noble families in the damn Soul Society, had bothered to push for some kind of organization, the entire place wouldn't be such a festering hellhole.

In any case, I never denied that this was a fixable issue for the shinigami as a whole, just not something Ichigo can be expected to come in and fix.

The hilarious thing about this is how during the fullbring arc, Kubo tried to make it seem like Ichigo was an active protagonist by force feeding the audience nonsense about how he supposedly was the factor that "changed Soul Society" for the first time in a MILLION years. The truth is not only was soul society almost completely unchanged, as the laws of Central 46, the rukongai situation, and everything else that makes Soul Society a hell hole is still intact, only now, old man yama is getting soft! He's offering to send shinigami into the human world to help out Ichigo. How wholesome! Give me a break. Ichigo did the bare minimum, didn't actually care about or have any truly meaningful interactions with almost any of the characters he met, and he's praised for it. Then again, the world building in Bleach is so poorly done and the world feels so shallow and unlived in that I could believe it. Nothing has happened in this place for hundreds of thousands of years. No wonder they love Ichigo, he finally brought some excitement to the place.

Must have just imagined Ichigo helping reveal a hundred year crime committed by the dude who wiped out their whole governing body, committed mass murder and human experimentation

Amazing. Almost every single thing you said here was wrong.

Standing up to evil and injustice usually starts and ends with beating up bad guys in shonen manga. Did you see Luffy stick around to fix Arabasta and Wano after he beat Crocodile and Kaido? No, he moved on.

Expecting shonen heroes to do the kind of long term work it would take to create systemic change is expecting stuff of the genre that it's just not going to do.

Okay, so he brought Aizen's crimes to light. Great. Nothing else of note changed. Hell, they still let the confirmed war criminal Mayuri run around and lead his own squad. Real stand-up organization here.

Again, contrast that with Ichigo, who doesn't so much as say anything against the Soul Society's current state and has no problem being all buddy-buddy with members of the organization that actively contributes to it being such a shitty place.

Ichigo came to Soul Society for the purposes of saving Rukia from execution and he accomplished that by exposing the conspiracy that was behind her execution. He even convinced the person who was most invested in her execution to let it go.

Yet Ichigo's arrival does mark things getting better in Soul Society because his example inspired others. He made it clear what kind of person he was and the effect he had on others during the Substitute Soul Reaper arc you guys claim to love so much.

I don't recall Ichigo acting buddy buddy with Room 46 though?

You keep making these vague statements like Ichigo "inspiring others," but either you or the series itself stating that as fact doesn't necessarily make it so. Again, just what concrete, lasting changes did Ichigo make to the Soul Society? Did (after)life somehow get better for regular souls? Did the endemic ineffectiveness and arguably corruption amongst the Soul Reapers get corrected? (I'm not counting the active traitors who peaced out after their crimes were discovered.)

Did Yamamoto stop being a sad excuse for a leader? Because I'm coming up empty on all of those, and if he didn't manage any of that, then just what did he do?

He stopped Aizen who was killing hundreds of thousands of Rukongai residents for his Hogyoku but I suppose that count for you.

He inspired the next generation of Room 46 to liberalize their policies for example. Again, Ichigo doesn't live in this world and it's not his prerogative to drop in and fix systemic injustices there. It's enough that he provides the push for it to happen.

Genuine question because I straight up don't remember. By the end of the series, is there any real indication that things in the Soul Society have improved for its regular, non-militant citizens? Or do they just keep suffering in an inexplicably feudal era-themed back alley until they eventually die again and get sent back to the living world, rinse and repeat?

Like for comparison, if I look at any random schmuck from Wano or Alabasta or Dressrosa, I can immediately tell you exactly how things get better for them because of Luffy's involvement. Luffy doesn't stick around, he heals up and has a party then dicks off to another island, but by the end of the arc the place is in the hands of people who truly want to put in the effort to see all their citizens thrive.

So what, by the end of the series there's just a new secret room full of unknown old guys who might consider one day maybe giving half a shit about the millions of people they're responsible for?

Not unknown, there's a literal novel following one of the those "old people" (actually a young girl) about her trying to improve Soul Society for the better.

He stopped Aizen who was killing hundreds of thousands of Rukongai residents for his Hogyoku but I suppose that count for you.

He inspired the next generation of Room 46 to liberalize their policies for example. Again, Ichigo doesn't live in this world and it's not his prerogative to drop in and fix systemic injustices there. It's enough that he provides the push for it to happen.

Bringing up the 'inexplicably feudal' part as an example. That's a deliberate asethetic that Room 46 cultivated in order to control the populace and we literally see the Soul Society move away from that after the war in order to improve the lives of everyone.

Not unknown, there's a literal novel following one of the those "old people" (actually a young girl) about her trying to improve Soul Society for the better.

The Soul Reapers continue to let a twisted evil sociopath who has no problem mass-murdering tens of thousands of souls serve as a captain in their ranks. Who needs to worry about external threats when you have one like that as one of the "good guys"?

Oh, now I see. I'm sorry, but I don't really care about some spinoff novel released after the series had already concluded. We're talking about things that were portrayed in the series itself, particularly things that happened prior to the Fullbringer arc, which is when Yamamoto made the statement that we're disputing.

Top Gun wrote:

The Soul Reapers continue to let a twisted evil sociopath who has no problem mass-murdering tens of thousands of souls serve as a captain in their ranks. Who needs to worry about external threats when you have one like that as one of the "good guys"?

You're totally on the right track about Mayuri being a crazy psycho, but y'know, if you want to censure Mayuri, better to bring up his actions against the Quincies rather than that incident, since if he hadn't everyone in existence would have died.

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Oh, now I see. I'm sorry, but I don't really care about some spinoff novel released after the series had already concluded. We're talking about things that were portrayed in the series itself, particularly things that happened prior to the Fullbringer arc, which is when Yamamoto made the statement that we're disputing.

Whether you care or not is immaterial. Bleach is and always has been a multimedia project consisting of more than just the manga. The novels and anime are just as canon as the manga.