Score: A+

What the hell was that!? I’m sorry to open up with that, but this is one of those episodes where if every other word isn’t profanity then I’m not sure it’s accurately expressing my thoughts on the episode! I don’t want to over hype anything, but I don’t think I can avoid it. This may be the best episode in Bleach and almost certainly is the best episode of the entire year. Not sure how much further I want to go with that line of thinking. But this episode was insane! Nothing in my mind going into this episode remotely compares to what we got here!

Just the best girl

Inoue is the best girl!. She grabbed that tile and held onto it while getting actively obliterated in this episode! People can say that having the main love interest getting brutally attacked is a cheap move…but it’s an effective one! Because most people take a hit and they either are done or it wasn’t that big a hit. Because…people can only take so much. But that’s not the case with Orihime! She was taking some horrible hits. Just shots that were punching right through her body! And the only reasons she or anyone else survived this episode was that her healing powers go beyond reality. Inoue was getting brutally beaten down and had to keep healing herself and Ichigo.

I don’t like comparing suffering. Debates like “who has suffered more between Guts, Subaru, or Furude Rika” just isn’t really a great one to debate. Because at a certain point, suffering is just suffering. But this was an episode of suffering. It’s not like Inoue could erase the memory of the hits she took and she had to endure those hits to reject them. So she got hit again and again. And obviously it wasn’t just her. To a degree it’s basically torture with her restoring herself and Ichigo just so they can take another hit. But when it’s that or dying…what can you do? And so she kept going. And 1000% credit to her voice actress. You could feel the absolute agony through Yuki Matsuoka’s voice.

This episode absolutely beat her up

The whole episode was just building it up. There was obviously an incredible amount actually going on. But, you could feel them building up something for Inoue. Constantly having Inoue dismayed over her lack of power. I wanted to tell her that she was really being too hard on herself. The ability to keep them alive through repeated mortal wounds is not a minor ability! But it also does tie into Inoue’s story in the series. Her defense and her “healing” abilities are truly insane. But her attack was never powerful. Tsubaki was used a couple times and it just didn’t do much. So I understand how frustrated she was. But in a tragic way it really felt like she was taking in Yhwach’s argument about power and almost embracing it. That she had to change her power into not one to restore others, but one to eliminate their enemies.

That whole last part of the episode was basically that entirely. Inoue clearly readying to throw away her life in order to save Ichigo, Rukia, and everyone else. To turn her power into a “strong power” and use it to get rid of their enemy. It was a beautiful and utterly tragic scene. Ichigo and Rukia were just down for the count. They were in no position to do a single thing in that moment. All they could do was watch in horror as Inoue gathered her powers, pulled everything she could out, and marched forward towards presumably her own death…Just begging for her not to do it. Her faeries quietly circling, her blood lifting into the air, and the ED song quietly playing. It was beautiful and horrible. Presumably using her power to inject the concept of rejection into her very body and then reject both herself and Yhwach.

Beautiful bankai…tough day for Rukia

On a non-Inoue note…what the heck Renji! You send Rukia off to fight the last boss while you hang out with Chad to fight some statues!? I’m not going to pretend that it would have guaranteed the win, but was that really the best idea!? But fair enough that Chad and Ganju were having a tough time against those things as they kept regenerating. And I suppose Renji probably still needed time to fully recover after Ishida utterly trashed him in the last season! But I just look at that last moment with Rukia impaled and just wondering…

Rukia going did make sense honestly. She was there at the start. Rukia meeting Ichigo was the trigger for the plot of Bleach. So maybe it really is only fitting for her to be there fighting at his side against the greatest terror of the series. Part of me does think that her presence might have pushed Inoue even further down that path though. Feeling as if she wasn’t able to fight alongside Ichigo, even though her powers were again the only reason he could keep fighting as long as he did. And it is kind of nice since we haven’t had many (or any that come to mind) moments of Ichigo and Rukia fighting together. Maybe the time they got jumped by Grimmjow, but that was more a one-sided beatdown.

Rough day for everyone!

I can’t believe I’m still going at this episode and haven’t talked about Ichigo’s fight! The episode was so packed and overwhelming. We got both Ichigo pulling out all the stops in his partial hollow form and then busting out the bankai. The former unfortunately just couldn’t get that decisive blow in on Yhwach. And things got really bad once the man stood up and started unleashing hell on them. Poor Ichigo couldn’t protect himself much less Inoue. Which all led to that horror show of her taking brutal hits, rejecting them, and then taking another one. Just a reminder of how utterly insane and powerful their opponent had become. Yhwach getting the Soul King’s power on top of what he already had was simply too much.

Respect to his bankai

Ichigo’s bankai deserves some respect on its own. It was great at least for a while seeing him break out that level of power. I presume he was holding it back out of worry for what might happen. But at that point there really was no choice. It was do or die. Loved the shadow clone kind of thing he had going with generating copies as he sped around. And that was one of the most beautiful getsuga tensho’s I’ve ever seen. Just insane power and then generating a visible moon afterwards. It was just flexing on another level. It wasn’t enough to completely disintegrate Yhwach who was as tenacious as any villain out there. But it was a true spectacle. Getting back to one blade and just embracing the mixed up nature of his power.

Ishida gets the job done!

Poor Ishida again is forgotten until the very end! He was giving his all as well. While Ishida wasn’t fighting Yhwach, he was fighting the All Mighty power. Very much like Ishida to use his head and trying desperately to find a weakness in that power. A classic Ishida fight in that sense. And he didn’t have Inoue there patching him up so the injuries were really piling on. Haschwalth just getting more unhinged and malicious as the fight continued. His win a combination of finding that Haschwalth had a very brief gap between usages of that future sight and using Leiden Hant on Haschwalth. Tricking him into thinking Ishida was going to use it as a desperate power boost instead of using it to rob Haschwalth of his Quincy powers. The man is clever and finds a way to win!

Just…this episode…

Wow, this was an episode. In a sense it was needed for me to write all this just to work my way through it. I’m both left in awe of Inoue’s sacrifice play and disgust for Yhwach’s views on power. He spent the whole episode practically spitting on how Ichigo and Inoue wanted the power to protect those they love. All he cares about is the power to inflict harm and his own selfishness. He is a perfect final opponent. Ichigo only wants power for the sake of others, and Yhwach only wants power for his own sake.

The episode ends on a final note with effectively the credits rolling. But it had weird moments like divider between the two halves of the episode kind of obscured after Ichigo used his Bankai. And I can’t imagine we’ll have 5 episodes of just grieving for Orihime. But I guess we’ll see what happens. It is going to be a horribly tough week to wait through!