Anime Pilgrimage RTT

Bleach – episode 62

December 26, 2005 on 10:57 pm | In Bleach | 2 Comments

This looks suspiciously like the end of an arc. Reunion!

More spoilers, unrelated to the spoiler warning of the last few episodes

After a brief flashback courtesy of Komamura, Aizen finishes his story. All comes to light.

So much about these last thirty six or so episodes comes into much sharper focus here. As soon as Aizen revealed that he, Tousen and Gin had been controlling the council for as long as they had, I knew that Byakuya would be released from his contract and be able to come back and, finally, become sympathetic. His end is somewhat ambiguous, but then characters can survive anything on this show.

It becomes clear that the real reason Orihime was brought to Soul Society was so that the other death gods could see her restorative power and make suggestive remarks about it. It’s a pity, then, that Chad and Ishida proved useless. If manga composition has a general outline but is vastly made up as it goes along, it makes sense that Kubo Tite would have wanted the characters available “just in case”. If this was not the case, then it’s simply frustrating that they came along for the ride for no real reason other than to have some ultimately pointless fights.
For that matter, almost every fight up to this point has been rendered pointless by Aizen’s treachery. But then, that was his plan all along.

Still, the reunion of just about every character involved in this arc, attempting to beat up on Aizen, Gin and, surprisingly, Tousen, was pretty good. It’s nice to see Yoruichi and Soi Fong cooperating, and quite obvious that Soi Fong still considers herself subordinate. Beyond that, it’s all fairly neatly resolved, with few questions left unanswered besides those obviously reserved for the “Hollow Aizen” part of the story.

Where can Bleach go from here? Wherever it goes, I hope it gets there much faster. While the “Save Rukia” story had some good moments and a fairly satisfactory conclusion, it took a hell of a long time to get here.