Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War

What is the quintessential battle shonen protagonist if not single-minded? Since time immemorial, your typical battle shonen protagonist has, at any given point, had one goal and one goal only—and it’s usually something along the lines of beating the crap out of whoever their enemy du jour is. To be clear, I’m not saying this is an inherently bad thing (or inherently good thing for that matter). Just that it’s one of the foremost battle shonen-y tropes, for better or for worse. But this week, I think, highlights both sides of that. Ichigo, for starters, has nothing on his mind but beating down Yhwach—he’s locked in, and ready to go like he’s never been locked in his whole life.

And speaking of his life, we learned quite a bit about that this week. I remember back in The Day, people used to joke about Ichigo that he’s part Quincy, part Hollow, part Soul Reaper, part [everything else he is; you get the idea], and all Gary Stu. And to be fair, at the time, that’s how it came off. Like Ichigo was some ultimate Franken-protag, combining every cool thing Bleach introduced into its world into one body. Even now, I’m not entirely sure if it was Kubo’s hope people would feel that way about Ichigo (I’m guessing not, but whatever), but that’s besides the point. What I’m getting at is that while it’s been a point of joking and criticism in the past, it’s good to see Bleach actually address Ichigo’s weird status as being a little bit of everything all at once. I’m not entirely sure I buy the idea that this was all machinated from the start so that Ichigo could be the next Soul King, but still. Good to see the series at least address this and bring it into its overall narrative.

Still, despite Ichigo having more than a few moments, Orihime was the star of the episode as far as I’m concerned. Battle shonen series, especially from Bleach‘s generation, don’t usually have the best track record when it comes to female characters, whether that means writing them in a way that’s lesser, or otherwise just never including them in the action. Often, both at the same time (cough Naruto cough). And while I’m not saying Bleach has an excellent track record in this regard, episodes like this remind me that in its back half, it made a lot of noticeable improvements in this department that its contemporaries don’t necessarily share. If Hueco Mundo felt like Kubo realizing he accidentally made Orihime way more powerful than he needed her to be, this feels more like him embracing that and telling the audience, “Hell yeah, I made her stupid powerful, what of it? What’s your point? What are you going to do about it?”

I think my only nitpick about Orihime in this episode is that all she seems to be thinking about is her precious Kurosaki-kun the whole time. Not to say he’s not important in this, obviously, just that when I say writing tends to be a consistent issue for battle shonen women, one of the most common ways this manifests is them having nothing on the brain but boys. It’s fine for Orihime to be worried about Ichigo; I guess I wish she would think of something else, too, while she’s trying to protect him. Say, I don’t know, the fate of the worlds and her other loved ones? In a way, this circles back to how I started this whole review: the single-minded battle shonen protagonist. When it’s a guy, it’s a battle or a big, grandiose goal. When it’s a girl, it’s just getting senpai to notice her. For better or for worse, I guess battle shonen heroes can’t have more than one thing on their minds at all times.

Still, this was a great episode all the same—a good return to form, following how underwhelming last week was. I’ve said all this, and I didn’t even mention how toward the end of the episode, we got a whole hype squad of captains—Hitsugaya, Byakuya, and Kenpachi—all ganging up on the same guy. If that’s not a recipe for a great fight, I don’t know what is.

Rating:

Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War – The Calamity is currently streaming on
Hulu and Disney+.