Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War Part 3

Of all the possible things that could’ve interrupted the destruction of the Soul King, I must say “an Ukitake flashback” wouldn’t have been my first guess. Or my second. Or even my third. “Someone tries to contact Aizen” probably would’ve been something I could’ve guessed pretty quick—and we’ll get to that—but we haven’t really seen Ukitake much this season until now. In many ways, this flashback feels like it really came out of nowhere.

Like so many other things in Bleach, all of this Mimihagi stuff feels like it was pulled out of thin air. Bleach is so long, Ukitake shows up so sparingly, and I haven’t watched the original series in so many years, that it’s possible that I could be forgetting having previously heard about his connection to the Soul King—especially if it’s the kind of thing that was only mentioned once, early on in the original series (and admittedly, I wouldn’t be too surprised to learn if that happened). But all the same, I can’t remember having heard such a thing, so to me, this once again feels really anti-climactic—as though Kubo realized that he accidentally wrote himself into a corner, and had to hastily come up with an excuse. And, hey, he hasn’t really used Ukitake much so far—he’s still kind of mysterious. So Ukitake conveniently provides him a lot of flexibility for ways out of the mess he’s made for himself. Which is great for Kubo, but as a viewer, it really makes me feel like the momentum has taken a sharp downturn.

At this point, it’s getting harder and harder to feel a real sense of tension in this anime because so many times now Kubo has done stuff like this, that at this point, I come to expect it. And as we draw closer and closer to the end, I see this happening more often—no doubt because Kubo is becoming increasingly forced to tie up loose ends. That said, another common theme of Thousand-Year Blood War is that it’s pretty easily been able to distract from its shortcomings with a cavalcade of gorgeously animated, high-octane fights. And while there’s a little bit of scuffling, we don’t really have that in this episode, letting this mostly uneventful flashback feel mostly unwelcome—and I say “mostly” because given the body count that Thousand-Year Blood War has already had, I think it’s pretty likely that Ukitake’s going to die here. And I want to care more about this, but this happened so abruptly and I feel so apathetic toward Ukitake—who we’ve barely seen—that I just can’t find it in myself to feel strongly about his imminent death one way or the other (sorry, Ukitake fans).

But this episode’s saving grace is toward the end: Shunsui has decided to call upon Aizen for help. This was, of course, a long time coming. Surely, we all knew this was going to happen sooner or later, but that doesn’t make this scene feel any less impactful. Aizen is, of course, the original big villain of Bleach—and, candidly, still arguably the best villain it’s ever had. Has any other major shonen series put as much effort into imprisoning one of its antagonists while still keeping them alive, as the Soul Society did into Aizen? At the top of my head, I struggle to think of a rival (though honorable mention to One Piece, who among plenty of other things, sent one of its antagonists to the moon).

So this is all to say that at long last, the Soul Society—or at least Shunsui—is desperate enough to want help from none other than Aizen. You want to remind your audience just how intimidating a villain they haven’t seen in a while is? Let them have control over only their mouth, one of their eyes, and their ankles, and still make it apparent that the person talking to them isn’t sure what’s going to happen—in fact, make it so that said character is required to put the main key out into their chest to ensure that the villain can’t escape. God, Aizen is so cool. Of course, he’s being really coy about whether or not he’d actually do anything to help—and since this is Aizen we’re talking about, you just know he’s got something else cooking in the vast kitchen of his brain. And despite how underwhelmed I was with 75% of this episode, this last 25% here won me back over; I feel like I’ve been waiting ages for Aizen to finally get involved again, and we finally seem to be arriving here. And what a time to finally be arriving here, too; at this stage, I feel more confident in Aizen’s ability to kill—or at least neutralize—Yhwach than Ichigo’s, and I’d love to see Aizen usurp the main villain crown from him, and once again take center stage as the big threat of the series.

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Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War Part 3 – The Conflict is currently streaming on
Hulu and Disney+.