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I think Bankais, Resurrecion and whatever the hell the Quincy powerup were all ok theoretically. The problem was that for each of them Kubo introduced 50 different variations, and then proceeded to randomly throw them against each other in different pointless fights. Like remember that one time when Renji made his triumphant comeback from the job zone by...fighting a random luchador mook he had not met before? Or how Mayuri, one of the most charismatic characters, ended up fighting a blob so they had to resort to pulling your nostalgia strings by reminding you how cool his fight versus the other scientist was? Or how Urahara shows up to fight discount Aizen and nearly dies for it with no involvement on the resolution of the main conflict? But nevertheless the point being that Soul Society arc is good because there are only 5 big fights that have a thematic or emotional purpose: - Ichigo fighting Ikkaku (3rd seat) - Ichigo fighting Renji (Lieutenant and love interest of Rukia) - Uryu fighting Mayuri (experimented on multiple Quincy including his grandfather) - Ichigo fighting Kenpachi (Captain without Bankai) - Ichigo fighting Byakuya (Captain with Bankai and brother of Rukia, who previously beat the crap out of him) With only a few sidefights that get resolved relatively quickly (Kenpachi vs blind guy, Chad vs Kyoraku), expand the backstory of characters (Soifon vs Yoruichi) or are resolved offscreen (Yamamoto vs Kyoraku and Ukitake, Yumichika vs 69) , and most of them are used as breaks from the big fights. And all the time between the big fights plot happens (Aizen is "killed" between the 1st and 2nd big fight, Hinamori and Toshiro confront Gin between the 3rd/4th and 5th battle, Aizen's betrayal is revealed midway through the 5th fight). The Fake Karakura/Deicide arc and the 2nd part of the 1000 year war arc both fail because they are just a bunch of boss fights one after the other with almost no breaks inbetween them and no emotional investment. At least Hueco Mundo had Rukia vs her mentor imposter, Ichigo vs Grimmjow and Ichigo vs Ulquiorra. In the case of the Quincy, out of almost 20 fights, the only memorable fights are the Rukia vs The Fear and the Kenpachi ones, and these last ones purely by the fact that Kenpachi is fighting and beating guys who can bend the fabric of reality by punching or biting them harder. lezard_valeth fucked around with this message at 01:13 on Feb 6, 2020 |
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Feb 6, 2020 01:10
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I kept reading Bleach till the end because gently caress I already love enough stuff that will probably never get a proper ending (Saint Seiya, D.Grayman, Hunter x Hunter, Song of Ice and Fire and recently added Berserk to the list) might as well take one when I get the chance, even if it's a lovely one.
lezard_valeth fucked around with this message at 06:16 on Feb 6, 2020 |
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Feb 6, 2020 05:58
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Bleach's 2nd, 7th, 12th and 13th opening are great too.
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Feb 7, 2020 03:39
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Yumichika ALMOST had a moment in the last arc where Ikkaku was in trouble and he was about to go "screw it!" and release his true power... but then Renji showed up Where is my character development Kubo 
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Feb 8, 2020 23:05
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The power scaling in the fake karakura town arc is amongst the worst in any shonen. You start the previous arc by stating that Vasto Lorde type Hollows are as strong as a Captain and if Aizen gets his hands on any of them it will be really lovely for the heroes. Round 1 of the karakura fights starts and Harribel is defeated and needs someone to bail her out. Then round 2 starts, Harribel is revealed to have been a Vasto Lorde all along and yet she can't beat 2 over emotional kids. Starrk is revealed to be number 1 and so strong that he spontaneously became an Arrancar without needing Aizen's help, yet he is defeated by Kyoraku without even needing to use his Bankai. And Yammy is 0 meaning that he somehow is stronger than all of them, and yet is defeated by 2 mid tier captains that weren't even taking the fight seriously. The only one of the top Espada's whose defeat makes sense is Barragan, who the novels reveal to have been one of the first Vasto Lorde. He lost not because he was overpowered, but due to his arrogance and toying with his enemies giving Hachigen enough time to come up with a plan and turn his power against him.
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Feb 11, 2020 23:47
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Thoren posted:G8, the filler arc so good people talk about it decades later in random unrelated forum threads. The best filler of animes I've watched I can think of is the original run of Saint Seiya's Asgard arc, to the point that many consider it better than the canon Poseidon Arc. And they managed to seamlessly integrate it into the story to the point that it's almost considered canon save by the author.
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Feb 13, 2020 18:48
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Rody One Half posted:Chad really peaked early by fighting a monster he couldn't see with a telephone pole he ripped out of the ground gfdi in recent years having been reading a lot of other mangas (and also age  ) I kinda forgot why I liked Chad but whenever I rewatched the openings or started talking about Bleach I always thought "mmmmmm I KNOW I really liked this guy for a reason but I cannot remember why, he always lost fights..."now that you have refreshed my memory all I can think is holy loving poo poo how they massacred my boy e: and kubo then retroactively ruins that moment by revealing he was actually special all along instead of just a hecking strong regular dude that beat a chtulhu demon with the biggest stick he could find so in the end the only 100% normal human in Ichigo's group was Orihime? and somehow she ended up with the most broken power in the story which amounted to nothing...man this series probably doesn't have reread/watch-ability value knowing what it all ends up amounting to 
lezard_valeth fucked around with this message at 05:52 on Feb 23, 2020 |
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Feb 23, 2020 05:40
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chumbler posted:I wonder if it was Kubo or the editors/readers who disliked Chad. You know what, I'mma start pointing fingers and blame Kenpachi for overshadowing Chad. Both fill the strong brute quota in how they tackle problem solving, but one is a sadistic maniac while the other was quiet and emotional, and Kenpachi somehow clicked better with the audience and took off and Chad was left behind to rot
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Feb 23, 2020 05:57
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I searched that episode up to rewatch and it starts with this HOW COULD THEY gently caress UP THIS CHARACTER???
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Feb 23, 2020 06:21
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Man, early Bleach was sooo good and I'd rather we have gotten a lot more of that than more Soul Society. Hell, frigging HELL got relegated to a non canon movie and instead the last arc we dick around with more Soul Society stuff.chumbler posted:Chad is so cool. I remember when Bleach ended people posted pictures of themselves cutting/burning their Bleach manga collection because their Rukichigo ship didn't sail. Same feeling, but with what they did to Chad. Dude doesn't even show up and we are informed he ended up becoming a professional boxer  That's some Game of Thrones level of character arc ending.Stairmaster posted:I think he and orihime are mentioned as exceptions to that rule in can't fear your own world (which changes the rules again and says fullbringers have pieces of the soul king in them) Is it worth the read? lezard_valeth fucked around with this message at 07:18 on Feb 23, 2020 |
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Feb 23, 2020 06:59
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Schubalts posted:It was an actual ritual, and the target had to sit there and watch the whole thing. It's not a simple release command like anyone else's. Not something he can just whip out midfight without being interrupted or having the target run the gently caress away. Aizen only got the other Captains because showing your bankai is part of becoming a Captain, so everyone in the room had to watch him the entire time. It's elaborate enough that he tricked all of them into thinking his shikai was his bankai. What about Yhwach? Was it implied that he was always peeping from the shadows and he accidentally witnessed Kyoka Suigetsu's release when Aizen was showing it to the other captains?
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Feb 26, 2020 04:07
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I liked Gin solely on the fact that his greatest ability was lieing about what his powers could do in a shonen manga where you HAVE TO explain how your power works
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Feb 26, 2020 05:55
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Also I'm reading the Bleach novel and holy loving poo poo does it completely blow when it switches to a fight "i inserted myself in the past of the tree so i made that tree grow taller" wtf that wasn't even how your power worked. the fullbring were a mistake
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Feb 26, 2020 05:59
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ZepiaEltnamOberon posted:Speaking of Tsukishima, Byakuya. Granted it was a loving cool Bankai, even though he only learned to properly use it like 3 chapters before the manga ended. "mmmm what if instead of one sword I use all swords?" 
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Feb 26, 2020 06:08
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ZepiaEltnamOberon posted:Also because Aizen loving broke the game by doing unchanted level 90 kidos constantly, which sorta makes other kidos seem less impactful. I think up to the first half of the HM arc, the kido system kinda worked. You had specialised Kido users like Byakuya using low level kidos to greater effect than when other characters used that same Kido, establishing that the power of the kido depended on the user. You had Aizen completely destroy another captain with an incomplete level 90 spell (which retroactively made Tessai's usage of a level 99 part 2 spell even more impressive) establishing that even captains are not able to fully control the high end kidos. You had Rukia combinining the incantation of 2 kidos into one for rapid fire hax (and this was never ever brought up again!  )And then... You had Tessai shoot a level 80 kido and Aizen reveals that every kido below 90 is trash because of this one handy shield.You had every instance of a character using a kido over 90 achieve woop-dee-doo nothing at all, to the point that no one was surprised at all when Ichigo just bitch slapped the Black Coffin off because by that point 10 other characters had come out unharmed from level 90 kidos. The impact of a 90s kido was completely lost already, culminating with Aizen using the final 99 kido as a cool background for his sword fight vs Yhwach.
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Feb 26, 2020 06:20
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My all time favorite Bleach fight was Hachibel vs Barragan because: 1) An example of a fight that is won through adaptative strategy instead of brute force or "fortunately I happened to bring my only-god-killing sword" 2) Kido battle. Kido is cool. 3) Only Vizard to ever win a fight period
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Mar 2, 2020 22:00
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Tousen's Bankai is actually really good, problem is he was an idiot on how he used it. Just disable Kenpachi's senses and boom, sword through the heart. Or stay ranged and blast him with Kido. He knows how to use kido, he blasted Grimmjow's arm with it. Instead he danced around while monologuing around random philosophical crap and hitting non vital areas giving Kenpachi enough time to figure things out. lezard_valeth fucked around with this message at 22:46 on Mar 5, 2020 |
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Mar 5, 2020 22:44
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Darth TNT posted:The whole Mask sequence was fantastic. The reveal of 2 bankais and how easily they were beaten. One of them specifically because he felt the need to explain how it works. Which was the 2nd Bankai? Also my guess is that during the 1st war they simply stalled Yhwach out, since apparently his Almighty ability only activates after a certain time has passed and doesn't last forever. Plus unless I'm misremembering he didn't have the Sternritters back then, and I remember it being said that he gives the power to them and when they die he regains that power plus their abilities (though he never makes use of any of them) so he was stronger the 2nd time around. Or maybe one of the old captains had a sword that couldn't cut anything unless you were called Yhwach, you know, classic Bleach stuff 
lezard_valeth fucked around with this message at 18:11 on Mar 6, 2020 |
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Mar 6, 2020 18:07
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Oh I was rewatching some Bleach fight videos and I had completely forgotten about the green haired Vizard girl. did she even appear in the last arc?? I think Kubo forgot about her too.
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Mar 8, 2020 06:18
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Stairmaster posted:I still am of the belief Kubo didn't want to involve soul society chars as much as he did and the post SS arc was going to be ichigos friends and Ichigo teaming up to fight aizen. Did SS ever give a reason why they decided to let Ichigo and friends head first into Hueco Mundo and eat dick before dramatically arriving at the nick of time to save them? Or was dramatically arriving at the nick of time the reason? Bible Ian Black posted:remember how hiyori literally gets bifurcated but then she's just fine later did SHE show up in the last arc at all? god there's so many stupid inconsequential characters in this manga what the hell
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Mar 8, 2020 06:49
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I mean, if I were a mafia boss I too would fight using a Bleach weapon. Preferably Lisa's ridiculously huge spear Also "Ancient Sword of the Meth King" is such a rad name, someone give that journalist a rise.
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Mar 8, 2020 08:03
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I always held hope that Orihime would do something right up to the point where she and Ichigo were about to fight reality warping Hitler and thought "oooooh this is where her reality rejecting powers finally will come to play, oh Kubo, you, you had me fooled for a second that she was gonna be forever useless"...and the next chapter he fooled me and she was forever useless.
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Mar 15, 2020 05:38
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I'll be there day 1 when the new anime releases to watch the opening, then I'll resume whatever else I was doing
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Mar 18, 2020 23:06
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Yeah, imagine coming back week after week thinking "Ok, maybe this fight will end this chapter and we can move on with the plot" only to find out the character on the losing end pulls out a new power out of his rear end and prolongs the fight another 2 months. And then immediately after you move to another pair of characters and their fight  Heck, I remember the comment section of the manga page I used to read Bleach on, the later chapters were just an endless sea of "just end this fight already for christ sake!" lezard_valeth fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Mar 24, 2020 |
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Mar 24, 2020 20:02
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I think that one of the reasons the last arc got so unbearable was how aggresive it was with the fanservice. You had cool parts like Rukia vs The Fear but they ended up lost between pages of "heck yeah guyz did you see byakuya doing a backflip with his eyes closed while wielding hitsugaya as a sword and landing on Kenpachi's massive donger??"
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Mar 30, 2020 08:12
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Byakuya should have died twice in Bleach for narrative impact and yet he didn't because popularity. Hell, Hinamori should have died twice but she didn't because that would have turned Aizen from a troll into an actual villain an Aizen was just too much popular as a troll.
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Mar 31, 2020 02:38
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Sydin posted:And that's just the stuff I remember. Basically everything from the second invasion of SS onward is a complete clusterfuck that poisons the entire arc, which is a real shame because again I thought it started off incredibly strong. Bleach's constant problem throughout all of its arcs is that Kubo decides to introduce 20 new characters and have them 1v1 the previous 20 characters, or if there's a 2v1 or 2v2 it's with characters that the narrative gains nothing from pairing them together, with some very rare ocassions of clever team ups that are wasted because the bad guy pulls a "HAHAHA MY POWER B WIN", with the ocassional good guys pulling a "NO U". The SoiFon and Hachibel vs Barragan fight is the only non-filler instance I can think of the good guys winning vs the bad guy by teaming up and using strategy instead of rear end-pulls, and even then it ends up not being a good pair up since both of them never interact before or after this event ever again. The 2nd half of the Yhwach arc drags on because you have like 20 fights (most of which are a minimum of 5 chapters each) of 1v1s (or multiplevs1butactuallyonly1persononthegoodguyteamdoesalltheheavylifting) of characters that barely had any interaction with each other prior to this point fighting villains whose motives are not clear or deeper than "because Yhwach-sama said so".
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Sep 18, 2020 01:53
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TheHan posted:You could maybe excuse it the first time he did it since he didn’t think Aizen was so OP that he could reverse all his muscle memory on the fly, but that Shinji did it AGAIN against the bomb Sternritter was inexcusable. To be fair, reversing the directions against the girl that can nuke in every direction at once wouldn't have made him any good. The only way Shinji's power would have been useful is if he moved in for the kill immediately before the girl realised what was going on and decided to nuke every direction. But that's not how shonen works
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Sep 18, 2020 20:21
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The sequence is cool but doesn't make sense. In the manga Soi Fon uses her 2 hit kill attack on Aizen but the 2nd hit doesn't land because SPIRIT PRESSURE. But then it turns out it was Momo the whole time. In the anime they kinda fixed it by having MomoAizen grab Soifon's arm and stop her before she can get the 2nd hit in...while keeping the whole SPIRIT PRESSURE mumbo jumbo speech intact
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Sep 19, 2020 16:37
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TheHan posted:Of course, that was after Aizen's zanpakuto was destroyed, so who knows how he was even making illusions. Or when he had the time to show Ywach his release. Wasn't there something along the lines of the Quincies having been watching all along for 1000 years from the literal shadows of Soul Society? Maybe they were just peeping at the wrong time.
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Sep 22, 2020 08:03
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The final arc had some really fun stuff that ended up being wasted or poorly used. Mask de Masculine and the squad 0 captain that had the sword that cuts are an example of this. Mask losing because his opponent does some really cool poo poo and wins his fan over would have been  But hey, at least we got more chapters of the unkillable ostrich god fight  Sydin posted:Goddamn the vizards were such a disappointment, awesome character designs and powers, but they existed to do nothing but endlessly job. Except Hachi. He holds the records of: 1) only vizard to beat the opponent they are fighting 2) only character that won a fight using kido instead of swinging a sword harder
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Sep 28, 2020 22:57
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Urahara was one of the biggest dissapointments of Bleach. Secret villain theories aside, dude is the smartest man in ghost town and always knows more than he lets on, yet in the final arc he contributes absolutely nothing for the downfall of Yhwach and last we see him is presumed dead after having fought a random mook, and instead the MVP is Ishida's dad, a character that at most appeared in 30 pages total of the almost 700 chapters, and the "they lived happily ever after" monologue goes to Aizen, the former big bad of the series.
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Nov 4, 2020 00:10
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I can agree with Rukia vs blue Ichigo, Rukia vs the Fear and Renji vs Byakuya all being in the list because they are the only non Ichigo fights in the entire series that have any emotional weight to them at all. Hell if you add Ichigo into the mix then that list only gets expanded to Ichigo vs Renji, Ichigo vs Byakuya, Ichigo vs Grimmjow and Ichigo vs Ulquiorra. While fun to watch (most of the time at least), the majority of fights in Bleach are just 2 guys throwing and explaining their powers to each other and could easily be replaced by any other guy to the same result.
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Nov 13, 2020 09:06
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The whole "Ishida joins Yhwach's side" plot was so dumb. Ichigo didn't believe him. Chad and Orihime didn't believe him. Yhwach and the quincies didn't believe him. The audience didn't believe him. He then reveals he joined the quincies to get close to Yhwach and kill him and Hasbro is like "I know". The audience went "we know". IF Kubo had used the eXecution arc as a way to have Ichigo and Ishida grow apart, but no, actually Ishida ends up being Ichigo's closest ally in it too. If he had started the Quincy war arc by having Hasbro approach Ishida and tell him about the horrible things the Shinigami did to the quincies (that he was already aware of but apparently he forgot) then maybe it would have fooled someone. But no the first we see of Ishida in the arc is that he has already joined the Quincies as a chapter cliffhanger that I imagine the editors had to restrain Kubo from adding the "DUN DUN DUN" sound effect. So what was the point? Kubo had already exhausted the double quadruple secret agent trope with Gin, and even then everyone was expecting it, so why even bother attempting it again with a character that had been well established for 500 chapters already to be on the good guy's side?
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Nov 18, 2020 06:16
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That whole part seemed as though Kubo got stuck/bored and wanted to move on. Urahara: "Alright I just created some plot pills. I have conveniently teleported the plot pills to your current location. Please touch the plot pills so we can cross this plot point off the list" Like the Quincies stealing the Bankais was set up as a huge deal, and then they get to use them for all of maybe 3 minutes before they get them back. Not to mention, Yamamoto was dead. By all means Yhwach should still have his bankai. Granted, he has his bullshit "I say I win" power, but you'd think he would have kept the bankai for those times when him and Hasbro do the switcheroo.
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Nov 20, 2020 16:43
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Gologle posted:I literally can only think of Kenpachi and Aizen who get character development after that, yeah, and Aizen's is a bit more tenuous. And Rukia too. She has the fight with her zombie mentor in the Hueco Mundo arc, and then the whole achieving Bankai and fighting the fear guy that bodied her brother.
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Dec 14, 2020 18:02
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Also that reminds me that I never understood Byakuya and Rukia's relationship in Soul Society. They are brothers but not really cause they are spirits and he wants her dead because honor but also he doesn't want her dead because she looks like her dead wife because reasons which is also the reason why he adopted her as his sister in the first place and this all only comes up during Soul Society arc and is never brought up again after which point they are just treated as regular brother and sister and why the gently caress would you write this convoluted mess in the first place instead of just having them be brother and sister
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Dec 14, 2020 18:10
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Oh I forgot about the part where they were actual sisters I still think it's made super confusing by Rukia shouting "NII SAMA" every other second post soul society
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Dec 14, 2020 19:45
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Thinking back to the Hell movie reminded me that one of the reasons I hated the fillers and movies in general is how they shamelesly straight out reenacted fights. Like I know that you are not gonna give the characters new filler/movie only powers (with the hell transformation being a rare exception) but here they have the opportunity to use the already established powers in new creative ways but no, Rukia's opponent dangles her in front of her face and ends up getting stabbed by her insta-ice sword, Ishida dramatically drops the quincy goo flask that causes his sword prison to explode and I don't even remember what Chad did. Probably died.
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Dec 22, 2020 05:05
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I mean, Ginjo (that was his name right?) was RIGHT THERE at the time. To me it would have made a lot more sense for him to be the one that goes stabby stab on Ichigo and go "Here, I give you your true original Shinigami powers back" which would both work with Yhwach's vision of Ichigo killing him with his original sword, and also retroactively give the Fullbringer arc a greater scope purpose other than "the bridge arc where Ichigo gets his powers back". Instead Ginjo just showed up there because I guess it meant a lot for Tsukishima that he accompanied him?
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Dec 23, 2020 16:20
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