Shonen Showdown Episode 5: The Bleach Dive
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Welcome to Shonen Showdown, where we are dedicated to making your shonen brain rot worse. I am your most raggedy of doctors, and I think I need to send this to my co-host to properly get this episode started. It is your beloved Lady Emery. Hope all you fine people are doing well.

as I believe we should be releasing this around the new year. But yeah, we had some rumblings in our discord www.aadiscord.com. Let us know what you'd like us to cover to dig into some shonen shows like actually get in the weeds and one we're listening folks see we're listening but to

I wanted to talk bleach. I wanted to talk bleach. And that is what I asked Raggedy if we could do. So that is what we're doing today. That is right. And I did not really have a choice in the matter. I am kind of along for the ride. I'm going to let Emery take us into this bleach dive, as we're calling it, and introduce us to the bleach universe for the five people out there who don't know what bleach is.

Yeah, so for those who don't know, this is about Ichigo Kurosaka. Kurosaki, excuse me. Oh my gosh. Recovering from cold, people. It happens. But he's always had the ability to see ghosts, even if it was a gift he wished he didn't have. And then one day, his family is attacked by a Hala, which is a evil lost soul, essentially. And Ichigo becomes a Shinigami, or also known as a soul reaper. But...

We'll likely call him Shinigami's here. He dedicates his life to protecting the innocent, helping tortured souls find themselves peace and...

Let's be honest here. I know like if you're new to Bleach, I guess steer clear of this until you dive into it because we are talking spoilers. It's going to be a lot of nonstop spoilers. And I would argue we will go through the like where the anime is right now, A Thousand Year Blood War. We might even touch a little bit on the future. We'll try and be good for those who are just watching and are not readers. But yeah.

Just wanted to give the fair warning out there right now. MARK MANDEL: Yeah, absolutely. And I think probably the best place to really start with our deep dive is talking about what kind of sets Bleach apart from the other members of the big three.

Obviously, Naruto, One Piece, Bleach makes up the classic Shonen Big Three. And Bleach always kind of felt to sort of like the odd man out, the redheaded stepchild, which makes sense considering our little strawberry. But it definitely does belong. And I think the things that make it different are kind of what helps make it belong.

I, I absolutely agree. And I'm excited to dive into this because I can at least kick us off. I think one of the things that stands out to me is the art style. Each of the big three has a very unique art style. We've touched a little bit on one piece of art style at some point, I'm sure we will touch on Naruto's but Naruto's

Bleach for me always was something that I hadn't seen in the 2000s. It was somewhere between a prettier version of Samurai Champloo, where it's just a little more edgy, a little bit harder lines or edges, but still beautiful. I'm sure we'll talk later in the episode about the beautiful women, but T.T. Kuba knows how to draw a lady. But yeah, this was...

The first time I had seen when I watched this back in the day, back in high school when it was airing –

Where I saw an anime that embraced a variety of races that didn't feel cartoonish. And like I said, the women are very feminine and the men are smoke shows. But it just felt mature and different, which I know you wanted to talk a little bit about that too. And I think this touches back to the spooky showdown episode that we did.

That's our second episode that having these spookier, darker themes in your show lends maturity one superficially. I think when I was a angsty teenager, right, that that, uh,

that superficial veneer of maturity, of the darkness that comes with Bleach is that first thing that grabs you a little bit. But then you realize that the themes and the stuff that Bleach gets into is way more mature than you would expect for a shounen.

The tone is a lot darker. The characters are kind of allowed to actually develop and grow. Ichigo is probably one of the few shounen protagonists that's not from the Sun Wukong model yet.

Shonen right? It's not the Monkey King. It's not Goku Luffy or Naruto or even not sue from fairy tale all these characters kind of fall into that archetype where each ego is much more in my head a Yusuke Urameshi coded character You know, he's more of this brash Punk who has like the heart of gold he is

gets much more of a character arc that's built around his mother's death, which happens very early in his life, is very impressionable, and it gives him a lot of guilt. And you have to kind of watch him slowly over the course of 600 episodes, little by little work through that. And he gets true, full character development that we don't see a lot in Shonen. I would agree. I had written down the darker parent story because...

We get more of Naruto's background eventually of like his parentage, but you get that right away with Ichigo, which was amazing. And I think was the hollow that killed his mom, the Fisher hollow? Terrifying, by the way, like a terrifying hollow when you think about it. And like you said, kind of leads into that spooky element, but it just shows that they aren't afraid to go into it. Yeah, for sure.

Just to, yeah. And another thing, I don't know if it would lean into the mature themes, but more so just an exploration and something that I thought was super cool was the artist obviously dove into various cultural influences. And it was a celebration of that. There's a lot of Spanish and Mexican influences. I mean, Chad himself was.

One of the characters in Bleach is half Mexican, half Japanese. You have Hueco Mundo, along with a number of other places and creatures like the Arrancars, who all have either Spanish names, which do mean something in Spanish, or it just feels like a celebration of that. And I know we will get into it. I'm really excited for our audience to hear all of the research that Raggedy went into, but...

Yeah, for the Quincy, those Germanic and I think some Jewish elements, but it's more so that's again, that'll lean into some of the religious talk that we'll get into there. But I know for a fact that when Kubi went on a break, he went to Germany to do the research for the Quincy. So I just feel like there's a love there. And

Most recently in Thousand Year Blood War, the biggest celebration was of Japanese culture. I mean, every single one of Squad Zero seemed to be embodying an influential part of Japanese culture, whether it was the calligraphy, hot springs was brought up, food, the sword creation themselves. I mean, the Buddhism, like walk and everything. I just, it was so...

So well done to see those various elements. But I think that was really cool. And I don't think we always get that out of various authors. No, we don't. And just to touch on a little more on the diversity part, like with Chad, he was this mech.

This Hispanic Japanese character who gets bullied a lot and he forms this connection with Ichigo who because of his red hair was bullied because people thought that he was mixed race as well. And it does lean into something that Kubo does very, very well where he doesn't actually explain a lot. A lot of Shonen will give you a ton of exposition.

And while he does give you a decent amount of information, he doesn't lay everything out on the floor for you. So you kind of have to pick it up a little bit yourself. And I think that was one of the drawbacks of Bleach and more the popular consciousness because

You're asking a bunch of 12-year-olds to do the heavy lifting of deeper critical thinking, and they just kind of glosses over. But something that they also do really well in Bleach is the diverse cast, not just in their diversity, but also generally.

Racial diversity, I should say, but their actual diversity of personalities and the fact that unlike a lot of shonen, Bleach allows its very big cast to all interact. And you watch these very interesting, very distinguishable characters bounce off each other. You have characters like –

Shiba and Yamada, you know, who are recognizable and they all have their own unique quirks and you watch them bounce off of other characters. It's not just, you know, purely Ichigo and his friends. You know, you get these other characters doing their spiel too, which can, especially as the show gets on, dilute things a little bit, right? Where you're not getting maybe as deep of a connection to each individual character, but it does let you...

See a lot more of the world and gives more breath to it and that I think also will lead us nicely into our next topic which is the diversity of their powers and Obviously more specifically the swords. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I want to touch real quick on the powers because that's something that I think I funny enough for being a show very much about the swords I loved

Kubo's like attention to detail for everyone else as well. So like, for example, Orihime is not just a simple healer. Like you could just have her be your white mage.

But she's turning back time. Like, it's that additional, like, je ne sais quoi that's just so good of like, oh, that's so creative. Like, I love that Chad has his – I wrote down right and left punches, but the right arm is, I think, the right arm of the giant and the left hand – or the left arm is either the left hand or the left arm of the devil. Yeah.

That's so cool that it's so unique. And I know I will touch on Yoruichi later because she's one of my favorites. But yeah, when it comes to various swords, I feel like we do need to touch on some. What's a favorite sword?

Favorite power sword for you though, Raggedy? So for me, my favorite powered sword is Kenpachi's because he unleashes the ultimate power of using two hands on his sword. And that's it. And that's just this big epic moment. And I was...

dying so hard where he's like oh i could use fancy sword tricks too it just grabs the sword oh i'm so glad you touched on kim pachi i wrote him down too because he doesn't use it correctly it's it's chipped like the details of how chipped his poor sword is yeah it's it's terrible but i love it um there's oh my goodness i can't believe i'm blanking on his name uh there's the one power where the um

Where the sword, every time it cuts someone, it doubles the weight. Oh, yes. Whose sword was that? He's one of the lieutenants. Then there's the other sword where he's not – he's Ikaku's brother, whose name I'm also forgetting at the moment, where he also doesn't use his sword properly because his power is –

When he calls the sword's name, it spreads into these four other swords. But that's not actually what it does. It's more of this like magical type of power, which is taboo in his squad. So he intentionally insults his sword by calling it the wrong name. So it won't function properly until he absolutely has to. Amazing reference. Like, yes. So, so good. Yeah. One of my favorite swords is Shinji's.

And we were talking before we were recording, it's the everything is fucked up. Like that is such a good and cool power because his Shikai is just reversing directions. Up is down, left is right. Super annoying in video games when that happens to you. But then his Bankai, which they did not go into in the manga, but they did in Thousand Year Blood War. Again, please watch Thousand Year Blood War. They're doing such a good job with this. They're expanding on things and it's a lovely story.

They show you his Bankai and instead it just messes everything up. It messes up from distance to visual cues. So you just can't function. And I loved that. That was so good. Yeah. And then even beyond the Shinigami powers, which get a lot of focus as they should, the Shinigami powers, especially with Ichigo, even though his power is kind of quote unquote boring, the cool thing with the way that the system –

Which I will get into a little more again for later when we talk about the religious stuff is that it leads itself into allowing Ichigo to grow and sort of accept his inner truth the way that the sword is a part of the Shinigami and is them but is also still this kind of separate entity that they can –

communicate with. And then something else with that, you have the Arrancar, which are kind of this super neat inversion of the Shinigami powers, where instead of them sort of finding their inner truth to enlightenment, they're almost regressing back to their native state, so to speak. And it's just their Arrancar state where they look more humanoid is them almost regressing

quote unquote, civilizing themselves, so to speak as a presentation of false face of who they are. And then their resurrection, you know, where they turn back into their more hollow form is much more of a representation of, of that bestial kind of, uh, origin that they have, which, uh,

Is super cool too to touch on because like I said earlier Kubo doesn't really give you everything right? So a lot of the powers while some of its explained a lot of it's explained very visually So the first time you see a resurrection with the Iran car it is not explained you just see it and you go Oh, I know what that is. It's exactly like what the Shinigami do but it's the hollow version and it's never Exposed on and I like that he does that a lot so true. I

I think, well, because I could talk about swords and the power system for ages. I think that we should probably dive in and, you know, we got to give this a fair shake. We need to talk about the biggest drawbacks, which I wrote down for me is the filler. And I am so curious about this because I am going to disagree with your hot take, but I'm kind of excited. So why don't you first tell us about this hot take of yours? Okay.

I have the hottest bleach take of all time. And it's that the filler is not bad. The filler itself is not bad. So what I want you to think about is more or less about the way the filler is being used, because that is the problem. That's why the filler is bad. It's poorly organized. It's placed in bad spots. It is way too long and it

The nature of the story of Bleach doesn't allow those long filler arcs to be inserted well into them. But the filler arcs themselves are actually, I think, quite enjoyable. Interesting. The Bound arc I know is not everyone's favorite because it's not. It's the first big one that kind of causes this problem. It's not that terrible if you watch it in isolation. Right.

But I want you to think more about the better filler arcs. The Zanpakuto Rebellion arc, which is super cool where you watch the Zanpakuto come out and become people.

and are actually interacting not just with their shinigami as they you would expect them to do what you see with ichigo now you can see the other characters doing that but they also interact with each other their designs are super cool like the katan kiyot uh kyokutsu has a twin uh

body because it's a twin sword. The Zabimaru is Sabi and Maru, which are twin characters, but are still connected like you would expect for how Renji's sword works. Some of the designs, like Wabisuke, which is that weighted sword, looks really cool when you look at it. The problem is it's nestled inside the Aranka arc, splitting it up. So the problem is how it's organized, not the actual arcs themselves, in my opinion.

humblest of opinions. I think you explained that well because yeah, that is my critique is diving the most into the Bound arc because I've seen that one unfortunately the most. The frustrating part is it undoes a lot of what the Soul Society arc had done for Ichigo. Had you put that arc in

before that or made it its own separate movie even, it would have been better. But it was way too long. It was backtracking a lot of the characters. And like you said, the other arcs just get in the way. I just want them to get out of the way because it's breaking up crucial battle scenes. And I understand that they were billing time because they were catching up to the manga, but it was incredibly frustrating at the time.

But, you know, maybe I'll go back and rewatch it. I'm glad you brought up the twin swords, though. That will, for those who are watching Thousand Year Blood War, that will come back around. That's actually a nice little plant that I didn't think about for the filler that they did. Yeah, that's the nice thing about the bleach filler is that they actually expand a little bit on the world. It makes it feel a little more lived in. One of the other ones that I like is the modified soul thing.

uprising arc which you know you have characters like khan who are there and you don't normally you wouldn't really think about them and the story properly doesn't actually think too much about the ramifications of having these you know creatures slash things exist but there's this whole uh filler arc that expands on it which is cool and then i mean you

The best filler arc of all in Bleach is probably the Fullbringer arc because they go full on JoJo's with that. And no, it's not. I know it's canon. It's still filler. That is my other hot take is Fullbringer arc is still filler. It's really funny you say that because you're right. Oh, man. Well, I think where we go from here, though, is I need a little bit of feminist rant time. But before we get to the feminist rant, I have to obviously...

Interrupt the feminist rant with a man's name just to make it sting that much even harder. No, just kidding. But one last thing I did want to mention because I know you were talking a little bit earlier about – before we started recording about the one-piece filler and how it kind of works a little bit better. I think –

Part of the reason of that is the organization of how that show works. So One Piece, you're going from island to island to island. So you can get these little separated snippets of stories that don't interact with each other, that don't necessarily feel like they're taking time. There's these natural breaks in the story, which

Bleach doesn't have as much, which is why I think that filler stands out so much more egregiously. No, I'm so glad you said that because you're right. If we're talking about the best filler of the big three, One Piece has them beat. I mean –

um what is the what is the filler that you always tell people to go watch raggedy g8 g8 arc so good so glad i watched it and i've never thought that about any filler of like so glad i watched it but you're right it was organized really really well and it was concise i think it was maybe eight episodes um if it was longer it felt like it felt good it felt like the right length

Yeah, it was something like that. But now we can get into your feminist rant because, oh boy. Oh boy, everyone. T.T. Kubo, he sure can draw them women. But we both agree he doesn't know what to do with them. He knows how to write them, but he doesn't know what to do with them. And you had an example of a –

The woman you felt he did well, and I still feel like he cut her short. So I feel like I should give you the floor before I go full rant mode. I don't know if doing her well is exactly my take. I think she's the best example, probably, of a character that he does give –

a bit more agency to let's, which is Rukia. Sorry. I guess I'm burying the lead a little bit, you know, for Rukia, which makes sense. It's one of the characters that you spend the most time with. She is one of the more interesting characters, uh, in the story. She has some of the more impact on, on the story itself. She gets a little bit damseled, uh, which is annoying. Everyone gets damseled. Of course, even Ichigo gets damseled. So everyone does get damseled. Um,

But Rukia does get her development with her brother, and they kind of work through their stuff, which is nice. She does get some pretty cool power-ups and good fights later on. So I think she definitely gets used the best. And probably the thing that I would see with him, with saying that he doesn't know what to do with them, is part of the problem with that big, diverse cast is that...

You have a lot of these characters that you get a little more of a superficial look at. And the unfortunate reality is that most of the ones who suffer from that the most are the women. Yeah, I think. Oh, man, I couldn't agree with you more. It's frustrating because I will say.

Kubo doesn't just do this with the women. He does it with the men. For example, Chad is an another excellent example of going to give him a cool power up. He's good for an episode and then he's useless again. Like he does it with others. He just does it the most with the, with women. Um,

I am going to touch on my favorite, which is Yoruichi. I adore Yoruichi. I feel like Rukia and Yoruichi fall into the same category of they're not looking for a love story. They're two strong women. They're strong in their own rights. But there's this what I like to call the Captain Marvel effect or the Captain Marvel category.

For those who don't know, Captain Marvel in the Marvel Universe, big, strong, powerful woman. And once her movie was over, whenever they are trying to shoehorn her into the other films, or whenever they are trying to make her part of the bigger ensemble cast, they clearly didn't know what to do with her or how to scale her. And I felt that was the same with these two women in particular.

With Rukia, I'm going to touch real quickly on her Bankai. It is essentially absolute zero. It's stunning. It's powerful. They say it's the most, I think, beautiful. She's the most beautiful sword in all of Soul Society. It is real pretty. It is.

It's such a cool moment in Thousand Year Blood War. And what happens? She can't control it. And so she like is trying to come and reverse out of her absolute zero sub breeze. And her brother has to save her. You couldn't let her have that. Like, just let her have this one guy. Come on, come on. I just want her to have this win. And with Yoruichi, I love her because she is this outstanding former captain turned rebel, right?

She has a Zanpato, but she never uses it. And why? Because she's a Shinpo master. She's the flash goddess and it's referenced by multiple characters. And she is so incredibly fast that I would argue she doesn't need her Zanpato. And she actually creates techniques for this and...

I'm going to say spoiler, spoiler, spoiler right now. And this is for those who are watching the anime. Anime, you just fast forward for like a minute or two. Yeah, you don't want to hear about Yoruichi's glorious ass. I mean, sorry, go ahead. I didn't mean to.

I mean, let's be real here. What I'm about to talk about is when she turns into a lightning cat, which I'm trying to remember what it's called, but it's a combination of shimpo and keto that just makes her super powerful. And yes, does it make her super undressed? Absolutely. She's a cat woman that's basically nude with just a lightning bikini on with cat ears and a cat tail.

And it's amazing. It's such a cool moment. And does she defeat her enemy? No, God, no, she can't do that. We have to have Bucket Hat come in and step in and help. And that's just like...

So incredibly frustrating to me. And just as a side note, yes, of course, I'll mention Orihime. I used to love her in high school. But then when you look back on it, you just go, she's the most damselingest of damsels. She's got boobs and she's super sweet, but like,

I don't know, man. When Kubo tried to give her powers outside of healing, I was like, don't do that. She's your healer. She's reversing time. That's cool enough. It's going to be okay. I think I just had to confirm. I think I just remembered this sheerly out of pure love of the game, but God of Thunder 3...

the cover when you see Yoroichi's ass in all its glory is I think exactly the chapter slash episode you were talking about. Yes, yep. Which I'm so happy I was able to bookend your feminist rant with just nothing but pure misogyny.

Of course. Of course. There's a lot of other things I wish we could get to, but I'm actually going to skip us all the way to religion because I really want you to get into this. This is so, so well thought out. And I want our fans to hear about this and all of the details. I think, yeah. We're going to get into the religion bits and then we'll close out with some of the cutesier stuff with the style and the openings, I think, to round out. But I will...

Prepare yourselves this this may come off as a little bit of a lecture on religion and I would apologize But fuck you. I put a lot of work into this you're gonna hear it The the first thing I want to talk about before I get into the deep deep religion stuff is something interesting with the Quincy's and How the Shinigami work so the way the Shinigami work it's about purifying these souls and kind of bringing in this reincarnation cycle and

Quincy's on the other hand the way that they deal with hollows is they completely erase them from existence so this is disrupting the hollow Shinigami reincarnation cycle and sets Quincy's up as this natural enemy to Shinigami's almost even more so than the hollows and the the religion aspects play such a huge role in bleach not just to the

aesthetics, right? You know, the Shinigami is a bit of an aesthetic thing. The, uh, the, the reincarnation, it's a little deeper, obviously the wheel of life from Buddhism is deeper, but it's very plain to see, but a little less obvious is how the powers work. So for example, the Quincy's are modeled after the sort of Judeo Christian, uh, um,

and modeled after them. And they draw their power from the blood of their founder slash savior figure, Yuhua, who is a representative of all three persons of the Christian Trinity. He is the father of all the Quincy's. He was resurrected like the sun and he bestows his power and bestows his power upon them like the Holy Spirit.

Additionally, the more superficial his name is from the Tetragrammaton, which is how you say God in Hebrew. It's the Y-H-W-H. So that is that more deeper connection for it. And it's almost this –

weird sort of inversion of the Judeo-Christian belief and a little bit of a bastardization on it intentionally. It makes sense that it's doing this because while he is representing this, he's also a little bit of kind of an anti-Christ kind of figure because he's not like Christ who's giving his body to forego the sins and all this. He's actually...

in spoilers for a thousand year blood war, drawing these powers back into himself to strengthen himself off of his followers. For his, um,

Eyes, then are we thinking that's similar to like the Judeo-Christian idea that God is omnipresent then with like the multiple? Yeah, he's definitely omnipotent and an omnipresent that that is his power is the almighty, which is, again, coming from a Judeo-Christian sort of realm and.

They are, you know, the Quincy's are modeled after the Nazis. They just are like that. No one, no one who looks at that doesn't go, oh yeah. What could that be? It's obviously what, what it's say. It's not, say what you want. It's not what you want about the Nazis. They, they were stylish. They were, they got their clothes from Hugo boss. All right. So look, that's everyone gets one and that's the only one that they get.

That's more of a slant against Hugo Boss, in my opinion. But a lot of – I'm somewhat joking, but a lot of anime does pull the Nazi aesthetic, particularly for the fashion. That's why they do it. They're somewhat obsessed with it. A little too much, in my opinion. But when you play it into the J.A.O. Christian –

beliefs and aspects of the Quincy's, it fits with that bastardization of these beliefs and the bastardization of the power system. So it's not completely... Because I remember a lot of people...

When this first came out, very superficial, like, oh, they're making the Jews the Nazis, which is a superficial reading when the real actual reading is, no, this is bastardizing that Jewish Judeo-Christian religious system for an evil sort of term.

And then to get a little bit off That's the stuff that people that we are more familiar with and I had to do a little more research on the Buddhist stuff For the superficial you have things like the Hyogo coup, which is based off of a wish granting jewel in Buddhism And is kind of similar to you know the Shikan no time of the jewel of the four souls from Inuyasha

So that is a thing that does come up a lot in anime. Again, with the powers, the Shinigami power is a manifestation of an individual's strongest attachment to the physical world, and then thereby conquering said attachment, gain their power. That's how they get their Bankai, and that's how Ichigo is allowed to grow a lot of the times as a person. And one other thing before I throw it to Emery, because I think she's got something she wants to add, a few other superficial things.

Aizen Mu is a lesser wisdom god in Buddhism who has six arms and has a third eye that goes up and down, which looks very similar to what we know Aizen eventually looks like, as well as the fact that you have Orhimes Fulbring, the six flowers, which is an iconic flower of another Buddhist goddess. So a few more superficial things with Buddhism. Well, and all I was going to point out is...

People oftentimes were joking about it. And it's in that same vein of it was the superficial look of Ichigo's sword in his, I think it is indeed his Bankai. It's a swastika. And people like, oh my God, he's got like a reverse swastika for his sword guard weapon.

which is the part before the actual blade. But no, that's actually a Buddhist symbol that was stolen and utilized. Well, I say stolen and utilized by the Nazis. Definitely stolen. Fully agree with that. Okay. But like, that was the purpose. And I love that you are bringing up all of these points because it's like, ah,

Of course, he's reached in a weird way like that enlightenment or he's conquering, you know, those attachments. Of course, that's going to be what his bunker looks like. So I love that. And one last detail from Shintoism, which is probably one of the cooler ways that that happens.

The power system gets melded from religion into how the characters sort of develop. In Shintoism, that's kind of where the Shinigami and all that stuff comes from. But more particularly to what I'm going to talk with Ichigo is the idea of the Matama or the four parts of a soul.

There are, in Shintoism, the soul is divided into four different souls. The wild soul, the gentle soul, the happy soul, and the wondrous soul. And anyone who has watched enough Bleach knows that our cute little strawberry, he is not one, he is four. He is a hollow, the wild soul, a human, the gentle soul, a Shinigami, the happy soul, and a Quincy, the wondrous soul.

And according to sort of the theory of Shintoism, each of these souls has its own personality, its own function. Sounds familiar probably to anyone who's watched it again enough bleach. And they all have to exist together harmoniously. So, for example, the rude soul is rough and violent like Ichigo's hollow aspect. And the harmonious soul is considered the complete opposite to that, the –

The sort of the human, the gentle soul is the other word for it, I guess, is completely sort of opposite that. So the humans are kind of opposite of the hollows. You have the wonder soul is...

said to cause transformations and cure illnesses, which is something that the Quincy's are, are very much able to do. And then, you know, the happy soul, again, representing the soul reaper aspect of Ichigo spirit and why Ichigo's development is played through. This is that he slowly over the course of the show, he starts as a human, then becomes a Shinigami, which he has to reconcile with for a long time, has to then reconcile the hollow aspect and exorcism,

accept that part of him and then finally when he gets his final power up because each of these sort of enlightening steps comes with a power up the final one is when he accepts the fact that he is a Quincy and all four of his pieces can live in harmony

Just, I, I'm so impressed. And, uh, where do, where does the full bringer, where's that? So, uh, the full bringers, the full, the full bringers is, uh, a hold on ready for this. Two things. One, it is a big Jojo reference.

That's first and foremost. So completely, completely unrelated. Okay. But the only real bit with the full bringers kind of play into it is the full bringers are the humans part of that, of this, this breakdown. So that fits a little bit into there, but it also fits into the Buddhist part where if you remember how the full bringers powers work, it's all based off of a physical object that they have attachment to. And that's,

you know, a big theme in Buddhism is your attachment to the material world. So that, that plays into it a bit. If I was smarter, I could tell you in more detail, but that is what I'm going with. I love that. I love that. Well, I think real quick to round it out, because I wanted to point out, we had asked our discord, what do they like about bleach? And I think other than obviously the story, the fighting, all of the elements we've talked about today, um,

They also really liked the fashion. So a quick shout out to Champ and Seth and Marshmello for letting us know. But they, a lot of them were posting the fashion and that DJ's put them in outside. So I think of like the panels or think of like the chapter covers. He really is dedicated to that. Yeah.

I think we've said it 10 times already, but he sure can draw him some women. But he can draw some men, too, which I know you have a few particular ones you want to shout out. Grimshaw. We got to talk Grimshaw like smoke show. I'm telling you, man, some of the men in this are quite handsome and well-drawn. Eye candy is great as long as everyone can share.

Love that. I love that. I feel like we need to insert that into multiple show And I mean beyond just his his fashion, you know Kubo's paneling is really really good his high contrast coloring the way he Leaves your eye through the page It is just excellent the

touching more on the fashion, one of the things he does really well is he is able to give all of his characters very unique, very stylish fashion that also all seems to fit with the character's personality and what you would actually expect them to wear. So he puts that little bit of extra level into it.

That I'm so glad you mentioned all of that. I would have mentioned, or will mention now the inking, the way you mentioned the contrasting, his choice and how he chooses to ink. And as we've talked about that in your blood war, especially those chapters, he had a very good dedication to either filling the space with darkness and black or letting the negative space of the white really speak out and

He just it's very good attention to detail for those kinds of things I think you touched on sort of the final real point we want to get into, you know I think quickly before we get into it. I we will mention one last bit I know you want to talk about which is the openings the OPS are great They're all really good. We are going to shout out our personal favorites real quick just to

before we get into our last topic. For me, Stars from Thousand Year Blood War. Excellent. It's a cool song. I love how they kind of re-symbolize the fight. So you have like Rukia fighting with a fire extinguisher and you have Uryu using a violin versus Ichigo's double neck guitar kind of matching the bow and arrow and double sword aspect. So that's definitely a top one for me. And the other one that I really like is Shoujo S by Scandal because I mean Rukia and Orihime dancing. I mean just, whoo, god.

Damn. So good. So good. What a what a good pick. Mine was Alones with the Z by Aqua Times, again with a Z. It's the sixth opening. I love the Spanish and Flamenco guitar that they used. You might not hear it in the original opening. Go listen to the full song. It's so, so good.

The visuals for me on that one were really spectacular. And looking at the 180 between the captains versus the Iran car, especially because Eisen being the pin that it all spins on. I love that opening so much. I watch it again and again, and I definitely have that song on my Spotify, like workout playlist. Definitely very creative. And I think it, it only do justice for you to start us on our last topic.

Yes, yes. I know we're going long with this one, but I'm telling you, it's worth it. Just like Thousand Year Blood War is worth it. It...

is so well animated. I think it looks like a movie. It is amazing. Before I got to the arc that I'm at now in One Piece, I thought it was the best looking anime of all times for me because of the dedication they put into all of the fights, the colors. And one of the things that Kubo was very particular on is he did not want to be censored. He

My understanding is he made sure that when Thousand Year Blood War is playing in Japan, it is playing in the evening time slot because of the mature themes, because he didn't want to hold back on the blood and things like that. And it pays off. It feels like there are actual stakes. Even the CGI and animation that they've used is...

Pretty seamless, I'd argue. And I've been really, really impressed. And instead of giving us a bunch of filler that I know I've complained about, I don't want, they take breaks. I think that was the right call. My final point for Thousand Year Blood War is I've never felt so highbrow snooty, but the poems at the end, which are somewhere between a death poem and a haiku. Excuse me, not haiku, different anime. Haiku. But...

Haiku. Thank you. Oh, my God. It's just it's a perfect way to end each episode. And they each have a very delicate meeting that's clearly referencing what's about to happen. Yeah.

bleach thousand year blood war is truly bleach at its best the filler is gone the art is top notch the the contrasting colors with the manga is great with the black and white and you lose that a bit with the anime until you get to thousand year blood war where they get very creative with using color contrasting painting the sky you know

pink doing bleaching out some of these colors, putting in other ones and doing that more high contrast look to it serves the manga art a lot better than, than earlier bleach does. They get a lot more into the weeds on the, the religious stuff, not necessarily explicitly, but it is, it is definitely a,

And the powers that the Quincy's have, you know, initially the Quincy powers are super lame. They get so much cooler. We go full JoJo's, baby. It is nothing but crazy powers and it is the best. Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned it. A quick shout out again to Champ for pointing it out. Another thing they're doing is they are introducing Bonkais. They are introducing...

backstories to characters that we didn't get in the manga. So there is a little bit of like something for everyone. So say you're like, yeah, but I already read it. I don't know if I need to go back and watch it. I can watch it. You're actually getting additional elements now. Super duper extra spoiler for anime only. I hope they do.

fix the ending a little bit. It's not a bad ending. It's a pretty solid shonen ending, but I feel like they could definitely improve on it. And since they are showing those improvements, like you mentioned, I think it's an opportunity and an area for it. And I think they're going to do it.

I think so too. I, how could you not like, this is your time, you have the runway for it, you don't need to rush to end this. So why not give a little bit more there? Because I agree.

And that's it. You get the Shonen Showdown stamp of approval for Bleach Thousand Year Blood War. Watch it, people. It's great. Do it. Do it for me. So remember, the glory of Shonen can be yours for the taking if you just believe it. So set sail and join us for the next episode for our Tournament of Tournaments where a special guest will be joining us. Who could it be? You'll just have to find out next time on Shonen Showdown.

Bye-bye.