Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War - The Calamity

Episode 2

There's several anime fans whose first significant steps into the world of theorizing about their favorite anime revolved around Kisuke Urahara and what, specifically, his Bankai did. It's not an exaggeration in the slightest to call it one of the biggest, most persistent looming questions of Bleach overall up until this point. I would dare to call his Bankai reveal one of the most highly anticipated moments of the whole series. And yet somehow, against all odds, I was left feeling really underwhelmed this week when—after all this time—we finally learned about it; It's a healing Bankai. Which he also didn't do anything especially cool or hype with. And in an anime as spectacle-filled as this one, somehow the thought this left me with was: “Oh… that's it?”

Listen. It wasn't totally uncool. That moment where Urahara was riding across the stitches, especially, was really fun, and delivered exactly the kind of visual, stylistic flair I've come to expect in this series. But consider how long we've waited for this, and how much it's been hyped up for literal, non-hyperbolic decades. And further consider how Thousand-Year Blood War has really been pulling out all the stops, making sure everything is as big and explosive (sometimes very literally) as it possibly can be. The planets were in alignment for us to get an epic, grand reveal. But everything from the reveal itself to what the power actually is—while it obviously came in handy for this particular fight, the whole thing just had a muted quality to it that I'm not used to seeing in Thousand-Year Blood War. And because, in that way, it stands in such sharp contrast to the rest of the series, it just can't help but stick out in my mind.

Needless to say, the Yoruichi segment of the fight was way more exciting, and probably could've stopped after that if this was the alternative. I almost wonder if I would've rather had Urahara's Bankai remain an eternal mystery—or maybe the kind of thing revealed at the end, at a point where it no longer matters—than this. Still, being a healing Bankai, I'm sure he's not totally down and out yet, and this'll probably come in handy for later. It reads, unfortunately, as very strategic more than anything else. Probably so as to heal someone else in a tight spot (probably Ichigo?) later.

While Urahara's Bankai reveal is, obviously, the biggest thing in this episode though, it's not the only thing going on. We get some introspection from Orihime as Ichigo finally makes his way to Yhwach, setting the stage for their grand face-off. I like that the series takes a beat for this—slows down the pacing? Sure, it does. Can't deny that. But at the same time, writing for female characters in battle shonen series hasn't exactly earned itself the best reputation, so it's nice to be reminded—even if it's only by means of fleeting moments like these—that Orihime is actually present, as opposed to having her just be around and taking up space, not doing anything in particular. Still, it can't be denied that it's slowing things down, which is something I would've previously thought unthinkable for a series as grandiose as this one. Even now, I can't believe I'm typing all this.

Overall, this episode just wasn't it for me. It wasn't terrible by any means, but I'm just having such a hard time getting past how much I find myself thinking, “Oh, that's it” with regards to Urahara's Bankai. This show's production value has given it every opportunity to really zhush up anything in the manga that might've been underwhelming, and this is maybe the first time that it just hasn't been able to do that in such a way where it felt like it was meeting the hype level of everything else. It's disappointing considering how long fans have been waiting for this. Even so, even though that's a pretty big miss, it's still the first major miss I think this series has had. The rest has been so excellent that in spite of this, I'm looking no less forward to next week, when perhaps we'll see Ichigo and Yhwach finally start the final boss fight.

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