#ichibe

★ squad 0 icons !!

Design Characters:

Man, what an episode... I really missed this anime, despite finishing the past seasons only recently. The beginning of the episode was a recap of the final episode from last season, but I didn't mind it. Seeing Senjumaru's Bankai again set the right mood for the rest of the episode and it gave her more time to show off before her end. The rest of the episode also had a lot to offer, so it didn't feel like they were dragging things out or wanting to simply reuse animation.

Reusing animation wouldn't bother me at all because this episode looked incredible. From Senjumaru's Bankai to Yhwach's awakening to Ichibe's whole being looked incredible. And the soundtrack! That alone already makes it worth watching the anime. But that's not all. The voice acting was also fantastic, especially from Ichibe. He's a character basically made for the medium of manga, but I think with some neat visual effects and more importantly the music and voice acting they make him unique in the anime as well.

I did not expect him to start singing, but I absolutely love it. His voice actor has a great voice. It's the right mix of playful, melodious and booming like a grave bell. Gave me chills. I like this even more than the water colour-esque looking direct confrontation with Yhwach. His voice alone fully captured me here, I don't even need any spectacular animation.

This also brings me to another thing I love about Bleach's power system in general and that is, that they use chants for kido (or sometimes also Bankai), they actually chant. It's not just a few words strung together but they are basically reciting a poem or a song in this case. They are describing the source and nature of the power they want to summon or imploring a higher power to give them strength. Using chants to make your kido more powerful also has a serious risk because to complete the chants you need to talk a lot. I imagine this can take 10 seconds or more, which is a lot of time in a fight. There's a reason you usually don't stop to recite poems during it. Ichibe obviously doesn't have that problem and Yhwach is nice enough to let him finish his performance, but we have seen this come back to bite shinigami before. Anyway, it's very neat, particularly if you have a voice actor who can really sell it.