BLEACH’S MOST BROKEN BANKAI IS ANIMATED! Bleach Thousand Year Blood War Episode 35 Review!

Bleach: Thousand Year Blood War Episode 35 is titled, “Don’t Chase a Shadow”

This episode covers pages 4 to 6 of Chapter 640: “Baby, Hold Your Hand 3 (Mad Lullaby no.7)”, which leads into pages 10 onwards of Chapter 644: “Baby, Hold Your Hand 7 [Never Ending My Dream]”, Chapter 645, where the episode gets its name from until page 15 of Chapter 649: “The Theater Suicide Scene 3”.

Notably, this episode is the highest rated anime episode in the IMDb at the time of writing, garnering a 9.8/10, which also makes it the highest rated Bleach TYBW episode so far and the highest-rated Bleach episode in general, followed behind by “The Fire” at 9.5/10 stars (Bleach TYBW Episode 6).

Daruma-San

Surprisingly, the episode begins where we left off with Mayuri’s Modified Konjiki Ashisogi Jizō swallowing Pernida and his arm clones whole.

However, it continues here as the glowing yellow baby bursts as Pernida emerges but we do not see Pernida’s restored form here.

Instead, we cut to Urahara sensing Mayuri and expressing concern over his fate, which is a bit more timely than it cutting to the end of Mayuri’s battle, where he is truly nearing death.

One nice detail in the anime version early on is that after Kyouraku takes the shot, we see the other characters being out of focus and that is due to Lille’s scope focusing all on him as the target and not the others, which is a nice way of visualizing how X-Axis works.

At the same time, this is also part of Kyouraku’s trick.

It seemed like Kyouraku has been finished off by this snipe but then darkness.

We only hear a fading Kyouraku’s voice and then a yellow outline of him moving into the darkness before we cut back to Lille and he pops up right behind him to break his Diagramm weapon.

This additional visualization for Kyouraku’s latest game makes the first half of the battle incredible entertaining and rewatchable.

The reason why the visuals exist is because of Reikaku, the ability of sensing Reiatsu that replaces vision when the person focuses too much in battle.

Kyouraku leaves a realistic outline of himself in one spot with his immense Reiatsu, befitting the Head Captain of the Gotei 13.

Whenever Lille lands a shot, it actually does hit Kyouraku but only a clone of him, which is the effect of the second new game, Kageokuri, which creates a shadow clone after staring at one’s own shadow for too long.

Through Daruma-san Fell Down, a form of tag, we get a full picture of Kyouraku’s Shikai.

Games only exist if both players know the rules and games are cruel because once children bring into them, you are bound to play, on and on until the children are done for today.

The anime adds a change, with the child resembling a younger version of his Zanpakuto spirit, Katen.

The whimsy of the innocent concept of games ties so deeply into Bleach’s concept of battle, where Kyouraku says that there is no honor that justifies war, for both players of the game called battle have the responsibility of being evil the moment they enter for various reasons: whether dragged into it, voluntary enter it or obligate themselves to choose the battle.

Vollstandig: Jilliel

After Kyouraku successfully stabs through Lille amidst an army of his shadow clones, Lille opens his left eye for the first time.

Here, Lille reveals he has opened his left eye briefly twice as a way to let attacks phase through him.

As part of making things fair against “sinners”, he has restricted himself from using the “full essence of X-Axis”, which allows Lille to not only pass through targets but for attacks to also pass through him.

However, this condition also permits Lille access to the true form of his Vollstandig: Jilliel, which makes him resemble a biblical accurate angel, as shown by the four holes on each of his eight wings that he channels the X-Axis with.

This Vollstandig did quite some damage to Kyouraku, who had to hide away to recover and ensure he was at a distance far enough from his location so that they would not be sniped by the angelic enemy and to finally activate his Bankai.

THE BEST BANKAI YET: Katen Kyoukotsu: Karamatsu Shinju

The way Taguchi and Saito presented this whole scene was phenomenal.

Much like Ichibe’s Futen Taisatsuryō, we get the Kabuki sound effects (The “Yooo!” sound) to signal the start of this theater play for Kyouraku’s Banaki, giving it an authentic feel.

Kyouraku activates his Bankai and the shadow of a pine tree forms on the ground as the entire world is blanketed in a yellow hue, with various ink patterns covering the buildings.

The shadow of the Bankai spirit embraces Kyouraku, as if to initiate the role Kyourakuwould play as both narrator and the hurt woman.

When Ichigo and Askin were fighting, he and everyone else in Wahrwelt felt the OG Reiatsu effect kicking in, albeit with no transparent lines but only vibrations and shaking.

On an important note, the Askin vs Ichigo confrontation was completely redone, with just a chase scene and Askin remarking that Ichigo is immune to the Reiatsu density and poisoning effect from Wahrwelt, which Askin attributes to Ichigo’s training in the Soul King Palace.

Kyouraku faces off against Lille, asking if he feels any sense of despair from the environment around him.

The color already does the job without Kyouraku mentioning it as the yellow hue is meant to represent disorientation.

The patterns surrounding the buildings emphasize how diseased the arena feels, as if the play takes place during a plague, although the main symbolism behind these patterns is to create the feeling of being on stage.

The Theater Suicide Scene

“Act 1: Hesitance and Apportionment of Wounds” begins when a hole forms on Lille’s body.

All the wounds Kyouraku was inflicted are now shared by the actor who plays the unfaithful husband.

Next is “Act 2:  The Pillow of Shame”, where bleeding black spots form all over the man’s body to represent the illness his body feels from the betrayal.

Then we enter “Act 3: The Severing Abyss”, where both the man and woman actors drown until one of them runs out of Reiatsu and drowns.

If Lille did not try to resist and flap his wings to the unreachable water surface, he would have some chance of escape but it seems the more someone resists and wants to escape, the more Reiatsu they lose, which makes them sink even deeper into the abyss

For the final Act, Shunsui spins red thread that resembles blood turned to ink on his fingers to cut Lille’s throat and the drowning scene changes to something akin to Japanese classic art, with Shunsui and Lille in a more inky form, and the result is that energy within Lille bursts and destroys his head.

Shunsui is able to rest in the currents in the lap of his Zanpakuto.

Katen

As Kyouraku recites the lines of Act 3, his voice merges with that of the woman, the character Kyouraku is playing, which happens to be his Zanpakuto Spirit Katen, whom he affectionately calls “O-Hana”

The nickname is from Katen’s own name, as the kanji for “Ka” means flower, so “hana” while the “o-” is a prefix added when referring to a woman in older times.

The relationship both share seems to be akin to lovers rather than the concept of the “Blade is Me” that is the true principle that the Zanpakuto creator, Oetsu Nimaiya holds.

For those who have watched the anime before, this is another example of Tite Kubo canonizing what the anime originally introduced.

The design for Katen was first seen in the Zanpakuto Rebellion Arc (Episodes 230 to 255), released in 2009 and would be canonized seven years later in Chapter 649.

Notably, the next filler arc, the Beast Sword Arc (Episodes 256 to 265) features Katen drawing a circle over Shunsui’s right eye.

In fact, Katen’s right eye is covered with an eyepatch and Katen herself says she only has one eye, which makes you wonder if the anime gave Kubo the idea to remove Kyouraku’s right eye in the Thousand Year Blood War.

The episode ends here on  Kyouraku’s victory as the screen cuts to black but considering what happened at the start of this episode with Mayuri’s fight against Pernida, we know what to look forward to next.

Episode Poem: Nemu Kurotsuchi

“My child’s hand, so lost

Wandering, in search of mine

Close but far, I take your hand

Together we will walk, to the end” 

This poem is taken from Volume 71: Baby, Hold Your Hand and recited by Nemu Kurotsuchi.

Bleach: Thousand Year Blood War Episode 36 will be titled, “Baby, Hold Your Hand 2′”, which will cover Chapter 640 until 644.

With Chapters 631 to 634 yet to be adapted, that means 40 chapters have yet to be adapted by the anime.

This episode will conclude the first battle with the Schutzstaffel.

Nemu is featured in the Volume image and the episode preview but the one speaking would probably be Mayuri himself, who already spoke in the Episode 34 poem.

Notably, the one speaking will be her child self.

This poem simply expresses the sentimental love a parent has for their child, which is actually the dominant theme of Volume 71, with both Nemu and Nanao’s roles in the story.

In the Mayuri fight, we see how in spite of Mayuri viewing his creation as an object, at the same time and especially at this point, Mayuri finds his pride in Nemu, the most successful fulfillment of his scientific pursuit of creation from nothing.

However, it could also be that over-time, Mayuri has truly developed fatherly feelings for Nemu even while much of his public speech is fixated on being a scientist and Kisuke Urahara’s eternal rival.

In the Shunsui fight, we see Nanao step in to bear her mother’s curse by using her clan’s Zanpakuto.

Here, Shunsui gives his confidence that his niece and potential daughter-figure to take on the immense power and burden in her own terms.

Bleach: Thousand Year Blood War Episode 36: “Baby, Hold Your Hand 2′” will be released on December 7, 2024.

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