Chapter 686: Death & Strawberry
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So, we have reached the end. The final chapter of bleach. A bit of action, a bit on intrigue. Plenty of peaceful pictures and futures for a our
We are greeted with a new face. A young child who is hanging around somewhere, not sure where but it seems to belong to Hiyori who isn’t to happy about this little ‘snot nosed punk’ who quickly makes himself scarce.
After that we find ourselves back at Soul Society. Byakuya is hurrying himself to the readings of Ywach reiatsu on the outskirts of Soul Society. Soi Fon joins him on the way. As they arrive of course the local scientist Mayuri is already there. Ofcourse he hadn’t told anybody and probably didn’t have the intention of doing so.
A dark ring with sever ‘eyes’ suddenly appears and then we suddenly find ourselves in front of the ‘Kurosaki’ clinic.
In the 10 years that had passed it seems Rukia hasnt grown in inch in height and just decided to stick with longer hair. They are greeted by Ichigo, all grown, a short sporty hairdo to match. Ofcourse Rukia decides to mock Ichigo about the emptiness of the clinic. An annoyed Ichigo comes back telling her it’s a good thing this ‘EMERGENCY CLINIC’ is empty.
In the living room Ichigo’s three other friends are already there. Tatsuki, who got rid of the longer hair, going back to a short hairdo. Keigo and Mizuiro doesn’t seem to have changed much at all.
Ichigo’s sister Yuzu and Karin enter the room with all the grub. Both having grown up quite a bit since last we saw them. Towering over Rukia, which isn’t really an accomplishment, but hey. They all park themselves in front of the TV where they are going to watch a WBO heavyweight title match.
Why?
Towering Hercules; Chad has made quite a career for himself. My first thought felt it might be a bit of cheating on his part, since all the special training and power he possesses. It would give him quite an advantage over any human opponent. But he’s gotten even bigger and more burly, didn’t know that was even possible.
We quickly visit Ishida who is stuck at the hospital, following in his father’s footsteps after all, just like Ichigo it would seem. Anyway he is burning up his data bundle watching on his phone on the roof of the hospital.
Finally we see the person on team human. Inoue!
Her breasts seemingly gotten even bigger, just like with chad, didnt know that was even possible. Rule34 is going to have a field day with that, no doubt(they probably have already, sorry I made you guys think of that). Ichigo asks her where Kazui is. Ichigo youngest sister Yuzu seems quite fond of him seeing she lets him do as he pleases apperently.
Then after short inquire Rukia and Renji realize they lost sight(or flat-out forgot) of their daughter and hilarity ensues!
After this we see the face of the boy, Kazui in his room seeing another small orb or Ywach’s Reiatsu. Back in SS the dark shroud gets a bit pissed off making the Captains dance around to avoid it. Kazui on his end sticks his hand in the hole after which the Reaitsu completely vanishes from Soul Society and the hole in Kazui’s room.
Far back down below in his solitary prison seat once again. Aizen feel the disappearance of the final vestiges of Ywach’s power.
We get shown two pages of the end of the fight. Ywach’s defeat by Ichigo’s blade. With his demise he claims the path has been close. The path he had set out. A world without fear. A world where everything would have become one. It seems Ywach felt he was doing the world a favor. But could one really consider him/herself alive in a type of world he had envisioned?
A look at Ichigo’s face betrays that he kind of pity’s Ywach. Maybe even finds his ideas childish. Aizen takes a moment to reflect on it aswell. In short; people would continue moving forwards simply through being alive without of death wouldn’t be the same. He ends with mentioning the word ‘Courage’ as the strength that people possess to push on even with the ‘fear’ of death looming over them.
Finally at the end of our chapter another portal opens up a young confident girl appears holding a zanpaktou.. just because she can, she likes to show off a bit it seems. Her name.
Abarai Ichika. She seems to have taken Renji’s hairdo and from the few panels she’s in she shows alot of personality trates of both Rukia and Renji. Kazui, who personality wise, seems to resemble Inoue quite a bit turns into a.. kind of shinigami too.
Interestingly enough the hilt of his zanpaktou looks exactly like Ichigo’s earlier bankai hilt. Though it isn’t completely black and looks more conventional. It seems young Kazui does not posess the raw power Ichigo has who’s blade was always in shikai mode, or more likely, he wasnt exactly undress duress when he gained his ability allowing him a ‘normal’ growth.
With their introduction bleach ends. The birth of the new generation.
Final thoughts:
As for this final arch, plenty of question remain unasnswered adding to a feeling a rush towards the ending. I never really felt Ichigo grow beyond himself, or was allowed to shine in a final battle. I appreciate Aizen’s presence in this final fight but even he wasnt able to do much to the overpowered Ywach. But I kind of respect Kubo in not pulling a dragonball-style powerup to Ichigo again to overpower his foe.
I still haved mixed feeling about how this arch’s finalle played out and have trouble translating that to words. I’ve enjoyed Bleach as a whole a great deal. It had a great story, an awesome villian with Aizen whose power and cunning kept our heroes occupied for the majority of Bleach’s story and even far before Ichigo ever entered the picture he took and abused every opportunity presented to him.
Ywach showed more patience than Aizen but his plans were far less complicated. With the exception of the bankai-stealing tool he basically relied on raw power to fight his enemies. Though he was a terrifying being due to his own immense strength he didn’t really catch the kind of ‘praise’ that Aizen got from the fans.
Thank you all at shannaro for dealing with my not-to-in-depths ramblings about Bleach. I hope you enjoyed them and I wish you all well in the future. Maybe there will be some Bleach-spinoff that will pull me from my upcoming slumber.
~Pretend3r
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SHANNARO!!! 
Ahhh the final chapter a bitter sweet chapter. I always liked bleach. The saving Rukia arc was one of the best manga/anime story i have read/watched. When Ichigo finallys says “Bankai” to Aizen multiple transformations. So many memories.
@pretend3r Great job doing the reviews on a weekly bases. 🙂
A big thank you to Pretender for all the Bleah reviews. Shout out to all the other Shannaro authors.
This ending is okay. It could be better, could be worse.
Positives of Bleach:
Drawing- fantastic. IMO Kubo is great at drawing action. Just from one frame you can understand several seconds or even minutes of activity. Kishi is good too but Kubo is better.
Characters- there were lots of characters that were unique. You had a lot you could root for.
Originality – the story had many unique elements. Plus or minus here though is many aspects were presented as a “just the way it is” and never explained. If you don’t like depth then the original elements are a big plus.
Fan service? – speaks for itself.
Negatives-
No depth – wtf you can modify a Bankai but yet it can be broken and you can’t fix it? How is that consistent? Basically things aren’t explained at all. I mean, how are hollows toxic to Quincy? And why did Ywach need Ichigo to be created? I can guess but I can also guess about many things like the Fullbring arc…
Closure- so many loose ends.
Rushed – ending was kinda quick. I understand for simplicity Kubo showed Ywach’s death as a flashback. It allowed Kubo to gloss over details he didn’t want to or felt he didn’t have to explain. IMO having Ywach’s reasoning for all the trouble he causes at the end is the cleanest way yet almost the least satisfying way to do it.
Sad to see Bleach go. I really wanted to see Engetsu’s Bankai but I guess we never will. Later all!
First things first…
Pretend3r, I thank you for your continuous devotion to bleach reviews. I’ve enjoyed your reviews for a while and that will be one of the things I will miss. I do have to disagree with you on the “not-to-in-depths ramblings” in your reviews. Your reviews did have depth to them and at times you pointed out things that other people missed. A different perspective is what makes for good robust debate in order to get to the truth or in this case, try and predict what will happen in the manga. Thanks again for everything.
Now my thoughts on the chapter:
It’s hard for me to judge this chapter. Knowing that Bleach was cancelled, how do you determine if the ending was good or bad? I’ll just throw out whatever thoughts I have about the chapter.
At the beginning of the chapter we see Ichigo’s son hanging out at Hiyori’s place. I really wish he would have been at Kisuke’s place so that we can see what happen to him and Yoruichi. At the same time I was thinking “why did TK chose Hiyori’s place?” Perhaps because it was Hiyori’s attitude that cause Ichigo’s son to teleport or mover really fast from her place to Ichigo’s room. This may have set it up to show the power he possess. Not only that, it also shows that Ichigo’s son must be well known with the community of Ichigo’s friends.
Next seeing Byakuya, Soi-fon, and Mayuri was okay. Again however I wished TK would have showed some other people that we didn’t see last chapter heading to Y.H’s reiatsu. Other than that, the conversation between the captains didn’t really reveal to much.
Now back to the world of the living, everything was great. I really like the ideal of Chad becoming the heavy weight boxing champ. I mean if I had power like that then why wouldn’t I use it to make some money? Doesn’t Spider-man use his power to make money at that newspaper? I never really understand why superheroes don’t use their power to make a little money. So good for Chad for being smart.
I tried to look for some hidden meaning behind everything and to be honest all I can see is that everyone has basically moved on with there lives. Chad becoming a champ, Ichigo becoming a dad/husband, Renji and Rukia have a kid, Isihda becoming a doctor. Everyone just moved on. Now the one thing I didn’t like about this chapter was the fact that Renji didn’t say anything at all. I thought that was kinda strange.
Now on to Y.H. It was cool to see that Y.H had a reason for being a whack job. It would appear his hatred for his dad had to do with the fact that he (Soul King) created the cycle of life and death effectively bringing death to his own son if you think about it. Y.H wanted to put a end to this cycle perhaps because of his own fear of dying.
Aizen pretty much summed up this chapter by stating how the only way we can move forward is by this “fear of death”. Interesting enough it was Y.H’s fear of death that drove him to do what he did. I think Aizen tried to do things his own way and seeing the error of his ways decided to stay in that jail. Either way I wish we could have gotten more depth out of his character but because of the circumstances, we get what we can.
Seeing Ichigo’s son destroy or disrupt Y.H’s reiatsu was odd. I was thinking maybe Ichigo’s son inherited Y.H’s power somehow? I don’t know on that one. I originally thought of some time theory that was so confusing that I’m not gonna try and state it here. Maybe Ichigo’s son interfering with Y.H in the future connected somehow in the past? What would have been cool if Ichigo’s son was somehow a reincarnated SK. That is doubtful considering he confess to being just a shinigami. Renji’s and Rukia’s daughter was so cute. I wonder why we ended it with Ichigo’s son and daughter? Again maybe it’s that “moving forward thing” that Aizen was talking about. Perhaps TK just wanted everyone to know that life goes on.
Final thoughts:
Overall I like the chapter for what we got for a series that was cancelled. My only complaint was the fact that Renji didn’t say anything but everthing else was spot on for what I believe was the overall theme about moving forward with courage. With the “fear of this last chapter”, comes the courage to move forward to other things.
Now Bleach as a whole is amazing. There were things I didn’t like but I think the reason was my lack of understanding for the manga. When I first saw Bleach, I couldn’t get a grasp on the world of Bleach. It was hard to connect with the series in part because of learning the names of everyone and everything related to Bleach. For example; Naruto was easy to understand with easy to remember techniques and characters however Bleach was a little deeper that to this day I still don’t know many of the characters and techniques. However the more time I invested in Bleach, the easier the series became and also the more enjoyable. I truly will miss Bleach and the people here. Hopefully one day we can get together again when a zombie outbreak occurs and we band together to save the world; I can’t think of a better crew to fight with. Hehehe!!!
So long everyone. I hope your lives go exceptionally well. And just like TK said, I hope whatever fears you all have, may you have the courage to face them head on!
And when you face them head on,
SEIZE YOUR IMMORTALITY!!!
I always wanted to leave on a good quote.
Goodbye everyone!!
Though I just got to this discussion at the end, Thank You to Shannaro for this web site, and pretend3r for the review.
I haven’t found anything yet to fill the blank ‘Bleach’ void. Like most series that are cancelled it ends always too quickly with many unanswered storylines as have been expressed. Yes it was a nice ending, where the MC has moved on to married life with kids and the next gen is taking hold.
At least we see Aizen back in his chair, and wasn’t killed by YH. In a way, since he was a good guy at the end and the only one major distraction to allow Ichigo to get YH, I was glad he wasn’t killed/absorbed as some thought. Aizen’s last monologue was also a nice touch about humanity. Maybe there is hope for him to change.
Leaving what happened to YH’s essence vague will allow for discussion. YH couldn’t remove/absorb Ichigo’s shinigami powers, and maybe what Kazui does is like saying there will always be a Kurosaki around to stop him, no matter what time he chooses to make a return, if he ever does again. YH’s essence is pretty weak if a small kid can destroy it, or its a hint that Kazui has some potent power if the SS captains couldn’t do anything. My guess is YH was dying and tried to escape to the future, 10 yrs later, but died in the process, almost escaping to again destroy SS and maybe kill Kazui making good what he had said – that he would appear when everyone was happy to hurt them.
No Soul King that kept all worlds balanced and stable, Arrancar, shinigami, and Quincy working together. I guess it becomes one big happy family. Was it all the Soul King’s fault for fathering YH? It seems that is what the whole story was about.
I was thinking of the prediction about YH – guess it needs modifying:
It went …
The King would regain his heart after 900 (Soul Society) years.
90 (SS) years after, his intellect would return.
9 (SS) years afterwards, his power would return.
[Bleach begins /Ichigo discovers the shinigami till Aizen is defeated, and Ichigo defeats the Xcution group]
9 (SS) days after he regains his power, the emperor will regain the world.
[It should have said: 9 (Bleach) days after he regains his power, the emperor will regain the world, get killed, and the series will be dropped]
For those of you looking for something fun try the Gamer, though publication is sporadic. It’s a fun one.
An amazing Manwah in the vein of bleach, more mysterious and yet more clear in explanations, is Tower of God. I 1000000% recommend you read it.
The characters are fun (not as much as Naruto but still fun), the action is great, the drawing is amazing though at times it can be so grand that I can’t understand a panel at first. The storyline feels so huge like it could go on for 100 years, in a good way. There is so much to this Manwah (Korean name for printed comics). Check it out on Webtoon every Sunday!)
Nice review
one more manga with time jump + mini me’s + the older giving up haircut… If One Punch Man, One Piece or Hajime no Ippo end this way I’ll die.