Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War – Part 3 Episode 6 Review

In an absolutely stacked anime season, this part of Bleach’s Thousand-Year Blood War has had me the most conflicted out of the entire seasonal line-up. In some ways, this season has continued the hot streak that Bleach has been on since its 2022 return. In other ways, watching this season has felt a little like watching an MCU project, where the vibe feels like cameos and easter eggs are taking higher priority than actual story development.

Unfortunately, while I enjoyed this week’s episode, it did little to calm my anxieties in this field. I think that next week is going to begin a very strong run of episodes for the series, but this week, Bleach felt especially reliant on callbacks to the past rather than looking to the future. There’s still a lot to talk about this week though, so let’s get into the review – spoilers are ahead!

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The Review

Image by Pierrot

The episode picked up right where we left off last week, save for some activities with glowing balls in the Soul Society which, I’m going to be honest with you, I have no idea what’s happening with. But let’s leave those guys to their activities, and start talking about Grimmjow! Grimmjow is back, and he’s attacking Ichigo again which, look I get it, but we have bigger issues to solve right now. Seeing him, the first thing on my mind was – where’s Nelliel?

Luckily, she arrived through the portal soon after, and I’ll admit, I leaned into the recent Bleach trend of getting viewers hyped by just showing characters we haven’t seen in a while. Nel has been a longstanding favourite of mine. I still look back on her transformation in original Bleach as one of my favourite, and one of the most underrated moments of the series. By far, she’s one of the most memorable characters in the show for me, and I’m so excited that she’s here.

With Grimmjow, Nelliel, Riruka, and Yukio all making grand returns this week, this episode did feel a little reliant on viewers remembering characters and moments from the past. I’m not opposed to anime using this tactic, especially for a long-running series like Bleach, but this episode felt a bit too focused on those moments. It also makes little to no sense to me that Ichigo was left out of the loop on these characters returning – even we knew Grimmjow was coming back before he did, which feels altogether unfair.

Image by Pierrot

Another talking point this week was Grimmjow’s motives for helping our protagonists. He explains that if Yhwach destroys Hueco Mundo, he’ll have nowhere to kill Ichigo in the future – an interesting motive, but a valid one all the same. I will say though, I do wonder if Yhwach foresaw just how many people he was going to make mad by going ahead with his plan. Yhwach’s defeat is honestly in sight now, considering just how many people are coming together to stand against him, and it makes me wonder if he foresaw all of these enemies in his grand plan. When he eventually falls, he’ll really have no one to blame but himself.

After the meeting of just about every character that could be pulled from Bleach‘s catalogue onto a team, we cut to Ishida, and naturally, the episode was ruined. I’m not sure if anyone is a fan of this character, please speak up in the comments if so, but I just cannot stand him. He’s like a knock-off Sasuke, but his motivations make even less sense. Then Yhwach appeared, looking uglier than ever with all of his new eyes, and the episode got even worse. I will give credit where it’s due, I hate the villains of this season, which has hooked me into the conflict even more than before.

We then see that Yhwach has rebuilt the Royal Palace, and I have to say, I cannot fault the man’s sense of design. The place looks great, even better than before Yhwach took control of it. Who’d have thought that Yhwach’s greatest triumph would be topping the Soul King in his home design capabilities? I did love the scene where Yhwach was transforming the palace too, it was a nice display of his power and a good way of flexing his abilities before the true battle begins.

Image by Pierrot

Speaking of the true battle, I’m hoping that this new Royal Palace will be the battleground for the rest of the season. I assume it will be – in many ways, it feels like a pink-filtered version of the battleground from Part 2 of the Thousand-Year Blood War. I can already see how all of the characters will be able to break away into separate battles across this new city, and the pink tint is going to help to give the place its own identity throughout the rest of this part.

In conclusion then, this was mostly a preparation episode, focused on bringing back characters from the past to get ready for a battle to come, rather than having anything really going on in itself. Ultimately, it was probably the weakest episode of the season so far, but to be fair, every anime needs a slower episode to put everything in place in preparation for the explosive events to come. Still though, I wish there was a little less focus this week on, dare I say, shameless callbacks to past characters and arcs. All in all, I think the show can only get better going forward though, so I look forward to that.

What did you think of this episode? Have you been loving this season so far, or do you agree that, sometimes, it can feel a little too reliant on blasts from the past? Be sure to let us know in the comments!

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Where to Watch Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War?

Image by Pierrot

Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War airs weekly on Disney Plus, every Saturday. You can also catch all previous episodes of the Thousand-Year Blood War on the platform, as well as the original run of Bleach from 2004. Happy watching!

See also: Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War – Part 3 Episode 5 Review

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