“The Last Quincy! The Exploding Power”
Review
Kariya, who is the strongest amongst the Bounts, has already shown to be able to barely keep up with Ichigo now that he has his Bankai back and all the Captains in the Soul Society. So like any good shonen anime the writers need to create a deus ex machina in order to give Kariya a power up in order to extend this filler arc. With the introduction of the Bount Crest that is just what happened in this episode.
While it was predictable that we would be introduced to some sort of super power up for the Bounts I hope that this does not mean that this arc will continue to drag on. Even with the power up we only have three Bounts left. With one of the Bounts, Yoshi, looking like she is going to die that means that after the next episode that means we will be down to only two Bounts (Kariya and Koga). And with everyone in the Soul Society after the Bounts even with the power up Kariya received there really is much more that can be done story wise that should give this arc more than 4 or 5 episodes.
Even though this episode was painfully predictable it did provide some solid action that Bleach is known for. I enjoyed the two fights that we got in this episode with each fight having its own style. The fight I enjoyed the most is the fight between Uryu and Yoshi. I love seeing fights between close and long range opponents and the fight was even better due to the unpredictability of Uryu’s unstable powers due to the Quincy item he is using. It really puts Uryu at a disadvantage that helps to show that even with the handicap he is still a powerful fighter. Though I kind of wished that they would have dedicated the whole, or most of, episode to the fight between the two since I found it to be much more entertaining to the predictable battle between Ichigo, Chad, and Kariya. Hopefully we will see the fight end in the next episode and we get back to the manga story arc as soon as possible.
Episode Rating – 6.8/10