“The Wailing Bount! The Last Clash”
Review
Finally after this 40+ episode worth of filler called The Bount arc it is finally over. I have to admit that I am one of those people that will either watch the anime or read the manga of a series and not do both at the same time. The reason I do this is because whenever I do one or the other I am usually disappointed by what happens with the form I do second.
The only series I have made an exception for were I actually read the manga and then watched the anime is Deathnote and Bleach. It is because I feel that for both these series they have done a great job transitioning from the manga to the anime. So because I know what is going with the current manga arc I have actually been greatly anticipating the Arrancar arc as it all the fight sequences should look even better animated than they are in the manga, and they look good already in the manga.
As for this arc I will say for a filler arc it was not half bad. Most of the time these filler don’t add anything for what is going on in the overall story of the series (ex. Dragonball Z and Naruto) and the villains never feel like a credible threat. Now was this Bount arc slow? Yes. Were the fights as good as the Soul Society arc? No. But what this arc did do was give a mystery and villains that felt like they could have been part of the manga to keep me watching this arc and not just waiting until Bleach gets back to the manga story.
And even though the fight in this episode was not close to being as good as the fights we got in the Soul Society arc the Ichigo vs. Kariya fight was entertaining enough. What I liked about this fight was that those behind the anime did a nice job having Rantoa, Uryu, and Ichinose play a role in helping Ichigo get his victory over Kariya by what they did in the past few episodes. Also I liked the short appearance of Shirosaki, the name fans have given Ichigo’s Inner Hollow, and how he was able to again weaken Ichigo’s enemy that saves Ichigo in the end.
Overall this wasn’t a bad episode as it was mainly focused on only the fight between Ichigo and Kariya though we should have gotten to this point sooner than we did.
Episode Rating – 7.8/10