[zitagirl]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53_QT4NSB48&t=13s&ab_channel=vizmedia

Might as well link this here because oh boy, I have quite a few things to say on this.

First off it seems the ending for cour 2 will be when Yhwach leaves Soul Society and tries to enter the Soul Palace (confirmed at the beginning of the trailer) which is if I look at the manga should be chapter 587. That's a total of 45 chapters of source material (as Cour 1 ended with Blade is Me) although I could be wrong though because there's also that very brief image of Ukitake plus Ikkaku and Yumichika seems to be from the March of the Zombies chapters and then Shuhei also...

Either way, that's around 50-55 manga chapters, bit lower than the 62 chapters cour 1 adapted with each episode taking 4-5 chapters and probably will be the same for these as well.

Anyway so far I'm pretty hyped. The animation looks on par with cour 1(which was already really good, especially at the fight of Yamamoto and Yhwach) although actually surprised they will keep the red sky from the initial teasers.

The point that really made me super excited though was when Shinji said bankai, like oh boy! We are actually going Can't Fear Your Own World material, which is huge, considering a good chunk of the actual knowledge about the Bleach world and even the Soul King itself come from those novels and they are actual quite important so I'm glad it actually seem to be incorporated into the anime. Also Shinji deserved to actually have a good fight, so I'm glad he gets a chance to use the bankai (rip to those quincy soldiers though).

Also there seems to be quite a lot of additional stuff too and if they are at least as good as the ones from cour 1 (all the new Uryu scenes, OG Gotei, etc) I think these parts will be really good.

I'm surprised they pretty much spoiled the Bambietta vs Komamura fight though. Like bro, they even show Bambi being defeated and Komamura in his human form along with his alternative bankai form (and it's only there for a split second, but you can even see his beating heart on the plate at the end) while the other 2 fights showcased are more or less vague. But I guess I take that instead of them spoiling the other remaining fights that they didn't show.

Also holy hell, people are literally thirsting over Ichigo's back XD Guess that's what happens to a guy who has to carry all of Soul Society.

The only thing that did not really amaze me was the new song. Idk, it's not bad, but also not anything memorable except for the guitar part at the beginning.

Sadly though, I once again have to sail the seas, because Disney+ won't streaming it in my country, probably only months after the whole cour 2 got released. Oh well, I will buy the DVD anyway, like I did with Cour 1.

Eidt: Okay, so I looked back a bit after people on reddit pointed out and woah, that's really Tokinada at the end. Now that's HUGE!!

[zitagirl]

So, this is a bit of a weird thing to happen.

Pretty sure I have mentioned before, but back in end of 2021 we got the first trailer for Bleach TYBW and even announced it airing in October. That's all fine and good and admittedly the trailers we got throughout the months were great, but the community had 1 concern: can people outside of Japan watch it legally?

Well, this is where the mess comes in as till the very last week we got no announcement on where it will be available. Only a week ago where we learnt that there will be simulcast on Hulu for USA and Disney+ for "international".

Sounds good and all, right?

Well, apparently "international" meant only English-speaking countries, so everyone else got screwed over now and has to pirate it, including me. Not only that, but they refuse to actually communicate or say anything why this is like that and honestly at this point it feels like they did false advertisement to get new subscribers to Disney+...

Just really a shame that they handled this so badly, especially with such a passionate fandom that waited a decade for this arc to be animated at last. Then again, I'm still baffled on why on earth Disney would get the streaming rights for easily the bloodiest and goriest arcs of the whole manga...

And now let me go full fangirling mode because WHAO, THIS IS GLORIOUS!

My god, they perfectly set the tone for the arc with this episode. The eerie atmosphere of Karakura town, when they declare the war and demonstrate their intention with the impaling of Sasakibe right in front of the Head Commander and the first scene in the Wanderveich... it was just perfect, while still keeping in the general tone Bleach is known for with its cool and comedic moments (although I do admit they did cut some of the comedy bits out but mostly for the sake of the pacing) .

The animation is also just really good, especially for that this is still just TV animation. Really only the CG hollows that were a bit weird a few seconds, but not bad to ruin the scenes themselves.

And the music... god, Bleach already had great tracks before but just this episode already had at least 4 pure bangers of tracks. Easily made already great scenes just even better. Hope the soundtrack will release soon because I definitely would love to get it!

And the best thing is: the people behind it clearly cares about this project. They literally extended a scene in the beginning purely to give the fans some awesome fanservice with having Ichigo, Uryu, Chad and Orihime fighting those hollows, showcasing their skillset while the song Number One plays. It's purely for the sake of hype and I LOVE IT!

Then there's the whole AMV ending part with the song Rapport playing which was heavily inspired by the arrancar arc and my god. seeing all those iconic moments all those years ago... really made my inner teenager crying in happiness.

And they even included Ywach's poem from the manga volume, something that I always felt missing from the anime, as they are quite crucial in the narrative.

I'm just so happy, even if this all still feels so surreal. 10 years ago I was just reading these chapters and the anime ended with the fullbring arc at that time. To actually watch Bleach again on a weekly basis and see these chapters adapted... it's truly something mere words could not describe to give it any justice.

Just hope the other 51 episodes will be just as good if not better than this!