Bleach: Thousand Year Blood War Ep10: The Battle TV REVIEW. Let this be our final battle!
Bleach: The Thousand Year Blood War Episode 10: The Battle
Animated by Studio Pierrot.
Created by Kubo "God of Character Design" Tite.
Last week, on the greatest Shonen series, My boy Kyoraku Shunsui was promoted to Captain Commander of The Gotei 13. Because let's be real here... who else is there? I mean, the obvious choice SEEMED to be Unohana but, yeah. More on that later. Anyway, with the full power of his new position behind him, Shunsui passes his first edict as Captain Commander: Zaraki Kenpachi needs to get stronger. He needs to learn to swing that sword properly, and he needs to learn NOW.
And there's only one person that can teach him: The First Kenpachi. The Greatest killer the Seireitei has ever produced: Unohana?
This week, Ichigo and Renji meet the next Royal guard, and Kon thinks he's in heaven. It's funny. There's also some pretty solid lore on the true nature of Zanpakuto, this is going to be important down the line. We also get the set up for, in my opinion, the greatest flashback arc in anime history.
But the REAL point of the episode: The First Kenpachi, Unohana 'Yachiru' Retsu has just one task: Bring out the full potential of Zaraki Kenpachi. And she's going to do this, in the only way she knows how. . . By fighting him, in what can only be described as a ballet of blood.
When this fight ends, the True Kenpachi will be born.
Oooh boy, that was something, wasn't it?
Look, you know me, you KNOW I love a good bit of lore, and there was some GREAT Zanpakuto lore in this episode. But, frankly, it'll be covered more in later episodes, so I'm going to leave that to one side, for now.
Because HOLY SHIT, that fight was amazing. Everything about the first half of this episode was perfect. You can see how much effort the animators put into the first half of this episode, but then the animation falls off a freakin cliff in the second half of the episode.
But honestly? I'll give them a pass. Yeah, the animation quality declines, SHARPLY in the back half of this episode, and I have a feeling it'll stay low next week, too... because they probably spent 40% of their total budget animating The Fire, 40% on the first half of this episode, and the remaining money on the rest of the series.
The fight between Unohana and Zaraki was one of the most beautiful sequences I have EVER seen, in an anime. It was a genuine masterpiece. The use of colour, the fluidity of the animation, it was perfection. Cutting back and forth between the first time these two titans clashed, and their current battle, the voiceover explaining their inner thoughts, the way the narration shifts from Unohana to Zaraki, as the dominant force in the battle shifts.
It was a benchmark that I'm not sure this series —and I know for a fact no other series this season— is going to be able to top.
The fact that it was also probably the most savage and gory fight in the series was just the bloody icing on this cake of death.
Seeing Unohana, who until now had been the kind, nurturing leader of Squad 4, the squad assigned to healing and caring for other Shinigami, turn into this blood drenched warrior goddess is a sight that will stick with me, for a long time to come.
But the legacy of the Kenpachi is far from over...
If you're ready to bleed, check out Bleach: The Thousand Year Blood War on Hulu/Disney+ streaming NOW!
Or, if you want to start the journey from its very beginning, you can now watch the series in its entirety, also on Hulu/Disney+!
Or, if you want to cheat and read ahead, check out Chapter 480 onwards, of the Bleach Manga, on the Shonen Jump App!
Taheg Gloder is a Freelance Copywriter from England. Obsessed with comics and Manga since his teens, he now splits his time between writing comic reviews and retrospectives for POP, and doing reactions on his YouTube Channel, The Dragon & The Hound. He lives alone, because he’s a hermit.
