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Rating: 8/10 (but the OP and ED are 10/10 :-D)

Impressions:

Firstly, if you haven’t seen this ep and you’re not plan to, at least take a look at this post, since the OP and ED animation sequences have been replaced by previews of the upcoming Bleach movie, Memories of Nobody, out in Japanese cinemas on the 16th this month. The previews are awesome and a welcome break from these fillers, but speaking of that, it looks like they will be ending soon, and perhaps earlier than my ep 110 estimate. The flashback of Kariya’s past does not take up the whole episode, as I originally thought, and the quality is rather good, constant throughout the entire episode. The story itself is not that interesting though, while the latter half, although quite impressive, is fairly unrealistic as well. Just as Retsgip says, Kariya’s sudden power upsurge and mental divergence is quite ridiculous. You would think he develops a soft side for Ran’Tao, the woman who made saved his life and made it possible for him to have come this far. I don’t think the creators tried very hard in thinking up a good explanation for Kariya, but at least this way the flashback doesn’t consume as much time. I’m just glad that there shouldn’t be any more need for detailed past reminiscences and such.

The problem with the second half of this episode is that it is just all over the place. First we get Ishida running around as fast as the uber-quick Bankai Ichigo, shooting arrows with close to zero lag time, then his power drastically falls when Kariya gets ’serious’, and finally failing completely. Ishida is far too overpowered here. He had been owning Kariya for a while, something that not even the great Bankai Byakuya could do. Then, as Ishida is simply not allowed to defeat Kariya, Ran’Tao steps in and creates quite a predicament. I had hoped Ishida would shoot the massively overpowered arrow from Ran’Tao’s reiatsu into Kariya. That surely would’ve killed him, but ah well, at least Ichigo is here to finish the job now. The problem with Ichigo coming is that he has faced Kariya too many times to make his entrance exciting. Normally, when the uber-powerful main character comes to ace the even more uber-powerful big boss, you get the feeling of ‘wow’ running through your head. But since that’s happened one or two…or three too many times, the feeling just dies. Having Ichigo lose each time isn’t so good either. If he had lost the first time, then comes back to own Kariya’s ass, that would be dramatic enough. But this…

Oh and, I probably won’t be writing any summaries of Bleach until the fillers end.

Preview:

Next episode - #107
Ichigo vs. Kariya…again

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