Bleach Commentary: Ep. 173, The Appearance of the Great Evil! The Darkness in the House of Kasumiōji

Another week, another "Bleach".  Last week I was complaining that "Bleach"'s current arc is nothing but boring silly nonsense with barely any action or credible threats.  I think the creators might have been aware of this fact as well, so they decided to do things a bit differently for Ep. 173.  In this week's episode we have... a tea party.

Instead of the titular character for the arc, this episode follows Ichigo and Rukia, and the "protect the Princess" situation that as of yet seems to have absolutley nothing to do with the new Captain Amagai.  I'm pretty sure the two plot threads will come together somehow, but so far this arc isn't giving me much hope that the final pay-off will be worth it.  So Princess Lampshade-hat has escaped her guardians to travel back into the Soul Society, using her clan's own inter-dimensional tunnel*.  She manages to walk exactly thirty seconds before running straight into Kumoi, the evil old guy who hired the ninjas to kill her.  Of course, the evil old guy has to keep up appearances, so he just gestures to his purple-haired ninja to take care of it, and lets the Princess go.  Apparently she's going to "A PARTY!!".  Uch...

Before Ichigo and Rukia and the two guardians enter the Soul Society, they have to leave behind all the other major characters who have no role to play in this side-arc.  This is a funny scene, considering the current fates of these characters in the "real" storyline.  Rukia at the moment is possibly dead thanks to injuries inflicted during her battle with Espada #9, whose bizarre name I will not try to spell (Rukia won the fight at least, being the first character to ever kill a full Espada).  Chad might be dead too, having been beaten up by Spoon-head, Nnoitra.  Uryu is fighting for his life against Granz, that Espada that looks exactly like Kibune.  And Ichigo and Orihime are together, with Ichigo having defeated Grimmjow, but they're both still very deep in enemy territory.  Its a surreal thing, seeing all these characters standing around calmly when in the real plot any one of them might die any second or might even be dead already.

Everybody splits up to look for the Princess.  And who does Rukia run into?  None other than Zaraki and his tiny pink-haired side-kick.  Yay!  Zaraki is easily the second or third most awesome character on "Bleach", so I'm always happy to see him.  The Captain immediately recognizes Ichigo, and goes off to look for him.  This looks like trouble.  Sadly Captain Kenny and Ichigo won't actually have a rematch this episode, so forget any glimmer of hope you just had.

Meanwhile, the two guardians (whose names I refuse to learn) find the Princess's lampshade-hat in front of a building.  They step in only to be locked inside by the Evil Old Guy.  So now they're trapped there for the rest of the episode.  I know these two are complete jokes, probably the lowest of the low when it comes to Soul Reaper power levels, but they're still Soul Reapers!  They have magic swords!  Just cut through the walls!  Whatever, these guys are morons, I shouldn't get worked up.  Its still stupid.

Now we cut to the Princess who is carried in the style of Persian Shahs over to her little equally noble girlfriend's house for a tea party with other super-rich girls.  So now in this action anime we have little girls giggling and games of pattycake.  This is that moment in nearly every "Bleach" episode when you hope to Holy God that nobody walks in on you while you're watching this - and somebody inevitably does.  How do you explain to people what you're watching here?  Do you think that anybody will believe you that only a few episodes ago this anime had awesome action scenes?

Ichigo manages to track down the Princess, but is threatened by the guards.  Since Ichigo could probably murder each and every one of these guys in less than a second if he wanted to, he wisely instead uses Flash Step to teleport to the Princess's tea party.  The Princess refuses to deal with any of this, and leaves in a huff.  Then she finds a peasant girl crying in the hallway.  If you're thinking that the peasant girl might be an assassin, you're right.  Soon enough the assassin girl has a knife out and is ready to kill the Princess.  Ichigo jumps in and protects the Princess with his giant sword.  Amazingly, the tiny assassin is able to push Ichigo's sword back with her four-inch knife.  That's pretty hard core.  I like this girl.

Now here is where things get cool:  the guards rush in and tackle Ichigo for threatening little girls.  These guys aren't very bright, clearly.  Anyway, the assassin girl jumps out and fucking murders half a dozen guards in like three seconds!  That's so awesome!  What if this little girl actually is a threat to real characters?  Well, we never know the answer because Captain Kenny jumps through the wall and captures her.  The girl turns out to be a fully-grown ninja in disguise who runs away.  Oh well.  It was a good minute, at least.

Now Ichigo and Kenpachi and everybody join the tea party.  Hilariously, Captain Zaraki actually seems to be enjoying himself sipping tea with eight-year-olds.  Then we find out why the Princess ran off:  her best friend, the one she's playing with in the picture above, is getting married.  EWWW!  EW!  That girl is eight!  What the fuck??  Nobody in the show points out how disgusting that is, either.  I know its Japan, different cultural values, but come on!  Even the Japanese have to think this is gross.  So the little girl probably won't be able to have tea parties anymore, and I'll admit that's sad.  Not as sad as being raped by a man decades older than her for family pride, but still sad.  So we all learn a lesson about how tough it is to be a noble.

Of course, its also pretty tough to be the peasants living in squalor and dying of exhaustion in the fields so that the nobles can have mansions and tea parties, but I guess if they wanted us to care about them they would have been born noble like the people of consequence.

In the end, nothing happened this week.  Kenny had his big cameo for the arc, and probably won't be back.  There was a moment setting up a confrontation between Ichigo and the purple-haired ninja (who I note didn't actually take care of the Princess like Kumoi told him to), but I'm not buying it.  I see no evidence that this ninja has any chance of defeating Ichigo, a character who can defeat Espada.  If he can, I'll be pleasantly surprised, but for now the only possibly legitimate threat can only be Amagai himself.  We all still haven't settled anything with the Evil Old Guy, even though I'm pretty sure that Ichigo could easily cut him in half with no problem at all.  And how does the new Captain fit into this?  Are we ever going to get to the point?

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* Curious thought:  Why does a Soul Society clan need their own private tunnel to Earth?  How often do they use it?  I understand why Soul Reapers have to go to World of the Living, that's kinda their job, but what does a noble clan need to do there?  The Princess's vacation so far seems to be the only use the portal has gotten at all.  Perhaps they could use the portal to buy objects from the living world and sell it to the clearly technologically backwards Soul Society.  Imagine the profits you'll make from the trade of cars, gasoline, minerals, clothing, spices, exotic foods, electronic devises, and batteries.  But nobody seems to have thought of that.  Maybe this clan is just so super rich that they need a dimension portal if only to keep their status - they're the type of people who must must have one of everything, no matter how extravagant, ridiculous, and expensive.  Rich bastards.