Bleach Recaps: Ep. 175, The Revenging Assassin, Ichigo is Targeted

This was easily the worst episode yet of the entire arc, which is saying something.  Week after week this Shusuke Amagai arc continues to amaze me with how truly awful its been.  "Bleach" is not a bad show.  Stupid yes, occasionally nonsensical yes, slow yes, and silly yes - but its truly a rare episode that makes me change the channel.  I haven't done that since, and this is probably not a coincidence, the last filler arc, that nonsense with the Bounts.

Nothing happened this week.

There were two scenes at the beginning and a pile of scenes at the end, that's the entirety of Bleach ep. 175.  The rest of the episode was basically nothing happening.  As a matter of fact, even within the limited relevance that is the Shusuke Amagai arc, there is no reason for ep. 175 to exist at all.  Its total filler within a season that is total filler.  And this episode is the worst kind of filler:  boring nothingness.  Some filler episodes are interesting in that they show the life of a character that you rarely see.  I recall ep. 132 where Captain Hitsguya joins the soccer team of Ichigo's sister, Karen (because he's small enough to pass as a ten-year-old).  There wasn't any exciting fights, no real character development, and the whole episode was pointless, but even so it was exciting in its own right:  will they win the soccer match?  You never get to see much of Karen - she's wasted like so many other human characters - so its a new perspective for events.  Instead of that this episode is just Ichigo sitting on a roof listening to boring nostalgic flashbacks from Princess Lampshade-hat. This is one of the those episodes where I start to wonder if the creators themselves could even find this interesting.

The episode starts out by replaying nearly the entire fight with Ichigo and the Purple-Haired Ninja last episode.  This is a money saving trick that is absolutely classic "Bleach", but never more annoying when they're replaying a fight that sucked and which I'd never want to see again.  Last season they pulled this crap so often I think I saw the Rukia vs. Aaroniero fight in its entirety three whole times.

New stuff begins in the Soul Society with Prince Arnold sitting around bored, supposedly the clan head but actually just a prisoner of Kumoi, the Evil Old Guy.  Don't worry Arnold, there will be plenty of time for a wacky field trip before this arc is over and you're written out of the show forever.

Kumoi goes downstairs to his evil lair, changes to his fashionable evil half-glasses, and then starts yelling at the Purple-Haired Ninja for being a complete failure.  I think this guy has outstayed his welcome for Kumoi just as much for me.  Purple-Haired Ninja, who thanks to his failure will remain the Purple-Haired Ninja and not Hanza, now has to prove himself, so he takes out a Bakkoto*, and lets the sword's tentacles RAPE him.  Yes rape.

ORGASM SHOT!

Yes, we sit here and watch this ninja guy suffer through a tentacle rape.  Thank God we don't see anything.  Evil Old Guy is like "daaaaammnnnn, that's pretty hard-core!  Okay, you can kill Ichigo now."  Then the Purple-Haired Ninja reveals his three buddies:  one big, one midget, and one skinny and tall, essentially stock anime henchmen #1 through 3.  And these guys have names.  So they must be more threatening!

Yeah right.

Its at this point that I start to feel like I'm in an argument with the show itself.  "Bleach" comes to me and says:  "Look, we got four NINJARS here.  Isn't this exciting?"

I reply:  "So what?  Princess Lampshade-hat is surrounded by Ichigo, Rukia, Chad, and Uryu, some of the best four guardians you can ever ask for.  These ninja jerks won't stand a chance once you split them up one on one like I know you will."

Then "Bleach" says:  "But they have Bakkotos!  Brand new weapons with unknown abilities!"

I say back:  "Who cares?  None of these weapons are proven, and so far they've been completely ineffective.  These Bakkotos have a 100% failure rate, their owners have lost every battle so far.  Even Purple-Hair lost."

"Bleach" starts getting haughty and says:  "Hanza only lost because he and Kumoi underestimated Ichigo."

I shout:  "How threatening can these enemies be if they can't even predict how strong Ichigo is!  The guy invaded the Soul Society last year and won!  I'd think an Evil Old Guy of the caliber of Kumoi would know something of that.  And then there was the whole Bount situation, Jin Kariya**!  If they don't know how strong Ichigo is by now, it shows they're complete morons whose plan could never succeed!  This whole battle is a waste of my time!"

"Bleach" is getting pissed now at me.  It screams:  "OH YOU WANT A WASTE OF TIME, HUH?  I'LL GIVE YOU A WASTE OF TIME, MOTHERFUCKER!!"  And so then it made the rest of the episode absolute pointless back and forth conversation between Ichigo and Princess Lampshade-hat.  Well, I learned my lesson - I'm not going to try to argue with this show again.

Ichigo and the Princess are on the roof of her house and share what can be possibly be interpreted as a romantic moment.  I start to panic immediately, but then realize that this whole conversation is going to only be the Princess telling about how she got chased by a pig one time and other terrible stories.  Let it be known that this is the most boring ten minutes of television that could ever possibly be filmed.  I jumped to C-SPAN just to see if this was more interesting, and God help me, it was.  I changed back in a minute, coming right in time for only good part of the episode.  NINJAR INVASION PART 2.

Ichigo senses the invasion and actually says a pretty funny line to the Princess:  "If you got a tea party planned, you better cancel it."

As I predicted, the ninjas and the heroes split off one v one.  So its Uryu vs. the tall guy (since I doubt any of these ninja guys will be alive in two episodes, I'm not going to learn any names), Chad vs. the big guy, Rukia vs. the little laughing guy, and Ichigo vs. Purple-hair, who is now dressed in some ridiculous over-sized Japanese armor, apparently only to hide the fact that he has a tentacle three-feet up inside of him.  Ichigo gives the classic anime line "let's move this fight to someplace away from the civilians".  If I had a nickel for every time I heard that... it wouldn't be a ridiculous sum, but it would be enough for a lovely dinner for two in a pretty nice restaurant, plus tip.

Ichigo isn't about to screw around, so he goes Bankai immediately.  And its a pretty cool shot of badassary:

"King Kong aint got shit on me!"

Unfortunately that's the end of the episode.  Even though I knew these ninjas couldn't possibly stand a chance against the Ichigo Club, the last minute still had great atmosphere and built up the energy... only to end suddenly.  So at the very second that things get cool, it ends.  So Bleach 175 was an episode that I didn't need to watch, wasn't necessary to the story, and in fact was totally worthless.  Hopefully next episode will be better.

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* The narrator in the intro helpfully finally revealed what the weird swords the ninjas have been using so far.  They're called "Bakkotos".  So far the Bakkotos seem no more powerful than regular Zanpakutos, only that they have tentacles and can be used by more than one character.

** I'm still not sure if the filler Bount arc actually happened according to "Bleach" continuity.  The sock-puppet guys are still around, but the whole thing is so strangely forgotten that I can never be sure.  I'd prefer that it didn't happen, since the Bount arc was arguably worse than this one.  It was so bad that I stopped watching after only four episodes.