Bleach Recaps: Ep 203, A NEW BEGINNING OF ACTION!

Sorry for a lack of updates in the last week.  It was Finals, I was busy.  I see my daily pageviews have been plunging faster than Bush's approval ratings circa 2005, so I'll have to get back on the horse.

Last week Kenpachi killed Spoony in furious revenge over the latter's failure to ever finish his Let's Play of "Deadly Premonition".  I mean really, you start an LP of one of the weirdest games ever, a literal goldmine of comedy, and then you give it up to recap "Ultima"?  Who gives a damn about "Ultima"??  Anyway, Spoony is dead, meaning that for the first time in a long time there are no battles going on.  Since... God, I don't even know, episode 150, maybe(?)... all of the simultaneous plot battles have ended.  Its basically been always the same three or four plotline fronts all fighting at the same time, meaning that its taken this long for the fighting to finally cease - and we still have four Espada left to kill!  Its just been an endless hurricane of weird fights and the plot hasn't moved an inch since.  Yeah, two of the fights have been good:  Ichigo vs Grimmjow and Spoony vs Kenny.  But then there's stuff like the entire Granz fiasco that only seemed to continue in a hateful attempt to waste the audience's time.

But this week the plot moves.... into a completely ridiculous place.  But at least it moved, right?  Now that this current wave of endless battles has reached a conclusion, we now set up a whole new even longer and more ridiculous wave of endless combat!  And if you thought things were silly now, you haven't seen the half of it.  Its episode 203 right now.  The war this episode sets up will not end until episode 310, which I predict won't air in this country until the year 2014 or later.  So yeah, we're going to be at this for a long goddamn time.  Better strap yourself in, because this is going to take awhile.

Even though Spoony died last episode he gets another flashback for some reason.  We're back to that scene when Nel was still Espada #3 and Spoony was too fashion-conscious to wear a spoon-thing.  The Spoonman kills an Italian Arrancar for some reason and once again Nel is yelling at him for being stupid and evil... And I'm bored now.  I don't care about Spoony's motivations anymore.  That was explained last episode.  He already had his big death scene, its over.  Just die already.  Or actually review "Minority Report" for the PS2.  I'm fine either way.

This part is boring, so here's Neliel being hot.

Also last episode Spoony said his point was to be so strong that nobody could pity him.  Now he wants to fight so that he can die.  Which is it?  You can't have two psychological motivations.  This is stupid, moving on.

In the present Kenny congratulates Spoony's corpse for being such a good opponent.  Then a now-shirtless (yay!) Kenpachi smashes Orihime's shield around Ichigo and orders him to "take the women and go home".  You see, Kenpachi is the only one who remembers that Ichigo and his buddies only came to Hueco Mundo to save Orihime, and now he's getting that mission completed.  But first Kenny asks that Orihime heals his injuries.  So she walks over and...

LOL KIDNAPPED

Yeah, one of the Espada just teleports in and steals Orihime.  The guy sounds he is Captain Shunsui's brother or something - they're both pretty chill and sound love they love Jimmy Buffet.  This Espada dude doesn't seem all that happy to kidnap Orihime, but luckily the job is real easy:  just grab her on the shoulder and teleport away while Ichigo and Kenpachi completely fail to stop you.  "Need to borrow her for a bit" and yoink.  Enjoy spending another ten million episodes trying to save her now.  This arc can never end!  NEVER!

After the commercial break Orihime appears in a dark hallway with Aizen.  And if Aizen isn't acting like the creepiest motherfucker ever, then clearly I have completely gone insane and you need to lock me up before I write another word:

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, dude, way too close."

Apparently Aizen kidnapped Orihime this time just so that she could "smile and wait here awhile".  He's going to murder Ichigo's home town while Orihime waits here.  I guess he'll rape her when he gets back.  Then Aizen order Tosen to make a tentacool* which turns out to just be a magic loudspeaker system for all of Las Noches.  So Aizen now decides to reveal his plan to enemy for no reason whatsoever.  He's going to Karakura Town to kill everybody.  Also that whole business of kidnapping Orihime, that meant nothing at all.  He just did that to have half the Soul Society run into his fortress to save her and get trapped there.  I guess getting half his Espada pointlessly defeated was also a part of the plan.  Also Orihime is not particularly important to Aizen, even though she literally has the power to unmake the universe.  Ultimately all this was a feint so that he could just go for the goal.

Oh but don't worry about Karakura Town.  Turns out that the Soul Society built a fake Matrix-version of Karakura Town out of Plotkai.  I don't know how to make any of that make sense because I don't fully understand it myself.  It takes the rest of the episode for them to fully explain all the intricacies of this scheme, with all its weird details.  So Aizen just invaded an empty town with the entire Soul Society ready to face him.

"I love the smell of Zanpakutos in the morning."

Kenpachi is the one explaining all of this.  And for some reason he repeats the sentence:   "It was short and to the point, every officer of Captain-level was to prepare for battle in Karakura Town".  When I heard Kenny repeat himself I thought the stupidity of this show had caused me to go as senile as Yamamoto.  So I guess the order was actually "short and to the point" was it?  You'd think the dub company would have fixed this... they just didn't care.  I also note that there are plenty of lieutenants in this group, who by the way aren't of Captain-level.

Then everybody gets a badass close-up pose.  Aizen is completely unconcerned so summons a few more dimensional portals and in comes the last three Espadas.  Turns out he's totally cool with fighting the Soul Society here, and he's like "whatever I'll make the McGuffen here".  Nothing ever gets Aizen down.  Anyway, those three Espada:

Starrk:  "Could not give a shit..."

Barrigan:  "My mustache sense is tingling."

Harribel:  "Girl Power!"

So now the battle lines are drawn.  But notice that Ichigo has nothing to do in this grand ultimate battle of ultimate destiny?  Well Aizen fixes that quickly by ordering Ulquiorra to escape from that pocket dimension Grimmjow trapped him in two seasons ago.  Now Ichigo will charge forward and have that battle to fight.  So now once again we have ten battles.  Will this be the grand conclusion?

The only thing we can draw from this is that next week's episode just has to be awesome.  By law, I supposed.  I mean really, how could the next episode be nothing short of unbelievable?

By the way, what the Hell were Renji and Uryu wearing this episode?  Some kind of bondage gear made entirely of seatbelts?  Does Nemu have other secret skills that Mayuri programmed into her?

Renji has been a bad boy, he needs punishment.

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* For some reason this episode of "Bleach" makes a big screaming deal about the tentacool or tentacruel or whatever the damn thing's name is.  Aizen mentions it by name, then Tosen does a big huge magic sequence, and then finally Isane reacts with "they're using the tentacula".  All the thing is a PA system.  Who gives a shit?  Aizen could have just picked up a microphone and it would have been fine.  Its just one stupid kind of magic and they spend a minute on this one minor thing that means nothing.