Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War

Episode 11

One of the maddening things about Ichigo as a protagonist is that he is really, really bad at asking followup questions. Bleach has always loved to have various characters dole out cryptic clues to larger mysteries in the story, quite often through leading questions directed at our hero himself. Yet Ichigo rarely gets anything close to answers, and on the rare chance the secret keeper is somebody on his side, he's still liable to just let sitting foreshadowing lie until it can come back up a hundred episodes later. There is an entire wall of topics our hero has valiantly put a pin in for later, and that's how it wound up taking until this episode to finally learn about questions brought up years ago—like what led to Isshin, a soul reaper, abandoning Soul Society to start a human family

Granted, Ichigo seems to regret his lack of curiosity too, now that he's been kicked out of God's backyard cookout and left with a million questions about his parents, his powers, and just who the hell he is in this ancient blood feud. Doesn't make asking those questions any less intimidating though, so while I was a bit frustrated that Ichigo didn't immediately storm into his home and tell his dad to fess up, I ultimately appreciate that his first impulse is to run away. He's now had two separate villains reveal they've been aware of and controlling his life from the shadows since before he was born, and while finding out those details is important, it's understandable that he'd be hesitant to find out even more earthshaking revelations about himself. Plus it gives us an unexpected cameo from Ikumi, and it's very sweet to see her trying to support Ichigo in her own gruff fashion. He may have a lot of gruff weirdos in his life, but they're there when he needs them most.

But eventually Isshin finds his son, and it's flashback time to finally get to the bottom of all this secret Quincy stuff. While the material suffers some from being condensed into less than an episode, it mostly works well. Really, I'm just happy to finally meet Misaki as a character outside her role of dead mom/wife, getting to know who she was in life, and there are a lot of interesting details surrounding her as both a Quincy and a key piece in the big ol' jigsaw puzzle of Ichigo's character.

We find out, for instance, that there's a whole mess of arranged marriages and bloodline purity concerns with the Ishida family, who basically adopted her to marry her off to Uryu's father. That raises a whole lot of questions about that man's relationship with Isshin, as well as making Uryu and Ichigo's rivalry even funnier in hindsight. But most importantly we see the same selfless altruism and willingness to fight for others that's defined Ichigo from chapter one, mirrored in Misaki ignoring the Ishida family's orders and rescuing Isshin from the mysterious Hollow. Our time spent with Misaki in this episode is brief, but it's enough to show us just how much of her lives on through her son, and it makes their relationship feel that much more resonant. Plus she delivers probably the coolest use of a Quincy bow to date, blasting through the Hollow's skull point-blank while it's trying to gnaw through her collarbone. If this whole endeavor ends with Ichigo getting a bow and arrow too, he should really pick up that move.

We also get a look at Isshin in his “younger” days, but that's pretty much what you'd imagine. The guy hasn't really changed much in the years since, besides getting better at trolling his all-too-serious son, and his presence is more about dishing out plot details. Specifically he's there so we can learn about how Aizen was involved in this, and how it tied into all of his million plans. On the plus side, we finally know what Aizen meant when he said he knew about Ichigo since the moment of his birth. On the other, it's all just disconnected enough from the character beats that it doesn't hold my interest. Having a concrete reason for why Ichigo has every type of supernatural power possible is nice, but not as compelling as learning about Misaki and the story of how she and Isshin bridged the Quincy/Soul Reaper divide. Altogether though, this makes for a solid start to delivering some long-awaited answers.

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Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War is currently streaming on Hulu.