Welcome back, Bleach Fans! Time for Rukia to speed up the reviews, since the episodes are now pouring in and Ishida is no where to be found!

*sigh* Why do I get the feeling I will be the only one writing in this blog from now on?

Anyway! Let’s move on to the episode shall we?

Aizen finally reveals that he allowed the civil war to take place in Hueco for his own purposes. He used his zanpakuto, Kyoka Suigetsu, in order to make Patros’ Group think that they actually killed Ulquiorra.

Meanwhile, in Urahara’s Shop, Renji is apparently knocked out as Ururu and Jinta are forced to fend for themselves. A part of Urahara’s Shop has been destroyed, but the 2 children are still fighting the best way they can.

When Renji finally wakes up, it seems that he was merely waiting for the time that his limiter is to be released. He immediately uses his bankai and forces Patros to the lower level of Urahara’s Shop so that no further damage to the real world will occur.

Renji therefore sends Ururu and Jinta to go and find Urahara. Either this was for back-up purposes or merely to warn him that he was the target of Patros’ group is left to speculation, but it was obvious that Renji knew he needed a bit of luck in order to win this fight.

Elsewhere, Hitsugaya, Matsumoto, Ikkaku, and Yumichika seem to be making some progress in their fight with the 2 other Arrancar in Patros’ group. The Arrancar realized that they are in serious trouble unless they do something about it. But what else can they do when they are already fighting in full strength and the Shinigami’s Limiters have not yet been released?

Back in the Urahara Shop, Renji began over-powering Patros, makign it seem like he was going to win this after all. Patros decided to fight in full strength in his Arrancar form. This surge of power caught Renji off guard, but he had no idea that help was not far away.

Ururu and Jinta were able to successfully locate Urahara and the others and they hurried back to Urahara’s Shop. On their way, they were suprised to meet Ulquiorra in the site of the first battle between the Arrancar. What his purpose for being there was yet to be discovered.

Back in the Urahara Shop, the modified souls, Ririn, Cloud, and Nova closely observe the battle between Patros and Renji. They knew Renji needed their help, and did their best to find Patros’ weakness.

A few moments later, the 2 arrancars that came with Patros arrived in Urahara’s Shop, fatally wounded. They hurriedly asked whether or not Patros was able to achieve their goal because they wanted to escape. Unfortunately, both met their demise but Patros seemed indifferent. This angered Renji even more.

Because Renji is still overpowered by Patros, the mod souls decided that it was about time they interfered. Using Ririn’s illusions, Cloud attacked Patros to distract him while Ririn and Nova took Renji to safety.

Thanks to Ririn’s observations, she was able to find Patros’ weakness. As according to her, Patros can only attack when he sheaths his sword. Each one of Patros’ attacks depends on his ability to store energy within the sheath. If they were to stop him from sheathing his sword, he would not be able to attack, and therefore, they would have a change at winning the battle.

The group took a gamble and it paid off. Cloud stopped Patros from launching an attack giving Renji the opportunity to finish Patros in one shot.

Unfortunately, the joy of their victory was short lived. At the arrival of Urahara’s group and Hitsugaya’s group in Urahara’s Shop, Urahara told them about what happened on their way back. Urahara also noticed that the Hougyoku Patros was carrying was a replica.

It seemed obvious to Urahara that the whole Civil War on Hueco Munda was a set up provided by Aizen Sosuke. Aizen knew that the Shinigami would be busy fighting the Arrancar, thereby giving Ulquiorra the chance to collect data. On what, Urahara was not sure of.

Back in Hueco Mundo, Aizen’s true purpose was revealed. He seems very interested not in the Shinigami’s powers, but with Orihime’s powers. Why? We’ll find out soon!

Hi guys! Rukia again for your episode review this post! It seems Ishida is very busy and Nanao-Chan hasn’t been able to find good Bleach Cosplays in a while. Hopefully, you guys won’t get bored of me!

Now let’s move on back to the real story of the Arrancar Arc! No more fillers episodes! (for now!) And things are not looking good in Hueco Mundo!

A civil war has begun in Hueco Mundo, consisting of An Arrancar named Patros who refuses to bow down to a Shinigami… Their leader and creator, Aizen-sama. Ulquiorra had found out about Patros’ plans to steal the Hougyoku from Aizen in order to create an army of his own. But it seems Ulquiorra did not anticipate Patros having supporters. He was killed when he refused to join forces with Patros.

But is he really dead?

In the real world, Tsukabishi and Sado were asked to join Urahara to go on an errand of getting more supplies for the shop. Abarai wonders why Sado was asked to come along when he had more training to do and Ririn tells him that it was simply Urahara’s plan in order for him to be able to bring back more supplies.

Upon his departure, however, Patros’ group appeared in the real world. Hitsugaya’s team acted quickly to face the Arrancar head on, while it was made known that the Arrancar’s main intention for going was to find the creator of the Hougyoku and find out how to use it… They were after Urahara Kisuke.

Patro’s 2 companions remain anonymous for this episode, except for their  Zanpakuto’s names: Elisa for the young red-head, and Abare for the bigger individual. They both kept Hitsugaya’s team busy while Patros went to Urahara’s Shop.

It was a good thing that Abarai Renji was far away from the designation where the Arrancar came through from Hueco Mundo. He was able to meet with Patros before he could do any harm to Jinta, Ururu, and the modified souls.

With Urahara no where to be found, Patros took up Renji’s offer to fight him while he waits. Since Patros fears that the Los Noches will be after him and his followers soon, he had little time to play around with Renji and took the battle seriously.

The modified souls, Ririn, Cloud, and Nova decided to help Renji out, seeing that he was having a hard time with only Level 1 out of 20 of Patros’ power. They do their best in doing so, but are significantly weaker than Patros and were therefore of little help. It did give Renji some time to recover and re-focus himself.

At the end of the episode, however, we see the old site where the first battle with the Arrancar took place. Now why on earth it Ulquiorra there? Actually, the more important question is, why is Ulquiorra even alive without a scratch in the first place? Stay tuned for the next episode review!

Wow… Another long quiet time in this blog! Honto ni gomen nasai! (My humblest apologies) Things have been quite busy and Ishida is so far behind in his episodes, I think he gave up on watching for now!

Anyhow, we got ourselves a brand new layout thanks to Sanriotown! Which means, you’ll get to have bigger screen shots! And I got a lot of reviews for you all! So let’s start with where we left off…

This episode starts with Kon finally making it back to the real world. He made his way to Orihime’s house and found Rangiku accidentally stepping on him when she answered the door. It gave him a, *cough* rather “nice” view.

As they walked on (presumably to Ichigo’s house where Kon lives), they see a young girl by the bridge. She accidentally drops her stuffed toy over the bridge and when whe tried to reach for it, she fell over! With Rangiku’s quick thinking (or perhaps a form of revenge for earlier?), she took Kon’s modified soul and threw it straight into the mouth of the fallen stuffed toy! Hence, Kon became the stuff toy and managed to save the little girl.

People around them became aware of what happened and immediately gathered to see if the little girl was alright. This gave Kon no choice but to go home with the little girl (to which Rangiku happily obliges).

A quick glance around the house where the little girl lived gave him the impression that the family was pretty well off. He had planned on staying as still as possible until Rangiku arrives but the little girl’s attempt to dry off her stuffed toy with a hair dryer made Kon yelp!

The little girl realized that Kon could move and happily accepted it as a sort of answered prayer. She knew that Kon was the one that saved her but wasn’t sure if it was true or not.

She introduced herself as Miyuki, and calls Kon “Shintarou”. They began playing house, and Miyuki dresses up Kon in a cute pink dress, making him think that she’s a good friend of Ichigo’s younger sister..! She feeds him rubber toys like she usually does, giving Kon no choice but to play along.

After some time, Kon was already tired from all the playing and asked Miyuku to play outside with him instead and meet up with her friends. Miyuku’s mood immediately changed and she started crying stating that she didn’t need any friends. Kon panicked and decided to calm her down and ask her what her full story was.

It seems that Miyuki’s parents no longer got along, and because they were separated, Miyuki and her mom had to move. She used to have a big dog called Shintarou whom she always played with, but since he could not live with them in their new house, her mom bought her a stuffed toy who looked like Shintarou. itwas also unfortunate that Shintarou got hit by a car and died near their home.

The reason why Miyuki was walking outside all by herself was because she felt lonely. Her mom works all day and comes home only at night, so she wanted to go back to their house and remember all the good times their family once had. Upon hearing this, Kon told Miyuki that he would go with her to her old house. Miyuki was overjoyed and thanked Kon, hugging him with all her might.

Unfortunately, when they got to the house, Kon immediately felt the reiatsu of a hollow. The hollow trapped them inside the house, and Kon realized that, since Miyuki could see the hazy image of the hollow that appeared, Miyuki definitely has strong reiatsu, even though she was so young.

Kon had no choice but to try and defeat the hollow himself. Being in a stuffed animal’s body made it difficult, since all of his physical attacks had no power! But he somehow managed to fend off the hollow and kept Miyuki safe. But it was Miyuki’s strong love for Shintarou that saved her in the end, because the 2nd head of the hollow belonged to the the real Shintarou’s spirit! Thankfully, Rangiku came just in time to save the day, and sent the 2 spirits where they belonged.

A battered Shintarou advices Miyuki that she should go out and make new friends so that she would no longer be lonely. He explained to her that she could no longer rely on him because he also had to leave. He promises her however that he will watch over her, the same with the real Shintarou…

Everything ends well, and Kon was able to get back to his old body. Miyuki is also reunited with her mom, and Rangiku was simply impressed at how Kon sincerely wanted to help Miyuki.

This is one of my favorite episodes of bleach, even though it’s a filler. I see a bit of myself in Miyuki, and how Kon described his true friends, Ichigo and the gang, made me realize that, hey, I’m lucky to have really great friends too… ^_^

Rukia seems to be a favorite among cosplayers… This is the third Kuchiki Rukia I’ve seen so far, and all of them are quite impressive to me…

This Rukia cosplayer even has a Soul Candy dispenser. I don’t remember too well, but Rukia wasn’t able to get the “Chappy the Rabbit” version until later in the series…

When I think about it, yeah, it may have been a duck…

Nice cosplay… and have you guys noticed that among the Rukia Cosplayers, each of them have a different interpretation of her hairstyle..? Not that it’s such a bad thing….

With my fascination of swords, another favorite sword of mine from Bleach is Renji’s Zabimaru. So I thought of featuring this blade. Its a replica and it is up to scale as the real thing (in the Anime at least).

Its 52 inches long, stainless steal and its got a custom leather sheath and a wooden table stand.

The only thing I didn’t like about this replica is that it doesn’t segment into separate pieces like in the Anime. Then again its a replica so there.

I found this over at the King of Swords website. They also sell other Anime-related blades.

Here’s a pretty famous cosplay image that’s been going around anime communities lately… Kuchiki Rukia seems to be one of the cosplay favorites in the otaku world… Some of them leave a lot to be desired while others just leave you with a feeling of awe.

Though I’m not too sure what to think of this image… There’s a bit of digital editing on this image, especially on her hair. Makes you wonder what else was edited.

Though, I’m not really complaining. She portrays the character really well, so I like it, regardless of my critique… I love her eyes… er… “eye”.

Lots of filler episodes for the Bleach Series. Kind of disappointed… I just hope they won’t be following Naruto’s trend of having a whole season full of filler episodes.

Anyway~ Let’s move on to Bleach 134: The Beautiful Patissier, Yumichika!

The episode begins with a task from General Yamamoto-Genrysai Shigekuni, Captain of the 1st Division. According to him, they wanted to gather some data from the Arrancar battle field in order to improve the release rate of the Shinigami in the real world. Captain Kurotsuchi Mayuri thought it was a rather, boring job, so he assigns the task to the people below him.

No one wanted to go and do the tedious work, but surprisingly, Tsubokura Rin, the shy, young researcher, volunteered. He was to also give Madarame Ikkaku a set of replacement molars during his trip.

Rin meets up with Yamada Hanatarou as his bodyguard and companion. It was rather funny to see them together, as they not only look alike, but have the same mannerisms as well.

Hanatarou and Rin go to Urahara’s Shop as their base. Urahara Kisuke was already expecting them and told Ayasegawa Yumichika to accompany them to the battle grounds as per Hitsugaya Toushirou’s orders. Yumichika hates having to go through such errands, but complies in the end since it was from a Captain’s Order.

Rin has brought a couple of weird looking devices (or could they actually be living creatures?) with him from Soul Society, including a “Soul Projector” that allows humans to see the Shinigami without needing to have a faux body. He uses the soul projector to buy a cake (his true intention for going through with the tedious task), and meets an earth bound soul in the bakery. Yumichika wanted to perform the Soul Burial at once, but Rin and Hanatarou stopped him, wanting to here the baker’s reason for not moving on.

An unusually long Soul Chain allowed the baker, Momoyama Heita, to go almost anywhere, unlike most earth-bound souls who are trapped in only one place. He tells the group that he died in an accident in front of the bakery, and, even though his mother prays for him everyday to move on, he was bound to earth because of his one wish… To let his mom taste one of the cakes he made.

Rin pleaded the group to help the baker in creating a cake in his place, as after all, it was about cake! Urahara was able to provide them with a kitchen and ingredients, and Yumichika, who was skeptical until he saw how beautiful he looked on a chef’s uniform, decided to helped out.

It was pretty obvious that none of them have ever baked a cake before. Heita was frustrated in instructing the three of them left and right, Rin taste-testing too much, Hanataro having a hard time beating eggs, and Yumichika slicing strawberries.

They succeeded in creating their first cake, but still needed to taste test it before they could make a new one and give it to Heita’s Mom. Since none of them had ever tasted a cake before, they had to look for someone to do the… honors…

Sado and Renji became the unfortunate victims of various, horrible tasting cakes. It got to such a sad point that they were now hiding from Ururu whenever she came down to their training ground for a new cake taste test.

Frustrated and since they ran out ingredients, Heita was close to giving up on ever getting a perfect cake. But when the team found out that Heita’s Mom was moving the following morning, they got serious in their work, and was finally able to achieve 2 perfect cakes! Heita couldn’t be happier and excitedly awaited for his mom to arrive outside the bakery he used to work.

Upon presenting the cake, however, Heita’s Mom became upset. The loss of her son made her unable to eat cakes. There was simply too much sadness in the remembrance of her son that she refused to accept the cake Ayasegawa and the rest made.

This infuriated Heita and his anger made the chain in his chest loose. His reiatsu attracted a Menos Grande. A heated battle begins as Yumichika does his best to fight off the Menos. Hanatarou was more concern with Heita and his mom. Heita’s anger was causing him to lose himself as a human soul and he began attacking his Mom..! If they didn’t do anything, Heita would surely become a hollow!

Fearing there was no choice, Hanatarou took a gamble and used his Zanpakutou, the Hisagomaru to Heita’s heart. Hanatarou’s Zanpakutou absorbed Heita’s injury, healing him, and Heita releases the absorbed energy towards the Menos Grande. A second slash from Ayasegawa’s Zanpakutou, Fuji Kujaku and the battle was over.

When Heita awoke, he was back to his old self again. Rin’s Soul Projector suddenly came out and Heita’s Mom was able to see him. She was so happy to see her son again that she was able to accept that the cake Yumichika and the others made. She fulfilled her son’s last wish and enjoyed the cake they made.

All’s all that ends well in this episode… I just wonder when the fillers will ever end. T_T It was rather funny how gullible Ikkaku is though. In the Shinigami Cup, Rin accidentally crushed Ikkaku’s replacement molars, and Rin left a message saying “only fools cannot see these molars” and he believed it… xD Lolz~ Haha~

Rukia again! I hope you guys don’t get tired of reading my episode reviews..! Now we’re off to Bleach 133: Ikkaku’s Hot-Blooded Kendo Tale!

Ikkaku finds himself caught in the middle of what Hitsugaya calls “Human Affairs”. Karakura First District’s Kendo Club are ambushed by Koutei Academy in an attempt to make them forfeit upcoming tournaments. As Student Council President, Mizuho decides to hold a match between the two schools in order to avenge the seniors that got beaten up.

Ikkaku was rather delighted to have the opportunity to teach. According to him, he owes Mizuho and therefore agrees to her terms. Keigo, however, is doubtful as to Ikkaku’s true intentions.

A series of strange and hard training ensues, and the freshmen are pushed to their limits. One particular freshman caught Ikkaku’s attention. Shinji, who’s inability to fight or flee during the ambush, had a desire to become much stronger and avenge his upperclassmen. It was a long time since Ikkaku’s seen such desire, which made him enjoy training him even more.

Unfortunately, Ikkaku went overboard with his training, resulting in having the freshman even more injured than the upperclassmen..! This poses a problem for them. Who would represent Karakura district if there were no Kendo members left?

Ikkaku then comes up with a plan to participate in the tournament himself along with his “friends”. Mizuho adores this idea as it assures them their victory, but Keigo realized that this was Ikkaku’s intention all along… To participate in the tournament.

Of course, this still left a problem for them. They needed 5 members in order to participate in the match. So far, Ikkaku was the only one in the team. Surprisingly enough, when Ikkaku asked for participants, Shinji stood up to the challenge even if he was sore all over from the training.

Ikkaku proceeds to ask his fellow Shinigami for some help. Unfortunately, Ayasegawa and Rangiku immediately declined his offer because as according to them, “the uniform stinks!”

He decides to use other tactics in order to get the other Shinigami to help him. We first see a hilarious “bribery” going on for Hitsugaya, being offered candy and toys like an elementary school student. Though Hitsugaya doesn’t like being called an elementary student by Shinji, he reluctantly agrees to help Ikkaku out.

Ikkaku was also able to bribe Urahara (with candy of all things) to get Renji to help Ikkaku, but Sado refused to accept bribes. With only one member short, Ikkaku decides to force Keigo as their 5th member.

Hitsugaya, being the first of the five fighters, won his match easily. As expected from Keigo, he ran away and was easily defeated. Renji also won his match, leaving only one more win for Karakura First District to win the match.

Shinji was the 2nd to the last fighter, and Ikkaku assured him that if he were to loose, Ikkaku would win it for him. But how would Shinji feel if he were to lose again?

A hollow appears during Shinji’s match and Ikkaku was forced to leave. Being unsure as to whether he can come back in time for his match in case Shinji loses, he challenges him to go and be a man. 

Shinji took on his challenge, and though he had a hard time, he was able to successfully beat his opponent to everyone’s surprise! Ikkaku was certainly proud of the young man, but as we know, Ikkaku loves to have a good fight. Although it wasn’t necessary since Karakura First district had already won, he looked for his opponent and challenged him. This was where Mizuho’s true true intentions came to light, as the Ikkaku’s opponent turned out to be Igoroshi, a guy who dumped her.

In the end, Ikkaku not only defeated Igoroshi, but defeated the entire Koutei Academy Kendo Club with ease. Mizuho was very happy and fell even more madly in love with her “darling”, and Ikkaku got to fight as much as he wanted…

Strange but very hilarious episode. It’s well worth watching all over again, just for the fun of Mizuho’s crazy personality and especially for the scenes were the Shinigami mod souls showed how completely opposite they were from their masters’… ^_^