Bleach: The Thousand Year Blood War

[Rynjin]

I wonder how things woulda shook out if Kubo decided to take the end of the Aizen arc to do a Bleach: Shippuden moment.

The weird thing is the Fullbring arc does take place like 3 months after Aizen is defeated, so there's ALREADY a timeskip. Going a little further wouldn't have been a stretch at all lol. Show me Ichigo who buckles down, finishes school with top marks (he was always shown to be smart, like #5 in his class of 300 or some ****?), and starts his life as a normal person...and then gets dragged back in.

It would also have given Kubo a chance to really justify the godawful decision of having him end up with Orihime instead of Rukia.

(Aside, I think it is genuinely a disservice to Rukia's character to just like...hand her off as a "prize" to Renji at the end of the series.)

I feel like at bare minimum it'd put Naruto into the bottom slot of these three juggernauts, historically speaking. But even then I'm not like, 100% sure if I'd put Naruto above or below it NOW. Decisions...

I dunno if it would have saved the series to that extent, especially since it's not like Naruto was a weak series at all. It had its flaws in the latter half, mostly with the war arc being a bit too long and literally everything involving Kaguya, but it still actually managed to stick the landing and end on a high note.

Thus the theme between Aizen and Ichigo was the theme is one of illusions and finality, both things that word can not truly capture, it was supposed to be a battle of hearts and understanding beyond concepts.

(Did it succeed, well it depends on your perspective and whether you allow it to spellbind / seduce your heart. Thus it will not always succeed, for non success is also valid.)

I dunno if anyone disputes that Aizen vs Ichigo was a pretty great battle overall, though I don't know about going into that much thematic depth for it. The wordplay on their names is interesting, but ultimately what it's expressed as up until that final conflict is Ichigo tries and fails to do anything to Aizen while the latter maintains plot armor so thick it requires some serious Deus Ex Machina to justify him being defeated.

Honestly the opening that went along with After Dark tells the story better than any discussion of the themes behind their names do. Ichigo keeps trying to catch Aizen but he's always two moves ahead.

I guess what I'm saying is that you're not wrong, that thematic depth is THERE, and very cool, but again the execution lets it down.

Final Getsuga Tensho form is still rad as **** though.