User blog:Xilinoc/Ch. 579 - THE UNDEAD 6

Alright, I'm gonna write an actual review of this chapter when I get home because I honestly wasn't expecting a chapter this week, but for now...

Well, that just happened.

Song to listen to while reading this chapter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Tr0otuiQuU

So first off, we get, in my opinion, a proper send-off for Gremmy. Instead of him just dying from overexerting his imagination on his body, he gets to have a final conversation with Kenpachi, and it turns out that his body simply couldn't handle how much power Kenpachi has. That actually makes a lot of sense, much more than what I thought the reason was. Then, it turns out that he was a brain in a snowglobe all along, and had in fact been imagining a body for himself the whole time. Gotta admit, this first part was actually a little sad for me: even though Gremmy's one of the Sternritter and mercilessly killed two captains and nearly destroyed the entire Seireitei and so on, it seems like he was in a similar condition to Yhwach and Aaroniero in different ways: he was a powerless object that made a body for himself to survive, and now he's dying and has acknowledged that he failed. That last part's a first for ANY of the Sternritter, near as I can remember.

Then, Kenpachi spews blood from his mouth and realizes that one of his internal organs have been ruptured (classic Kenpachi, realizing he has a severe injury a few minutes after it happens). But then we get to the dark part of the chapter: Yachiru is missing, and no one knows why. Theories on what happened aside, this stood out to me because it actually got Kenpachi legitimately worried, enough so that he had an expression of concern on his face and actually gave an order to members of his division for the first time in the series. That's one of the most powerful moments I've seen regarding him, and it was done in a manner subtle enough that the reader doesn't even need him to say "I'm worried" to know he is. To put in perspective how concerned he is, Yachiru's disappearance has him yelling at his division members with fear on his face, whereas nearly bleeding to death during his fight against Nnoitra just got a "oh, I might die from this" from him.

And then we get to the stinger of the chapter; the rest of Bambietta's teen girl squad has arrived, with Candice apparently zapping the unseated Shinigami with lightning from her hand. There you go, she's either "The Thunder" or "The Thunderbolt". We'll probably learn what happened to Bambietta fairly soon as well, since Giselle's arrived as well. I doubt that Kenpachi's gonna be the one to fight them, unless Kubo feels the need to show off his Shikai some more. There are quite a few other options for who could take them on, but I honestly couldn't predict what will happen at this point.

Anyway, even though I didn't know it was gonna come out this week, I like this chapter. Gremmy got a nice exit, Kenpachi showed some non-happy-happy-fight-time emotions for the second time in this arc, and now we're gonna learn what happened to Bambietta and what the powers of the four cheerleaders are. (Liltotto seems to be manipulating gravity, Candice is obviously electricity-manipulating, and Giselle...well, unless she's "The Zed" and makes people British, I think we all know what "Z" is gonna stand for. No idea on Meninas, though.)