User blog comment:Xilinoc/Ch. 684 - The Blade/@comment-24769684-20160728121813

Oh boy. Where to begin?

Aizen reveals to Yhwach that he tricked him with Kyoka Suigetsu. First, how does that work still?? There's absolutely no reasoning behind why it works except for, well, it does. And when did Aizen show Yhwach Kyoka Suigetsu? You're telling me Chair-sama's one weakness, besides blasts of holy omnipotent power, is Zanpakuto regeneration and usage? Gee, that totally makes sense. And if Aizen could hypnotize Yhwach that quickly, as I say once again, why didn't he do it to Ichigo in their fight?? Sure, it just so HAPPENS that sparing Ichigo then allowed this keikaku to work now, but who knows if this would have even happened if Aizen won in the first place?

So Yhwach turns into a black man (symbolism!) but quickly claims that he can just go to the future where he doesn't die. Cool, man. Why not just go to the future where everything's worked out perfectly for you and you're lounging about in your brand new world? Definitely better than just Bleaching yourself. So Yhwach's powers are briefly stopped by Uryu's silver arrowhead which DOES. ABSOLUTELY. NOTHING. Yhwach regains his powers as Ichigo leaps toward him, but is struck by another silver arrow known as plot convenience. Unable to do something actually useful, like slicing the sword in half, or better yet slicing Ichigo in half, or just doing what I said earlier, Yhwach just cracks it, revealing Ichigo's old Shikai and causing him to get cut up.

OK, so first let's tackle Ichigo's Bankai. ITS ONE FREAKING POWER WAS TO RESTORE ICHIGO'S OLD SWORD? DOES THAT NOT DEFEAT THE ENTIRE PURPOSE OF ICHIGO REINVENTING HIS SWORD TO ENCOMPASS HIS FULL ABILITIES? And if Ichigo's got his old Shikai back thanks to his Bankai, does that mean his Shikai is now Bankai? Well, at least his sword skills seem to have improved a bit. And it's not like he'll ever need to tackle that particular issue since Ichigo will never use Bankai in the story again ._.

Then, of course, there's the Almighty, the almighty trainwreck of a power. As anyone could have seen coming, Kubo made this ability so powerful that the only real way to get around it is for him to give it random lapses rather than actual weaknesses. There is no logical reason for the Almighty to have failed the way it did in the end. Yhwach had the world at his fingertips and he chooses to use the Almighty to battle against some wash-ups when it could have been so much more. Did I want the Almighty to fail in the end? Of course! But I wanted it to fail in an actually logical way, one where the characters actually manage to spot a weakness and overcome it. Not in this way, where the author forces the character to squander the full extent of their abilities for no real reason on the character's end, just to bring them down to the levels of others.

So yeah, this chapter was horrible, and very much expected from Kubo getting cancelled. We knew about it since 4 weeks ago, so for those of us not in denial it was at least a little interesting seeing how much damage control Kubo had to do in order to end Bleach in some logical way. And this very illogical ending is probably the most logical he could get outside of Yhwach winning. But hey, that's the business of being a serialized mangaka. You create manga to sell to people in Japan, and if they don't like it, you're gone. That isn't to say that Kubo should have been a slave to what the customers wanted. Sometimes fans learn that the best plot twists and advancements aren't always what they've had in mind, as I've learned quite often as a One Piece fan. But the truth is that Kubo ultimately failed to maintain his audience's interest in Bleach, and thus his business tanked. Naruto, despite how bad it got, is still extremely popular in Japan. Whatever Japan wants, we get, because it's manga. And honestly, even the people outside of Japan could barely tolerate Bleach anymore. Just the people in stuff like Asylum, the subreddit, and this wiki were really the only groups of outspoken Bleach fans. So yeah, that pretty much sums up how much Bleach has tanked. I hope that perhaps maybe Kubo will collaborate with a writer in his next project and do the art. The art was pretty much the one thing I consistently liked about Bleach, anyways.