User blog comment:Xilinoc/Ch. 562 - THE VILLAIN 2 (Mask De Masculine is a Mexican luchador in a German army)/@comment-5693502-20131217161348/@comment-5398287-20131218034057

Well, Ten, if you'll recall the overextended FKT arc and particularly the battles in the titular area, a lot of them were like this: Shinigami were pushed to their limits and had to show off their powers, get legitimately wounded by their foes, etc. I at least like this arc because up until now, the Shinigami, on the whole both time and general-wise, have been portrayed as nigh-invulnerable to their opponents, usually only coming out of fights with enemy subordinates (Fraccion) with some scratches. Here, however, they're forced to hit hard and fast or die. Simple as that. Moving back to my original point, though, this seems similar to that phase of the FKT arc. Eventually, we reached a point where we knew where the story was headed (Aizen and the Hogyoku) and I doubt this will be any different. Thankfully, Kubo's making these fights much quicker than FKT's.