User blog comment:Godisme/March of the Starcross2/@comment-1268838-20120428173350

This was a pretty eventful chapter. Though it won't last, I'm pretty glad to see that Ichigo is pretty much taking this guy on with his bare hands, let alone his Shikai. From the looks of it, Letzt Stil will be the Vandenreich's answer to Bankai as some predicted, though I'm curious as to whether the repercussions will be the same. Kirge's comment about Uryu was rather curious, so I'm interested in seeing how the Ishidas will get wrapped up in this.

As for the pacing, I'm pretty fine with it actually. While the Arrancar arc took a while to kick off, it pretty much started with a series of battle royales among a multitude of characters - the entire arc pretty much repeated this pattern up until the very end. In the end I think it will come down to whether the Stern Ritter succeed or not. Given their name it seems as though they only comprise a portion of the Vandenreich's military, so they could very well fail in this invasion.