User blog comment:Xilinoc/Ch. 546 - THE LAST 9DAYS/@comment-1351982-20130717110017/@comment-5657895-20130717153837

That's exactly what the Arrancar arc and Fake Town Karakura arc suffered from; dreadful pacing. The fights were all over the place, they had little build up and consequence most of the time, and the fact that no one died on the Gotei side really made it seems lacklustre. I couldn't take Aizen's army seriously after that. Just a lot of action, little plot, investigation, flashbacks, and other things of substance. Just a ton of fights.

This arc has been done pretty well. I dislike how Kubo just ignores some of his most promising characters or characters he should really expand on considering it's his last arc (eg Unohana, Ukitake, Rose, Rukia, Orihime, Ryuuken, etc) and glosses over some important emotional bits that could really help connect things and make everything flow better (A proper funeral for Yamamoto, the captains reactions to Shunsui's new title, Shunsui and Ukitake's reactions to Yamamoto's death and the changed dynamic of the Soul Society, some kind of address to how the 3rd, the 5th, and the 9th reacted to Rose, Shinji, and Kensei, etc), but at least there's a proper conflict, there's real danger, there's real mystery to it and we're still getting little tidbits of information now and again.