Bleach: "Aizen Stands! Horrible Ambitions" Review - IGN (original) (raw)

Aizen divulges why he wants to kill Rukia.

Lately if you've been looking for consistency in your anime then Bleach has definitely been just that. The action and story hasn't let up and just keeps on going. When things are going so good, you know that eventually the show is going to have to fall a bit. Fortunately, Bleach didn't fall in this episode and delivered to us a good episode.
Renji finds himself on top of Soukyoku hill with Aizen, Gin, and Tosen. Aizen tells Renji to hand over Rukia, but of course, Renji refuses. Renji is still weak from when he fought Byakuya, because you can still see the slashes and blood on his robe. Renji puts up a fight anyway, but Aizen is able to break his sword with just the palm of his hand.

Yeah this was impressive and it's getting a little terrifying just thinking about how powerful Aizen might be. Back at central 46, Unohana gets the message out to the other soul reapers about Aizen's betrayal. The reaction from all the different reapers was a neat moment as all of them realized they had all been betrayed.

Ichigo realized after hearing the message that Aizen planned to kill Rukia and we see him appear just as Renji had a deathblow coming down on him. Ichigo and Renji both try to take on Aizen, but they fail again. Both of them are too weak or either Aizen is just too strong.

Once Aizen has his hands on Rukia, we soon learn why he wants to kill her so badly. It seemed that Kisuke hid a mechanism that breaks the barrier from a hollow turning into a soul reaper and vice versa inside Rukia's Gigai and Aizen wants it. This was surprising to us and the characters in Bleach, hearing that it was Kisuke would do something like this. What was interesting was that Ichigo can go hollow also, which means that he has the potential to become a really strong Soul Reaper.

Most of this episode came off well. It was merely an informative episode letting us know a little bit of Aizen's plan. I find it hard to believe that Aizen just wants to become more powerful, so I would think that maybe there's something more to it. The animators do a great job with Aizen. The Aizen that we first knew was the nicest guy ever, he looked it, and now this Aizen actually looks like the most evil jerk we've ever seen. It's just great how the animators haven't changed his animation much, but have managed to give his face this evil thing about it.

There were a couple of mishaps, which won't weigh heavily on my score, but the fact that Aizen's plan was so planned out was a bit too planned out to believe. He seemed to know that everything was going to happen exactly as planned, which further bugs me, considering that he already has an overpowered Zanpakto. Aizen just doesn't seem to have any sort of flaw and every villain should have some kind of flaw.

All the soul reapers have been alerted and they'll probably all be heading up to Soukyoku Hill. It should be interesting to see how Aizen will get out of this situation, even though he's probably aware that they are heading towards him.

Bleach slowed down a little, but it was still a good episode. Aizen's steps so far have been perfect, so it'll be gratifying watching him fail eventually. Also Kisuke's involvement in using Rukia came up and while it probably won't be answered in the next episode; It'll probably be addressed soon. Another good episode and now we just wait to see what Aizen's next move is going to be.