BLEACH EPISODE #67

The group arrives at school to find Ichigo and Renji’s bodies already in the front yard. Ririn appears and tells them the rules of the next game: there is an imposter in their midst and they have to find out who it is before noon. If they screw up, then everyone in the school is going to disappear. Since Claude isn’t with his partners, the group immediately realizes that he must be pretending to be one of them. Ichigo’s classmates soon start arriving for school, and Renji is introduced as Ichigo’s relative.

During class, Renji interrupts Ichigo’s thinking and the two’s argument gets them kicked out into the hallway. Ichigo thinks that Renji is acting strange and suspects that Renji may be the imposter. As a result, he tries to get Renji to take off the gigai, but it’s interpreted by everyone who hears them as him trying to take off Renji’s clothes. After Ishida starts suspecting that even abilities can be copied, Ririn decides to take her first victim: Tatsuki. Meanwhile, in Soul Society, Ukitake orders all traffic between the worlds to be stopped temporarily. At Yoruichi’s request, Soi Fong makes it out of the gates before they close and heads to the real world.

Inoue finds out about Tatsuki’s disappearance during gym class and goes to see for herself, only to find Tatsuki’s wristband on the floor. Ichigo has to calm her down after Inoue starts to suspect everyone. But with time running out, and very little in terms of options, Ishida suggests that they use their intuition to find the imposter. Unfortunately, that leads to Ichigo pointing to Ishida, Ishida pointing to Renji, Renji to Inoue, Inoue to Sado, and Sado back to Ichigo.

With only ten minutes left, the entire class starts to disappear. Only after everyone is gone, including their teacher, does Ririn offer them the deal of returning everyone in exchange for Ichigo and company. But Ichigo senses something and rushes over to the window where he sees Yoruichi and Soi Fong running towards them. As Soi Fong jumps over the school, she kicks out the window in front of her. Sado starts acting strange, and Ichigo realizes that Sado must be the imposter from the fact that he referred to Soi Fong and Yoruichi as only one woman (meaning he didn’t know Yoruichi was female). Sado reveals himself to indeed be Claude, and Ririn announces the start of the final game.

This episode has some genuinely funny moments, including what everyone perceived as Ichigo trying to strip Renji. Because of those scenes, I ended up liking this episode a lot more than the last one. And it doesn’t hurt that we get guest appearances by Ukitake and Soi Fong, the latter of whom became the reason that Ichigo finally figured out who the imposter is. But ultimately, the whole imposter thing seems like an elaborate way for the new villains to get Ichigo and company to trade their lives for their friends. I guess Ririn really likes her games, though it seems that we’re up to the final one.



Next week, another one hour special! Unfortunately, the animation quality looks pretty poor from the preview, though it does seem like we’re getting another scene of naked Yoruichi.

To be continued...