BLEACH EPISODE #86

Having been sent to the real world, Rangiku runs through town and finds Sado, Nova, and Ururu facing off against the old Bount Sawatari. After she’s introduces herself, Sawatari starts the battle by bringing forth his doll Baura. Or rather, Sawatari and his chair disappear into the ground, leaving everyone to guess where he went. Baura strikes from the ground and everyone gets out of the way just in time. It seems that Baura is a giant fish made of the same material Sawatari’s chair is. When it’s in the ground, Rangiku can’t hit Baura with her Zanpaktou, and Nova has to teleport her out of danger before Baura almost swallows her up. Sawatari takes the time to explain that Baura manipulates space and creates its own space to move freely in. Rangiku decides to release her zanpaktou, Haineko, but then has to pull the ashes back before Baura can suck them up and in the process take her zanpaktou. She decides to contact Soul Society and request that the surrounding space be frozen and that the souls there be protected. With these precautions in place, Sado powers up his arm and the fight really begins. But because of Baura’s ability to jump between dimensional spaces, none of them can touch it. That is, until Ururu delivers a huge kick that gives them enough time to run away and take high ground.

Baura, however, is able to come at them from any surface. Ururu pushes Sado out of the way of Baura’s mouth, but she gets swallowed in the process. After a chase, Sawatari explains that Ururu is now in a different space, and that her entire body will eventually be absorbed. Baura goes after the three again, but this time Rangiku uses Haineko to cut the ground so that Baura misses his target. A giant sign then falls on Sawatari, but he protects himself through Baura. Sado, Nova, and Rangiku take refuge in an alley, which Nova deems safe because the space is too small for Baura to appear and fit. Sado can’t help but feel that he’s not powerful enough, and remembers his time in Soul Society. Nova devises a plan to use his powers to wrap Baura up and counterbalance its energy. Doing that should allow him to free Ururu. Sado wants to be the decoy, but Rangiku overrides him so that she can do it herself. When they enact their plan, Sado and Rangiku are successful at throwing Baura and Sawatari right at Nova. His powers appear to be roughly equal to Baura’s, but it’s Sado’s punch that pushes Baura into Nova’s powers. However, Baura doesn’t disappear for long - Nova starts to suffer and a red light bursts out from him. Baura re-emerges from Nova’s chest with such force that Nova goes flying. His body is caught by Rangiku, but now Sawatari is free again and ready to finish this.

This episode wasn’t that bad. Wasn’t great, but it wasn’t that bad. Rangiku alone made it a lot more interesting because she adds that fun attitude of her. It was funny watching Nova get shy around her, and with the way he saves her and she saves him, we could almost start talking about RangikuXNova lol.



We learn that giant fish thing seen in the OP is indeed Sawatari’s doll Baura. Its space-shifting powers weren’t that impressive, though I thought the clash with Nova was pretty cool. There was some really good animation for that part of the fight, so detailed that Sawatari’s face was extra creepy.

There’s one more thing that I just have to say, but I’ll put it in spoiler tags for those who don’t want to see a manga spoiler.
Show Spoiler ?
When Ururu did her kick, I yelled “Genocide Mode!” in the spirit of the moment. Man, I can’t wait for that to be animated…

No episode on June 27th, so Bleach returns on July 4th. The new ED won’t premiere until July 11th though. For those of you who haven’t heard, the eighth ED is going to be ?MOVIN!!? by takacha. You can see and hear a preview of the song here. The single is due out the very next day after it airs, on July 12th. I believe I read in an interview somewhere that they really wanted to release the single close to when it premieres.

To be continued...