Bleach 421 is out

[qwirky.livejournal.com]

Bleach 421 is out at Mangastream.

As always: Don't go tweeting to Kubo about this chapter until Monday, and if you want to tweet him 'bout something else, then don't use art from this chapter in your icon.





The color spread is pretty but... but... Ichigooooooo. ;_; ;_; ;_; ;_; ;_; Waaaaaah. Ichigooooo. T_T T_T T_T *cries for him*

"Farewell, Ichigo" <-- The ;_; began at that point. (Oh, and Zangetsu has blue eyes behind the shades.)

Ichigo's faces during this chapter. ;_; ;_; Someone needs to give him a hug. Someone other than Aizen, anyway.

Aizen's frothing at the mouth, even at the end of the line. 'I'm a winner, you're a loser, blah blah, let me say more things that are totally wrong and that I made up.' Okay. At least he loses some of his freaky features and goes back to relatively normal-looking.

Uraharaaaaaa. So he outplayed Aizen this round. Not that it was hard, what with Aizen becoming unhinged, both due to his super annoying arrogance and his eroding humanity/sanity/intelligence due to the hougyoku. But as others said in the spoiler thread, sealing a villain is never a good thing - they tend to become unsealed at a future point.

Apparently Urahara did know much more about the hougyoku than he let on, if he was able to predict that the hougyoku would no longer think of Aizen as his master once Aizen weakened. It's okay, hobaby, go back to mama Rukia. But it looks like the hougyoku is being sealed WITH Aizen? I wonder how that'll work out. (My Feeling: Not well.)

So the Spirit King keeps the spirit world together? Hmmmmm. Guess we'll learn more about that in the next arc. Aizen: 'Graaah, why do you listen to that "thing"!' <-- Why the venom, Aizen?

Ichigo looks away at the end as Aizen's being sealed. I wonder if it was because Aizen's rantings became too embarrassing or difficult to handle, coupled with Ichigo's exhaustion; or if Aizen's words that winners think not of how the world is, but how it should be, reminded Ichigo that he's lost his shinigami powers. We saw in the prequel chapters that Ichigo longed for the power to crush destiny; now he no longer possesses that power. Ichigo... ;_;

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_debbiechan_/]

Okay, briefly--on the dome Ichigo turned into a beast with no conscience and then when Ulquiorra was already defeated and was lying on the ground and surrendering, the beast Ichigo had become (commonly referred around these parts as IchiThing) proceeded to show no mercy and fired a cero at him, starting the disintegration of Ulquiorra's body that would end his life. This was moral transgression one. Ichigo was responsible for killing an opponent with a cero in this fight--he usually would've NOT killed the opponent (witness all his other fights) but if he had resorted to a final blow, his zanpakutou would've purged that soul and mercifully sent it to SS.

Second transgression: Ichigo stabbed Ishida and then aimed a cero at his friend too, intending to kill him as well.

Ichigo, our shounen hero, has blood on his hands. I don't believe that he could enter a fight with the Big Bad and win without his trangressions on the dome being resolved. Ichigo still hasn't confronted his guilt over what happened there.

And I do believe that Ulquiorra has to return because Ichigo can't be allowed in the story to have killed an opponent who had already surrendered. It would be too much angst, too much wrong-doing for a shounen hero to carry around.