Bleach Chapter 573

This week’s chapter was, for the most part, an exercise of fan service. Not the random Orihime boobs popping out or unnecessarily sexualised scenes we get sometimes. No, this was Kubo writing the badassery of Kenpachi in to his chapter which the fans really wanted to see. The chapter starts out with a fully revealed Kenpachi standing in a very familiar way. To my surprise he didn’t really seem to have anything different about his appearance, he was still rocking the eye patch and he didn’t have any sort of special clothing like Ichigo, Renji or Rukia did, I expected him to inherit some sort of ‘Kenpachi’ clothing from Onohana, but it was not to be.

I wasn’t entirely clear on the next part but it was inferred that Yachiru was saved by Kenpachi. Isane escaped carrying the two supposedly dead captains once the new Sternritter had created his ‘stage’.

Something to take note of is Kenpachi’s and Isane attitude when talking about the death of Onohana. Kenpachi has shown that he is taking the name of Kenpachi as a great honour and understands to responsibility that he now carries. Isane also reacts in a way I would not expect. I was expecting some sort of explosive reaction once he told her that he killed Onohana but it was the opposite. Isane seems to understand the position Onohana held and the subsequent risk it carries. I do not think that she was told extensively about it and didn’t know much about the other side of Onohana.

After what has transpired I do not believe that Onohana is dead in this situation, she is simply to valuable. It is also not really that unlikely that the best healing medic in the known universe would be able to save her own life… just saying. This is obvious just speculation at the moment though, so expect the worst.

The new Sternritter’s name is Gremmy Thoumeaux, which is just has long and complicated to remember as the others so his code name is the much easier to remember ‘V’. V proclaims himself to be ‘probably’ of the most powerful of the Sternritter, with ‘probably’ being the key word here. Unlike the Arrancar’s they don’t seem to have a specific labelling system for the most powerful fighters, but it’s a surprise that they don’t have a ranking system for at least the top three. My estimate is that he is the second most powerful of the Sternritter and he or she will be revealed later on.

During the short skirmish that was shown in this chapter it seems that, after a short show of power, Kenpachi appears  to have the upper hand. This is not really surprising to see after all the character development he has gone through. At the moment it doesn’t seem likely that this fight will continue for very long, it’s likely that we will see a couple of displays of power in the next 3-5 chapters and Kenpachi may even ‘appear’ to be struggling, however the end the result will be Kenpachi’s victory.

Something else that struck me as odd on this chapter is V himself. He does not really appear to be intimidating at all, despite his manipulative power. It’s hard to believe that he is a strong opponent based on his child like appearance coupled with his overly calm attitude. To change this I am guessing that he change his appearance in the later chapters as he powers up more. Either with a physical change or he goes insane and has a psychotic face (rape face) and his fighting style will grow wilder with it, resulting in a very ‘Kenpachi’ style fight.

This chapter was no doubt lacking on content but was still very enjoyable. I give the chapter a 7/10, however I really do hope for some more content in the next chapter with less whole pages, dedicated to one image.