bleach: episode 244

I sense a potentially epic battle coming our way! Of course, I’ve already considered the possibility that the anime writers are going to deliberately tilt the scales in Zaraki’s favor since he’s the good guy here, but nonetheless, if things keep going the way they are now, the fight between Byakuya and Zaraki could end up being the decisive one. That is, if the anime writers have any intention of winding up the arc just yet. What I noticed was that they exaggerated Zaraki’s crushing spiritual pressure more than they should have. I mean, during Ichigo’s fight, Zaraki’s spiritual pressure, though impressive, was still conceivable. Here, however, they’ve gone overboard with the whole idea. They way they showed seemed to suggest that Zaraki had even greater spiritual energy than the Head Captain, which as we all know, is hardly the case. Anyway, I don’t know what kind of contrast they want to create here, but have you ever noticed how nobody else seems to be releasing any spiritual energy when Zaraki’s around? Save for Ichigo in his battle, but as I said before, that fight was conceivable. I was half expecting Byakuya here to retaliate with a similarly impressive burst of what I know is impressive spiritual pressure, but it never came. Maybe they were really serious about giving Zaraki the upper hand right from the start. The general impression was that Byakuya wouldn’t stand a chance. Fortunately though Byakuya inflicted the first attack on Zaraki, something I’m sure no one else present, excluding Ichigo maybe, would have ever come close to achieving if they had all attacked him at once. Byakuya was impassively sanguine all through, save for the part where Zaraki did what he usually does and blocked Byakuya’s blade with his bare hand before inflicting a blow on him. That part was a little discouraging. But judging from Byakuya’s portentous remarks at the end about how he had no choice but to kill (?) Zaraki—and I’m assuming here that they weren’t just empty threats—Zaraki’s in for a lot in the next episode—something I’m itching to see. He made a very loud entrance, so I think I’d like to see him being beaten. Okay, maybe sounding pro-Byakuya at this point would inevitably make me pro-bad guys, but I’ve decided where my loyalties lie, and they’re with Byakuya. Besides, everything’s going to fall in to place eventually.