u/RedundantConsistency

Now, I got your attention. It's an arguably fun ride, so buckle in!

First things first, the story.

Yhwach is the son of the Soul King so we can establish that he is strong, like his father who had the power to separate the worlds for balance.

He did so, however, by basically becoming a passive force and losing intellect and further removing parts of himself to complete this feat.

Admirable, but in a poetic manner Yhwach seeks to destroy this as it doesn't favor the Quincy and signifies weakness.

Now, for his first defeat let's assume he was arrogant, young, perhaps unready and let's also give the advantage to Gotei 13 for being an overly aggresive bunch of murderers who happen to be Shinigami. Ok, Yhwach was defeated but not killed. Fell into slumber in a way while he regained his powers and furthered his hatred to fuel his second attempt.

All this to say, it starts good. But ends horrendously.

The were hiding in plain sight, ok. They invaded and conquered Hueco Mundo. I'd think someone was keeping tabs but nah, we had one Hollow Uprising, can't have another. Right?

Nope, they all got decimated, enlisted in the Magic Nazi army and off they go. No one noticed them because they patiently waited for Ichigo to finish his Fullbring, because like Mickey said:

*It's a surprise tool that will help us later!*

Meanwhile, Uryu has his 30th identity crisis and learns of the real history from the journal of his cryptic idiot dad had on his desk.

Invasion begins, they kill all the unnamed characters plus another who was named and killed promptly. I actually liked this because it was brutal, seemed fit for an invasion to be shocking.

So, we sent in the Captains. As always, one against one because of the ancient code of Bullshido. They tell them "Don't use Bankai against the enemy who greedily taunts you to use it. It's a trap!"

As normal, they use it immediately. As shocked as the yellow rat from Pokemon, they realise it was indeed a trap and get kicked in the chin. Yamamoto finally takes lead and heads to kill the head of the snake. Only to do a proper detail show of his Bankai (which was AWESOME) and Yhwach to pull ye old switcheroo and slice him in half. No biggie, we all have a back-up drone twin set who can handle Kenpachi AND Genryusai. It just happens, deal with it.

Ichigo arrives after killing Nazi Marilyn Manson to find everything in ruins, everyone plastered on walls and blood everywhere. Save us, Kurosaki-kun!

Now bear with me, the real shit starts to write itself.

The Thousand Year Blood War begans in earnest!

So Ichigo goes head first again, which is typical. It's shonen, if they don't scream about protecting friends, something is terribly wrong. He gets thrashed, which was fun. Shocking is good most of the times. Breaks the monotony.

He also loses his Bankai (again) and gets his sword broken. He goes to training, again, and gets his powers back. Again.

Meanwhile, the Quincy's are pulling all sorts of powers that are just beyond Bankai. A guy regulates his body to survive anything, good friends with Bear Grylls.

Another is a biblically accurate American Sniper, another can wish things come true with his Gameboy, another makes his wishes come true by being the Heart of the Soul King, which in all these years never did anything to alarm the Shinigami. He just came out, happy as a clam to kill everyone.

The other is the Left Hand of the Soul King but it's beaten by Mayuri and his Dayman suit, shame his daughter had to be obliterated in the process.

We also have Nazo Libre, who also gets his powers by the praize of little orphans.

Now, I am making fun of it but all these characters are overpowering Captain after Captain after Captain. Nazo here took out what, 5-6 captains? And got defeated by Renji. It feels like opposite world but eh.

Everyone takes out everyone, but in the meantime we of course had the power up from one side, power up from the other, power up from one side... rinse and repeat. All the Royal Guard got mopped by the Quincy. We get the explanation that Yhwach uses the Auswählen, almost 5 times, which is a "sort by alive/strongest and destroy trash items" with seemingly no cooldown.

Uryu is by Yhwach the whole time, doing what fathers and sons do best. War crimes. He shoots Ichigo, he breaks buildings, shoots Renji, Ichigo again, then kills one of the Royal Guard, who broke a blood oath, kept in place because the Bankai release of one the Captains can destabilize the three worlds. Uryu learns from his father and switches them up and shoots her. Bing bang boom. That's because we sorted the inventory again (Auswählen). Keep up!

Next, Yhwach, ever the skank, tricks Ichigo to kill the Soul King (which could only be done by someone with hollow+quincy+shinigami+fullbring+ninja+saiyan+pirate king powers) and then beats him again. He really likes beating Ichigo, like a lot. He absorbs the Soul King. Ukitake is revealed to have the other Hand of the Soul King inside him, which was why he was always sick, to balance the loss of the Soul King. It works, partially, and keeps the collapse at bay. Just enough for Ichigo to get some more beating.

Yhwach and Ichigo clash again, very one sided. Yoruichi tries to turn the tide and almost manages to do so, if Uryu didn't shoot her in the shoulder. Ever the pesky but lovable Uryu.

Now, I might have missed some clashes but that's only because Ichigo and Yhwach was seemingly defeated several times each.

Basically every single fight is this annoying switch up. One is overpowered, gets stronger and overpowers the other and back and forth. All the Bankai are shown, with very very few remaining and all the Quincy's can counter them with the most convoluted, idiotic last minute powers. This is my greatest grievance with TYBW.

The Division 0 has such great power they can't release their Bankai unless 3 other members are incapacitated. However, Captains are throwing Bankai and Schrift releases left and right but it's fine. Fans love Bankai. Amirite, fellas?

"Yhwach's out busting heads. Then he’s back to Ichigo for some more dead beating. Talks backstory, back to Ichigo, beatdown. Backstory, beatdown, backstory, beatdown, backstory, beatdown. And this goes on and on, and back and forth, for 20 or so episodes until the arc just, sort of, ends."

At the end (at this point, I just read mindlessly) turns out that literally a silver bullet defeats Yhwach. And then they all went back and rebuilt and that's why will probably have more Bleach in the future. Ichigo made a baby who played around and killed a lingering Yhwach. For real, I did put spoilers so here, a spoiled and smelly end.

I'm sad because Bleach had unlimited potential. Kept in the big three through hiatuses simply because it basically re-programmed the modern day "aura farming" anime, and it worked! It worked because it was flashy combat, fun characters, japanese terms with intricate names and the ever popular BAN KAI! but for me it just became obvious that's literally it. Everything somehow was connected and sorted in a nice bag.

And one of the worse offenders for this ending, is how the anime treats Uryu. All the things I mentioned as his Geneva confession, is solely on anime. In the manga, he didn't kill a Royal Guard Captain, he didn't battle Renji, he didn't shoot Yoruichi and nearly getting her killed too. He only shot a couple fake arrows at Ichigo to further his plan as double agent, because if I forgot to say, yeah. He was a good guy, after all.

If you read this far, goddamn. Good for you. Really! And if you don't like my opinion, well. We all got assholes and opinions.