Tosen and Komamura face off with Tosen's past highlighted to explain away his transformation to villain.
What They Say
Komamura performs his Bankai, Kokujo Tengen Myo-oh, to subdue Tosen. However, Tosen has already deduced the weakness of Komamura's Bankai from years of working closely together. Despite the damage received, Komamura refuses to give up on his former friend, throwing out the question of why Tosen chose to become a Soul Reaper in the first place.
The Review!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The match-up with Tosen in the last episode with Komamura going against him after reflecting on their past a bit was pretty good, though a lot of it was more style than substance. But that's a big part of what Bleach is all about so it works pretty well. Tosen has a blank if solid look to him, though when you remove the ability to see into another characters eyes, you lose a lot of the emotion behind what's happening. With Tosen, that's a bit part of the point as he's pretty intense even without that based just on his actions. And Komamura really does make up for that as he takes things to the next level with his own abilities to take him down.
Part of this visual design though is amusingly dealt with in another way as the flashbacks show us Tosen when he was starting out as a Soul Reaper and even then he was spending all his time with his eyes closed because of his condition. Tosen is not a character I've had too much experience with, but seeing his past, the way he became a Soul Reaper and the reasons why he's changed as he has are interesting, but it doesn't come across in a completely convincing manner. But such situations don't always make sense when viewed from the outside. As the saying goes, a villain rarely sees himself as thus and feels justified in doing what needs to be done, something that others will not do even at the cost of other important things.
What's striking about Tosen is that he comes across as so completely different from before. He's not the character that I saw a couple hundred episodes ago and to Komamura, he's certainly not the same either. Whether his progression to this side is natural or not, it comes across as being forced and somewhat out of the blue for me when you have his close friend and partner in Komamura being shocked by all of it. Tosen's flashbacks do explain things, but it's simply not compelling in making what seems like a gentle but firm soul transforming like this. It's easy in this instance to understand Komamura's surprise by it because as bad as things were for Tosen, to turn this way has it going too far without any real signs showing beforehand.
In Summary:
Tosen takes things up to an interesting level at the end, a decidedly creepy on, but for the most part I still can't get behind this apparently long game he's been playing for revenge. Throughout a lot of the episode I felt like Komamura, not sure why it was happening and that the reasons don't seem truly compelling. Tosen ends up coming across as more cracked in the head here as each new flashback adds more to the reasons why and his powers and appearance change to represent his shift to the evil side. Or, as he views it, the side of justice and revenge since that's what he's after. There are some decent moments with the fight here, and his transformation is decidedly creepy, but it also almost makes you laugh with the way he looks as it finalizes, which is not the impression I think was intended.
Features
Japanese 2.0 Language, English Subtitles
Review Equipment
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70" LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
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