voidox said:
Rukia got her bankai thru nothing but plotkai and BS shortcuts that can make no sense at all except foooor: OVER 9000 deus ex powerups!!
Well, this is actually my main complain about this entire arc. This one or two years time skip happend and suddenly everyone's power-level is completely off the charts. I didn't even realize I completely brushed this 10-year rule to achieve bankai away, because Bankai seems to be the standart by now anyway. I mean, many non-captains have achieved Bankai: Renji, Ikkaku, Yumichika, Sasakibe, most of the Vaizard, now Rukia and of course Ichigo. Bankai is not an exception that is reserved for captain level shinigami anymore, it's standart procedure, because the overall power level in Bleach has become rediculously high.
The thing that really bugs me is: Soul Society has existed a very, very long time, Rukia herself said she's several hundred years old and in all this time, it was never necessary or it has never occured to someone to train for a short one or two years and become strong enough to deal with potentially high leveled danger. I mean, the sheer fact that the power levels rose this high in such a short amount of time, leaves me in disbelieve Shimigami even bothered seriously training before.
If we compare the power-level of the captains, the strongest Shinigami there are, from the beginning of the manga to now, just mere 3 years later, the jump in strenght is unbelievable. I know I'm trying to make sense out of a power shounen manga, but I just can't believe how fast and easily Shinigami have sudenly become stronger, when centuries have passed where apparently such a power-level was completely unecessary and nobody bothered training themselves to their full potential. And we're talking about the same people that were in charge centuries ago, because Shinigami age that slow. It's not like we have a more selected pool of stronger athletes now, no, these are the same people. Considering these people are essentially soldiers and it's their job to protect and fight, not maxing out their possibilities as far as they can go, is stupid.
Aside from all that, the one thing that really botherd me this chapter was Byakuya. Rukia has a Bankai now, so she should be able to handle this situation very well on her own, or not? However, Kubo needed to show off Byakuya and this freakish strenght, only to pass the baton back to Rukia, so she can finish that guy off with her newly optianed Bankai now? Byakuya was completely unecessary, his interference only makes Rukia look artificially weak, because even though she is capable of doing it herself, she still needs to rely on nii-sama and this is bad for her character, because even though she has always been portrayed as showing great respect towards Byakuya, before everything else, she's supposed to be a strong female lead, which has effectively now gone down the gutter.