Bleach Episode 117 - Rukia’s Battle Begins! The Freezing White Blade

I remember when I first read this part of the manga that I was quite surprised and impressed with how Rukia was able to finally come out and show her power by killing one of the Arrancar without some long drawn out fight. It’s been a while, but I’m glad to finally see the Sode no Shirayuki animated. My only issue is that that Bount arc might have significantly weakened the impact of this episode, at least for those people unfamiliar with the manga. Whereas in the manga we had Rukia going from not doing much in the SS arc to kicking ass in this arc, in the anime the SS arc leads into the Bount arc which has Rukia doing quite a bit of fighting. In other words, for better or worse, the Bount arc got us used to Rukia being more than just a battle support character, so her coming out with her initial release here might not have been as big a surprise.
That’s a fairly minor and very specific complaint though. The episode itself was everything I expected it to be and the animation quality was pretty high. I actually don’t consider Rukia using her initial release, despite how impressive it was, to be one of the best highlights or shocks of this battle, all of which are still yet to come. Next week will be Ikkaku versus the Arrancar Edorad.

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