My reaction to that chapter was of a little anime girl going 'eeeEEEHHH?'

 

...so he gave up his Shinigami powers - but not his hollow powers?

 

This.

Ichigo's hair grew out even more. And it's black (Well, at least darker than before). If they'd given him blond hair he could've blasted Aizen with a Kamehameha.

Seriously? They both look completely ridiculous, but apparently hair length equals power-level.

Maybe it's Kubo's secret message to the world: Size does matter.

 

But his has blondish hair normally (well orange, but close enough), so to better show his level up he did reverse Super Saiyan.

Dragon Ball proved that one long time ago.

 

Hey, at least Ichigo's new form looks cool.

Anyways, wasn't there that anime filler episode, where that guy became one with his zanpakutou? And it took some Captains to kill him? I guess this is way more powerful version of it, or something. Then again, anime fillers... yeah.

Eh, if Ichigo kills Aizen, and leaves the Bleach world to do god knows what, it's a happy ending to me. If he stays around as a human, it's cliche bad end to me. If he dies, it's somewhat expected ending to me.

What's happening now really does feel like the end climax of the entire story. Perhaps they'll pull a DB GT and continue even after the story ended (Freeza), but I don't think so. Hope so, anyways.

 

GT was bad, true, but it didn't started after Freeza Saga, but after Buu Saga.

By the way, unless Aizen have back-up plan, I predict that next chapter will have his flashback.

 

Oh, right. Freeza did feel like the end, though XD.

 

Freeza was the end, but the executives in charge of the show forced Toriyama to continue despite that. Attaining Super Saiyan was supposed to be the equivalent of Goku becoming God.

 

That's also the truth. I was just pointing out that GT didn't started after Freeza.

I remember reading long time ago interview with Toriyama and he described the moment when he decided he really need to end DB. It was after he ended drawing one of the last chapter of Buu Saga and was thinking about next saga. He looked at his calendar and then it hit him that he was doing DB for the last eleven years. You thought - enough is enough and even his publisher couldn't make him change his mind.

In this interview he also told that he have tendency to make the same look on his face as the character he was drawing at the moment and his wife is always scolding about it.

But about Bleach and other mangas. I was wondering how often the authors are doing interviews about their creations and how much they are telling. When you are interesting in American comics books, you have the writers telling from time to time what plans they have for their books, but I never hear anything similar with managakas and because of that for all we know Bleach may really ends in the next few weeks.

 

Doesn't seem like the end to me. All the secondary characters [Tatsuki etc] still have to gain their Shinigami powers before the writer'll let this go, I feel.

 

Kubo could easily go the way, that Ichigo loses his powers killing Aizen. Cue Ichigo gaining his power back(recycling his plot elements is no problem for him). So then, we have a shinigami Ichigo again, and Kubo can start from almost clean sheet with his enemies, and still include the old guard, as ichigo is not making everyone totally obsolete.


I hope not, but it's probably gonna end that way.

 

^ This seems very plausible.

In any case, the plot over in Hueco Mundo has to be resolved too. Weren't Byakuya and Kenpachi fighting Yami? I suppose that'll take a few chapters to get done and it may well include a Yami flashback. And there's Isshin's back story and a whole bunch of Bankais to be seen.

 

My prediction is that Ichigo loses his shinigami powers semi-permanently. Everyone knows that Isshin lost his powers sometime before the start of the series but gained them back when he killed Grand Fisher. Since he is the one that told Ichigo about the Final Getsuga I think that there was a threat in the past to make him use his own Final Getsuga. The cliffhanger at the end of the latest chapter also makes me believe that a turn back the pendulum type series of chapters might happen. The Orihime rejects the final getsuga theory is also pretty plausible but would also be lame and anti-climactic.

 

You are now imagining Yamamoto using his final Ryuujin Jakka.

And shitting yourself.

 

...that's just a nuke, right? Or maybe a Dragon Slave?

 

lol, I don't think its possible to have something that awesome

 

With the recent interview with Kubo, when browsing some forums, I keep hearing rumours about Bleach continuing, but with a new protagonist. I really don't know whether this is true or not, but... yeah, who knows.

 

If it's true, I don't really consider it as a bad news. I've always thought that Ichigo is rather weak as a main character compared to a great support cast.

 

If the spoilers on Onemanga are true,

Spoiler

we're about to get ass-rapingly trolled by Kubo. He just trumped all his previous trollings in one fucking move.

To sum it up: Aizen uses bankai at last. It totally renders all other bankai seen powers obsolete-- and just about everything else since, say, the Danzai space was entered twenty some chapters ago.

 

Spoiler

The time travel fics were justified. My brain hurts now.