So cour one of Bleach Thousand Year Blood War ended on a mixture of emotions. The soul society was in shambles as a result of the attack from the Quincies and many of the most powerful soul reapers were either dead or had their strongest power stolen, their bankai. However, our protagonist Ichigo ended on a high note by fully realizing where his power comes from and is equipped with two beautiful new zanpakuto.

Cour two starts pretty much immediately after the first one left off. The soul reapers are trying to figure out how to compensate without their bankai as well as get them back and deal with the heavy losses. While many characters are still training for the next attack in the soul society while a select few are with the legendary zero division. We see some interesting growth here from several characters most notably Ichigo. Now in the manga we see bits and pieces of the training but here we get a much more in depth look and without going into detail it strongly hinted at some ulterior motives of the leader of the zero division Ichibe. Now for those who don’t know this was mentioned in a side novel of Bleach but not really made clear in the main continuity of the manga so it was very interesting to see these breadcrumbs of additional context here. We also get to see the growth of several characters but I’ll talk about them in a bit.

Not long after the training we are almost immediately back in the action as the soul society is attacked again. I mean this is literally episode two of this cour so it’s a very short wait. The rest of the season is almost nonstop battling but wow were those battles amazing. Some of our favorite characters that were beaten pretty badly in cour one got some much needed power ups and redemptions in this cour like Renji, Kenpachi, Byakuya and Rukia. Rukia especially as she finally reveals the full extend of her power which is not only impressive but visually mind-blowing with how beautiful it looks animated.

We do get to see how a couple of the captains function without a bankai but only briefly so it felt more like a plot element to motivate the characters to do some growing more than anything. Now granted this worked amazingly well as we really got to see characters like Hitsugaya pull off some clever ways to compensate for his lack of power. It was great to see our heroes find ways to power up and finally start pushing the enemy back a bit.

Watching the results of all the characters who trained relentlessly was amazing and full of fight sequences that were not only beautiful visually but well animated and incredibly entertaining. Though one thing that really took me by surprise was another departure from the manga which was the reveal of the bankai of Shingi. This was never shown in the main story of the manga and only appeared once in the side story called Can’t Fear Your Own World. So this made for a wonderful surprise.

Now for another departure from the manga is when the quincy leader Yhwach takes the fight to the zero division. This is a very quick process and one of my biggest frustrations with the manga is the fact that the zero squad went down so quickly. That’s not the case here as this fight takes up a huge chunk of the cour and the tide constantly shifts between the soul reapers and the quincy. We even get to see the bankai of one of the members of the zero squad for the first time but I won’t reveal who.

Another amazing departure from the manga is actually with Yhwach himself. We really knew very little about what drove this character but we finally got some additional context that fleshed this character far more than we’ve ever seen.

So really cour two was fighting, lots and lots of fighting. The fights were so intense and entertaining. Stunning visuals, constant shifts in the tide of battle, very unique battles at that. At one point we even get zombies. So really all of the plot development we saw in cour one came out in full force in cour two. That alone was amazing but equally incredible were the departures from the manga where we got to see powers that we’ve either never seen in the main continuity of Bleach or have just never seen at all and some additional story telling elements that fleshed out moments for both Ichigo and Yhwach.