The first episode ended with the taste of iron on the tongue. Word of Ichigo Kurosaki's crushing defeat spread like a spark through dry grass, and the response came fast - cold, official, almost brittle - as if the Soul Society itself had felt the blow to its pride.
No fanfare, but no hesitation either. Reinforcements were deployed.
Hitsugaya, captain of the Tenth Division, was sent to the human world at once, accompanied by multiple reapers at vice-captain level - enough presence to shift the very mood of the city. And among them was her: Rukia Kuchiki.
For anyone who'd been here from the beginning, Rukia's return carried a different kind of weight. It wasn't simply the heroine is back. It was the sort of arrival that said, without needing to spell it out: the lighter phase is over; from here on out, the story is going to collect everything - with interest.
On the opposite side of the board, far from human light, Ulquiorra and Yammy stepped through the Garganta and returned to the heart of Sosuke Aizen's empire - a white fortress suspended in emptiness, a palace too vast to feel real and too silent to feel safe.
Tap… tap…
Their footsteps rang down immaculate corridors, and the surrounding white didn't bring peace. It brought the sense that any stain would be unavoidable - blood on snow, waiting to happen. When they reached the great hall, Ulquiorra inclined his body in a minimal gesture. Yammy, pride dented and fury barely contained, dropped to one knee.
"We've returned, Lord Aizen."
Those final words drew a reflexive response from more than a few viewers. It wasn't excitement. It was the instinct you get when you hear the name of a storm and immediately look for shelter.
"Welcome back, Ulquiorra… Yammy."
The reply came paired with that signature smile - too gentle to be honest, too polite not to be a threat. The camera turned slowly, as though the episode itself wanted to stretch the tension, until it settled on the man seated upon a white throne.
Surrounded by dozens of subordinates, Sosuke Aizen seemed less like a commander and more like an entity watching the world from above - not through theatrical arrogance, but as though dominance were simply the natural order of things.
"Very well. Report the results… before our companions."
And when he said it, the episode cut.
A hard cut. No mercy. No farewell.
"Come on! Next one! Next!" someone shouted, the desperation so genuine it almost turned funny.
No one had to pretend: as vivid as every character felt, none of them occupied the same mental space as Aizen. He was the kind of presence that stole oxygen from a scene simply by existing within it.
So the second episode opened in the cruelest way possible - giving the audience exactly what they wanted… while reminding them that it came with a price.
It barely began before it threw everyone back into the white hall.
Ulquiorra raised a hand to his eye, removed the globe with a calm that bordered on unnatural, and crushed it between his fingers. The image splintered into shards of light and shadow, and what he'd witnessed spread through the room - as if memory itself had become a shared file.
Without emotion, he reported that Ichigo Kurosaki was irrelevant. Too weak to worry about. So insignificant he wasn't even worth the gesture of killing.
But not everyone in that hall saw the world the same way.
Grimmjow - violent instinct wrapped in pride - stepped forward and rejected it outright.
To him, an enemy was an enemy. Strong or weak didn't matter: if they breathed, if they could grow, they should be erased immediately - before they became a problem.
The room sharpened into silent tension. Not shouting, not chaos - just clashing wills. Ulquiorra didn't raise his voice. He held his gaze steady and let the warning fall like a thin blade:
If Ichigo ever grew into a threat… he would kill him personally.
That was when Aizen, still smiling like someone listening to something mildly interesting, ended the dispute with almost paternal simplicity.
"If that's the case… I trust your judgment. Do it your way, Ulquiorra."
Ulquiorra bowed, precise and respectful.
"My thanks."
Grimmjow didn't accept it. The disdain stayed in his shoulders, in his posture, in the look of someone already promising to disobey the moment he found a crack to slip through.
Then the scene returned to the human world, and the city felt different. It was no longer an ordinary stage. With Rukia and Hitsugaya present, with multiple reapers spread out and on alert, Karakura became a board under surveillance.
Ichigo, still carrying the weight of being erased in a single strike, tried to rebuild his spine from the inside out. Encouragement helped, yes - but the damage wasn't only emotional. It was existential.
He remembered that sensation. He'd felt it before, when Aizen had cut through him as if he were nothing. What Ulquiorra did wasn't merely defeat. It tore open an old wound and pressed the same message into it:
As you are now, you don't belong on this level of the world.
It forced Ichigo to swallow a truth he'd been postponing. If he didn't become stronger, it wouldn't be a matter of "losing."
It would be a matter of not surviving long enough to try again.
The reapers took positions throughout the city. Hitsugaya, Rukia, and the others split up, occupying strategic points as though anticipating a second strike.
And Aizen - damn Aizen - had still planted a detail too small to be an accident.
In a brief, almost casual encounter, Hitsugaya crossed paths with Isshin Kurosaki. For a heartbeat, both sets of eyes shifted. Not ordinary surprise. Not overt recognition.
Something older than that.
A single second of tension that felt like history.
And then… they moved past each other as if they'd never met, as if nothing had happened at all.
The episode slid into its second half with the precision of someone who knows exactly when to tighten the audience's throat.
The Garganta opened again.
The reaction was immediate.
No. It couldn't be. Again?
The panic didn't last, because the arrival wasn't Ulquiorra.
It was Grimmjow.
And strangely, that brought relief - not because he was less dangerous, but because fear has its own hierarchy. After watching someone erase Ichigo with a gesture, anything short of that level started to feel… manageable.
Even when it wasn't.
Grimmjow arrived spitting arrogance.
"I'm not going to act like Ulquiorra, hiding behind caution. Anyone with spiritual pressure - every last one of them - I'm killing them. No leftovers."
With an impatient sweep of his hand, he gave the order.
Five subordinates scattered through the city like knives thrown into darkness. Within seconds they'd found Hitsugaya, Renji, and the other reapers, forming direct matchups - one on one - as though it had all been rehearsed.
And Grimmjow, of course, went straight for the point.
He chose Ichigo.
The camera seemed to feel the audience's dread, drawing in close as if to force a reaction.
In comment sections, in chats, in living rooms where people watched together, no one needed to say the question aloud - it was written on their faces:
This time… is he going to get beaten to the edge of death again?
The fight began, and the answer came without delicacy.
Even in Bankai, Ichigo was pushed back. Grimmjow didn't even need to draw his sword. With nothing but fists and feet, he crushed the protagonist's rhythm as though he were teaching a lesson, not fighting a duel.
It was humiliating not because it was "easy," but because it felt inevitable.
The episode used the momentum to lay down the rules of this new phase, tossing out revelations like a door opening onto a deeper basement: Hollows divided into different ranks, categories that changed everything, the existence of a structured elite - the Espadas - and the fact that what they were facing was only one piece of a far larger organization.
And amid it all came the brutal realization:
Grimmjow was the Sixth Espada.
Sixth.
Not the first. Not the strongest.
Sixth.
The streaming page turned into a wildfire.
The fandom's outrage wasn't just noise. It was the kind of venting you get when people feel personally insulted by seeing the protagonist treated like a punching bag two episodes in a row.
And the jokes followed - survival instinct dressed up as humor.
Some swore Aizen must have something against the protagonist. Others joked that since he wasn't "playing" Ichigo, he was free to torment him as much as he pleased. And some tried to rationalize it: if Ulquiorra can erase Ichigo, and Grimmjow speaks to Ulquiorra like he doesn't fear him… then Grimmjow is probably in the same tier. Which means, "naturally," he can pulverize the protagonist too.
Naturally.
As if that made it any less painful to watch.
Meanwhile, in the other skirmishes, the reapers fought differently. Once their limitations were removed, the battles became controlled executions. The five Gillian-level Arrancar went down relatively quickly, and for the first time, Rukia Kuchiki revealed her Zanpakutō in full.
Sode no Shirayuki.
The name sounded like poetry and threat combined. The ice that spread carried lethal elegance - not a gratuitous spectacle, but proof that she wasn't the same person she'd been before.
Even so, the team's victories couldn't erase what truly defined the episode.
Ichigo lost.
He lost again.
And this time he would have died if Kaname Tosen hadn't intervened to retrieve Grimmjow - not out of mercy, but discipline. Grimmjow had acted on his own, and he would pay for it.
At the end of the episode, the punishment arrived with the cold precision typical of Aizen's empire: Tosen severed Grimmjow's right hand and stripped him of the Sixth Espada title, as if tearing a nameplate off his chest to remind everyone there was no room for ego outside the chain of command.
As Grimmjow withdrew through clenched teeth, someone emerged from the shadows of the white hall.
Gin Ichimaru.
His smile wasn't comfort. It was beautiful poison.
"Isn't this a problem, Captain Aizen?" he asked, eyes half-lidded, voice far too soft. "Before we've even begun properly, we've already lost five Arrancar."
Aizen replied as though the matter were too small to be worth concern.
"It doesn't matter. They were Gillians - the lowest layer. It won't affect the plan at all."
He rose from the throne and walked toward an opening that faced the Hueco Mundo sky, where a crescent moon hung like a luminous scar. Then he turned his face slightly - and for a moment it seemed as if he was looking straight at the audience, as though the viewers were part of the board as well.
"On the road ahead of us… there will be no obstacles."
The image froze.
The ending theme rolled in, credits began to drift across the screen, and the whiplash was so strong that many people only registered the obvious when the final note faded.
This week's update… was over.
And, as always, the collective response came as a flood.
Some shouted that two episodes of nonstop high stakes was "pure Alex," and that it was exactly why the series felt alive. Others praised the pace - no meandering, just impact, consequence, forward motion.
But the complaint that kept surfacing, repeated so often it became almost consensus, was surprisingly simple.
The only flaw?
It wasn't that Ichigo got humbled twice.
It was that Sosuke Aizen didn't get enough screen time.
Because no matter how much bigger the world became, no matter how many new names the danger carried… every time Aizen appeared, it felt like the rest of the universe shrank around him.
And that left the strange impression that the entire episode, at its core, had only been an appetizer.
A reminder of what truly mattered.
Of the era that was coming.
And of the man who was absolutely certain no one would stop it.
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