Bleach 136 and 137 were created in a lab to make me, personally, angry.
So, as we go through these filler stories, you may notice that each member of the Advance Team gets one. Rangiku’s sucked, but at least it was long. Toshirou beat some adolescents at soccer, Ikkaku beat some teens at kendo, Yumichika poisons Renji and Chad. There was even a Kon ep, which is more than Kon deserves. Later on, Rukia will get it on with some feral dude she meets in Hueco Mundo. So what does Renji get? THIS GARBAGE.
The problem is that these two episodes constantly skirt greatness and take a hard left every time. Let’s just jump in.
We open up with some 3rd string Arrancar, Patras, who is just totally pissed about how he didn’t vote for Aizen. He literally complains about how he misses the good ol’ days when he got to eat souls and crush Soul Reapers and immediately, I am here for this dude. He steals the Hogyoku and his sidekicks just beat the crap out of Ulquiorra. Yes. Yes. Look at Ulquiorra’s surprised Pikachu face! Eat it, sad boi!
Cut to the ol’ Urahara Shoten, where Urahara and Tessai are about to go shopping (for days, apparently?) and they are taking Chad with them. Everything about this seems like a huge lie and they are actually planning to take Chad to a Turkish bath.
We don’t get to see that, instead we get the Shoten kids trolling Renji. At one point, Jinta tries to fight him. I honestly would have enjoyed that. On the bright side, Renji is wearing the Red Pineapple shirt, which I unironically love. Where did he get it? I want to imagine that he and Rukia went thifting and she found it and they both lost their minds over it. It seems like the sort of thing you would only find in a thrift store, or maybe like the lost-and-found of an ice rink.
Anyway, they get the Arrancar alert, everyone mentions how happy they are that the process for gentai kaijou has been simplified (I told you they mention it a million times!). We also get an appearance from Renji’s lavender spirit phone, which we last saw in the Bount Arc. Look at this majestic thing:
It turns out that Patras and the Heartbreakers are just here because they are trying to find someone who knows how to use the Hogyoku. The sidekicks end up fighting Hitsugaya and everyone, but Patras gets directions from Kon and heads straight over to the Urahara Shoten. Renji never got very far, so he comes back to fight him.
Let’s get this clear: Patras has the Hogyoku and he wants Urahara to show him how to use it. This seems... fine? I would be like, “Ah, very nice, you want to come in and have some tea until he gets back?” Unfortunately, this is the part of the episode that I hate because Renji is an utter buffoon.
For the next episode and a half, Renji is just completely incompetent. He has the most inane dialogue you’ve ever heard and he just gets the crap beat out of him by this clown in a daring midriff. They always do this to Renji so that the Mod Souls can “help him out.”
I want to make this absolutely clear: Kuroda always turns into Renji. He doesn’t have Renji’s reiatsu, though, so it’s really obvious to everyone who the real Renji is. This is not me headcanoning, Patras points this out. Renji tells Kuroda that he thinks all this is “creepy”. It is, in fact. Oh, and if this wasn’t bad enough, Ririn makes an illusion of 1,000 Renjis. I hate this so much, it’s so terrible.
Getting back to that dialogue thing, here is an actual exchange they have:
Renji: OK, get up. Unless you’re already dead.
Patras: This is a very interesting shop you have here.
Renji: I’m glad you like it.
I am overcome. Here are some good things that happen:
1) There is a great deal of Hihiou Zabimaru. They coilin’. They screechin’. Renji has apparently been working on his rhythmic gymnastics.
2) Renji destroys Urahara’s van. I have been making fun of that van for six seasons now. PCHEW!!!
3) Even though he’s a moron, I still love him.
Anyway, the Mod Souls figure out the secret of Patras’ attack and stop him from doing it while Renji hits him with his cero attack Hikotsu Taihou.
Then Urahara shows up and explains that Patras was an idiot, it wasn’t the real hogyoku, Aizen played him. Also, Patras never actually beat up Ulquiorra, that was an Aizen illusion also. (Let us pause to think about how much fun Aizen had lovingly crafting an illusion of Ulquiorra getting utterly whupped). How does Urahara know this? I guess he ran into Ulquiorra down at the Pit, and U spilled the tea? At this point, everyone involved is tired of this.
They threw in this because the filler arcs are always trying to make Chad/Noba happen:
I’m just mad because they could have made an episode about Renji really kicking some ass and instead they just made him dumb and incompetent so the Mod Souls have something to do and this is not the first nor last time.
LOOK. If they had put me in charge of Bleach Filler, here is the Renji episode I would have written: It turns out that Tessai’s license is revoked for [CLASSIFIED] and Urahara is Too Gay to Drive, which is why no one ever drives that van, so they make Renji go to driving school so that that he can deliver Jinta and Ururu to their clarinet lessons. It could still be full of Renji buffoonery, except that he would be running over traffic cones and doing donuts in the van. There would be a scene where he has to attend a parent teacher conference for Jinta and it would be shot-for-shot that part of Overboard where Goldie Hawn yells at the kid’s teacher. A Menos would show up in the last five minutes. The van would still get blown up.
Anyway, RIP Patras, You Had a Good Point, I’m sorry you were stupid and sucked.
Advance Team Filler Masterpost
