That's the first time I noticed the blue hair sticking out of the back of Mayuri's helmet too. I think it was a mistake and that he never had it sticking out like that before.

I'm surprised so many of you liked this episode so much. From your descriptions I was expecting an awesome episode, but only got a pretty good episode. They really explored Mayuri's powers and abilities, but his enemy was crappy so it didn't matter much. I preferred the Ichinose vs Kenpachi fight. They should have included Nemu in the fight, that would have made this a cinch to be an awesome episode.

Is the washed out color only because of poor quality raw used by DB, or just cheap budget because its a filler? Either way, the animation wasn't great, but ok.