Aye. I agree with DE: The second half saved this episode quite nicely. The first part was pretty useless, but irrelevant history lessons have been quite prominent during this arc, so in that sense it's hardly anything new.

Ishida was quite true to his character, and the fighting was surprisingly good considering how bad Ishida's condition already was. But apparently his weapon was quite effective in principle against Kariya. Ichigo's shikai blast should be something quite similar, an energy based attack, so maybe he should try to hit Kariya with it. At least it would deliver a bigger punch at once.

I don't usually watch openings more than once, but now I thought I had become demented, because I just couldn't remember seeing it before. Good thing DE saved me... I spotted one interesting thing among the other stuff:



Is this Rukia's shikai? (Sorry about the somewhat low quality edit...)