Quote Originally Posted by Animeniax
However, most of this episode is filler anyway, but somehow everyone here likes it, even though a lot of the Bounto filler stuff was better. Kind of odd if you ask me.
This was one mostly filler material episode in the middle of the manga based story, and pretty well integrated and executed by any resonably measure. The Bounto arc was longer than a year of famine and had some really poorly executed parts and ideas.

Anyway, I want to love this series and Naruto, but they are making it damn hard. The animation is so poor and the colors are so washed out (is that just DB?), it's hard to watch
Doesn't seem so bad to me. Nothing worse than I would expect from a long running series, certainly. If you want to ogle superb quality and production values, go fetch Kanon 2006 HDs somewhere, or something.

plus they're slaughtering out favorite characters and making them act out of character. It really sucks. I'd rather they stopped making the shows altogether until they get the finances and effort to do a good job.
Slaughtering characters? Who? Renji? While it could have been bit of a stretch, it wasn't anywhere near slaughtering. We don't really know that part of Renji's past, how he was after Rukia got adopted into the noble family, and the horizon probably seemed to escape very far from his reach. He didn't have even Shikai, but still he was probably already desiring to get as strong as Byakuya.

And a good idea to halt making the show to get money... Oh, wait, they are animating now the main arc, so how exactly would stop making anything help them get money? I was under the illusion they must have episodes to deliver to the TV stations to fulfill their end of the bargain.

So what you're saying is, he'd rather lose a fight to a ryoko and die than reveal his bankai? Sounds far-fetched to me. I think it's another plot hole by the filler writers.
Why not? He just said in this episodes all he wants is to die serving under Zaraki. Sure, he will want to die after having fought really hard, and he did that against Ichigo. He could have beaten Ichigo with his bankai, but what would have happened after that? Would he have been able to continue to serve under Kenpachi just like before? He probably would have had no way to know. So, beating Ichigo could have destroeyd his wish to die in Zaraki's squad.