I don't understand why everyone is upset chat Renji's fight was weak. That was the entire point. You weren't supposed to like it. It's supposed to show off how powerful the arrancar are so that we can see a contrast. If they all started at full power and the good guys win, we'd just say "Ah, they were a little powerful, but big deal". There'd be nothing to compare it to. With Ikkaku, we had tons of contrast. There was an entire back story showing this, even his reluctance to bring out bankai. And even when he did, the arrancar was narrowly defeated.

So now we have arrancars and one guy who was never limited (Ichigo) will go up against uber-arrancar espada #6 now that the power of regular arrancars have been shown. We can now compare everyone and see how relative everyone's power is. Without any constrast and showing how they deal with less powerful attacks, there can be nothing to base anything on.

I, for one, am happy they did this because my main fear was that it was going to turn into that stupid matrix fight where everyone is uber-powerful, but the fights mean nothing because we lose perspective. I had no clue how they were gonna show the power of any future bad guys when everyone is already so powerful. I like what they've done. Especially starting it off with Ikkaku.

BTW, is the one with the ice a guy or a girl? I still can't tell. And that countdown, for me, feels more like a bomb ticking down. It feels like something super powerfull will release itself when that happens. Dunno, I can't wait to see if it gets there.