Bleach 309

[Endrance]

But as it was, he barely did enough damage with the FGT to trigger Urahara's plan. If he's waited until Aizen evolved to be almost as strong as him, it might not have even done that much.

Conversely, if he'd started the fight with the FGT instead of letting Aizen evolve twice first, it might have actually obliterated him and he wouldn't have even needed to rely on Urahara.

Yea, they can say that now. But Ichigo didn't even try to do something with his normal powers. He parried some uber weak blows to him, was completely unaffected by Aizen's space and time changing forbidden Kido, sliced Aizen once and saw how he regenerated once. And nobody knew how far the power marble would push Aizen. Kubo could just have written suddenly, that Aizen's brain couldn't comprehend the sheer power anymore or the marble had it's limits, due to the people's souls inside it rebelling against Aizen or some shit.

Then he went straight to owning himself while dominating - IMO it looked like he could have halved Aizen easily with a normal Getsuga and weaken him without fucking himself up - without even testing if he could have done that without losing his powers immediatley after that and being as intimidating as a rabbit.
Ichigo didn't know if Aizen would be defeated by blowing himself up. Ichigo couldn't just use it, in a logical way, because he was the only hope of defeating Aizen and if he lost all of his powers there would be nobody left to stop Aizen. The only things Ichigo knew were that he was way stronger than Aizen and that Aizen regenerates and evolves under unknown circumstances, also he knew that if FGT fails to stop Aizen from regenerating (why exactly would it do that again?) he will fail. So um.. if I was Ichigo I'd try to avoid using it until I really see no other way out. The point is that Ichigo knew that he'd die if he didn't defeat Aizen with his strongest attack, but he didn't know if he could do so without using it.
Bringing Urahara there at the end was just a very very cheap way to solve or maybe that's not even the right word, rather "sideline" as an attempt to make us ignore this huge logical hole to me. Now don't tell me Kubo intended to tell us that Ichigo's back up plan was to believe in Urahara's (who he saw being utterly defeated by a weaker version of Aizen before) intellect and that he'd solve everything if he'd fuck up. That's just dumb.

I'm talking about the fundamental basis of producing the episode and the way Kubo wrote it. I'm outside of the inner logic of the anime. My point is that this episode missed out alot of potential. To me and everyone else I talked about this episode but a few people on these forums it looked insanely rushed and rather awkward to use the final self-destroying resort as early as this at such a really bad cost-benefit ratio (Ichigo didn't know about most of those "inside anime" facts you're listing). And I'm not saying it was just short for Bleach or a shonen in general, it was even short for almost any kind of genre. Alot of series even go as far as making a TV Movie for the final episodes and investing alot of money into them. To me, Bleach clearly failed at giving the ending of the "Aizen saga" credit. It wasn't complete garbage such as the ultimate friendship filler power in Soul Eater, but it wasn't exactly noteworthy either and had as many holes in it as a swiss cheese. At least I wont remember this episode fondly.

I agree it certainly wasn't the most tense final showdown as a result, but I think he actually avoided one of the big complaints people always have with Shounen manga. The way characters could easily win fights in one attack if they skipped right to their big attack, but characters always start with their weakest attacks and work their way up during a fight, until, their most powerful attack always ends up being their "desperate final attack".

Only people who don't usually watch much anime or especially shonen and demonize the genre without even knowing anything about it talk like that. I've never had anyone knowing what he was talking about say that to me. The main criterions are the believability (in connection of making sense in their own world concepts, measuring it by only realistic standards is foolish) of scenes and decisions characters make, as well as the logic behind those and of course the epicness that comes with all of it.

And well, if there are people with decent arguments for this I can't see out there, they would be proven wrong by this episode.