Bleach 2.0: Return of THE HEART

[Emphasis]

Also got a little chuckle out of, "you and I are the same". ...."HOW SO!?".

[Obsidian]

Pretty sure that entire flashback with Ichibe and Yhwach this week is new material for the anime.

[Xno Kappa]

Yooooo that opening scene they added! Episode was fucking fantastic.

[Outlaw]

That episode was pretty awesome. Hopefully now we can get a decent fight with the 0 Squad instead of them getting off screened like in the manga.

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[Emphasis]

Part of what's awesome about the condensed format is people getting notably killed as soon as they are introduced, lol.

Yeah I have hopes for Squad Zero making their scenes worthwhile, as my memory of the manga is fuzzy but I do remember their fate being done in relatively quickly and a bit underwhelming. So far their scenes are pretty damn good.

[arus2001]

How the fights were handled aside, the main issue was a lack of care for all characters involved. The Alphabet Soup just being there and OP enough to compete with Soul Society's implied strongest is enough of an asspull, but it's not like we got a whole lot of characterization going for the Zero Squad, either, even if the anime has been a bit give and take on that. Ichibei's probably benefited the most, but not by a whole lot.

[Xno Kappa]

HOLY FUCK at that finale! It’s everything I wanted fixed from the manga.

[Obsidian]

That was sick.

[Koul]

rofl

Literally rolled out the red carpet. God damn.

[Guitarman]

I love the self-awareness lol:

Spoiler: show

Kirio: Now that's what i would expect out of a zero squad fight! Good one, Kubo, i see you.

[Emphasis]

Probably the most sophisticated bankai so far. Such a stark contrast from someone like Rukia's, lol.

I wonder how many minutes it milked off the episode. Still pretty sweet to see a move like that. It makes me curious about the other Zero Squad members.

[Emphasis]

[NotGreyheim]

Man I can't wait to binge the fuck out of these once they're all released...

[NotGreyheim]

Man I can't wait to binge the fuck out of these once they're all released...

Update: I am weak.

Spoiler: show

mf Sasakibe can never catch a fuckin break... RIP

[Outlaw]

I remembered I still had not watched the season finale last night. Holy shit..

Spoiler: show

They are going to have a tough time explaining how the Royal Guard can survive that. If her Bankai is that powerful I can't even imagine what the others would be like. I dought we will get to see them though.

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[Koyangi]

I dought it too.

[Melena]

Yay for VA drama.

https://twitter.com/anairis_q/status...OsAis7KtQ&s=19

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[Outlaw]

If someone hadn't posted this I probably would not have noticed. Well, at least not yet. Started out watching TYBW arc with the dub and Yoruichi had not shown up yet. I switched to the sub cause dub was going to slow. I'm so used to Wendee Lee voicing her.

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[NotGreyheim]

Yay for VA drama.

https://twitter.com/anairis_q/status...OsAis7KtQ&s=19

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What was the drama? I see she went from announcing her casting to being completely and retroactively replaced in like 2 weeks, so I figure it's probably pretty bad...

[BWYuko]

It is very stupid.

Wendee Lee has voiced Yoruichi -- arguably one of the most prominent women of color in anime -- in pretty much all English Bleach media since 2007. Wendee is ethnically white.

16 years later, a new casting director was hired for the TYBW arc's English localization. It appears they thought it would be altruistic to recast certain characters to match their apparent ethnicity and/or skin color. They started with hiring Alain Mesa for Chad, who is of Cuban descent. This was largely ignored.

For Yoruichi, they decided to recast her with a black VA. This was extremely short-sighted and fucking stupid, as black VA’s have widely communicated what they want is more opportunities to voice all types of characters, instead of being pigeon-holed into black character roles like this dumbass director believed. The director moved forward anyway, unaware of their own idiocy, casting Anairis Quiones.

Anairis is an excellent VA talent and deserves most any role offered to her; but, for the above stated reason, fellow crew (and most fans, POC or otherwise) communicated that the director's idea was rightly total dogshit. So they reneged on the new casting, quietly replacing Anairis with Wendee Lee again.

The "quiet" approach comes across as a very transparent attempt to save face in light of some pretty embarrassingly and blatantly racist shortsightedness. There was basically no communication to either VA through the whole fucking ordeal. In the tweet, Anairis was surprised to learn they'd gone another direction; separately, Wendee was tapped out of the blue, purportedly unaware there was any real complication. It implies that the casting director took away a 16-year (somewhat career-defining) role of Wendee's (a casting and voice director in her own right) solely because of her apparent race -- which is arguably just as fucked up as recasting with Anairis.

tl;dr new casting director made a big, two-way, racist oopsie and tried to quietly make it go away by reverting VAs hoping no one would notice, then the fired VA made sure everyone fucking noticed.