This episode shows the second half of this Nanami arc. After the things she saw and witnessed last episode, she really begins to fall apart. Touga, of course, helps her in doing this. Afterwards, it’s also her turn to see the end of the world. I really like what she manages to do afterwards. You could almost put a sign on her with the text: "don’t mess with me!" That’s the beauty of Nanami: she can be really poisonous at times, with beautiful results.

Anyway, during her fight, this was really noticable. I’m giving two thumbs up for the choreographers for this. The fight itself was short, with not much happening, for a standard Utena-fight anyway. However, the battle choreography-department seemed to extra their best this time. I don’t know how, but I could really see Nanami giving her utter best in this fight. I think the way she moved was different…

I’m also noticing that, the longer I keep watching the show, the faster I can be able to identify all of the different symbols used. And I realize that there were far more used than I would have imagined. The freaky thing is, that all of these symbols have some kind of hidden meaning, and they all relate to the main plot.

We get another pretty entertaining episode this time. GamiGami returns after having been absent for two episodes, and his plans are wackier than ever. Pietro also shows some signs of character development, Ston and Sanda mess up once again, and I was a bit startled when Hyuu came with her unorthodox idea to find some of the lost wind-kind…

The goodness continues. Somehow, the third episode managed to follow the second episode’s brilliance. The first half of the episode shows several characters struggle with Oiwa’s curse. It was lovely to see all of them become so paranoid at her sight. The second half of the episode, we get to see a bit of Osode’s story. That one is so full of unexpected plot twist, I really had to control myself not to fall off my chair…

I really like the way this show is heading for. It’s not often when deaths of characters are so common, that the creators manage to make each and everyone of those deaths awesome to witness. Not to mention all of the different complots that are going on. At first you might think them to be boring and repetitive, but once you see more of them, you’ll be able to see the unique aspects of all these complots.

Never did I have such hate/love relationships as with these episodes. Like I predicted, this filler arc ended at episode 68. The good thing is that the awesome bad guys get to stay a bit longer. Let’s hope they’ll get some nice airtime. The bad thing was, that the way the creators resolved this, was horribly uncreative. It doesn’t make any sense either. Why would Yoruichi have interfered with them in the previous episode? Well then, we get some boring explanations, Ichigo discovers that he can’t use his bankai anymore (seriously… not the training stuff again? *dies*). Then a sentence appeared that horrified me. "The Hougyouku that he took has another year’s worth of preparation before it can be used." I kindof feared that something like this would happen, but are the creators seriously trying to put another year into this? I so hope they find a very creative way to solve this.

Anyway, we have some talk, a new bad guy gets introduced, who appears to be the woman in the ED. I wonder when we’ll get to meet the big boss… Ah well, then we finally see what the ED has been hinting all along: the arrival of the three stuffed animals. I’m kindof disappointed with this. The three in their human-like form were extremely amusing, but right now it seems that they’ll be spending most of their time in stuffed-animal-mode. Anyway, their reaction to this was certainly amusing. It’s just too bad that Kon managed to ruin this with his whining.

The rest of episode 69 shows us a bit more info on the new bad guys. One of them lets just go of Chad and Inoue. I don’t see why he had to… apart from being convenient for the creators… The new bad guys themselves also seem like a bit of a disappointment. From the outside, they really look like two-dimensional villains. Especially if you compare them with the previous arc.

The episode ends with something that had to be inavoidable for this show. On one side, it can prove for some nice situations, but on the other side, the creators certainly could have spent a bit more time on thinking this over a bit, as it couldn’t have been done in a more cliché’d way.

Bleach shines when friendly characters annoy the hell out of each other. Bleach falls when it tries to be serious. I think that’s the best way to describe how I feel about this show.