SHINJI HIRAKO vs SOSUKE AIZEN - Bleach Battle ANALYSIS | How Gods are Born

okay so i know it's been quite a while since i uploaded the poll to find out the topic of this bleach battle analysis video but over 10 000 of you guys actually voted on that which i'm really just amazed by and of course your winner was by majority shinji versus eisen i have to be honest i was kind of surprised by this outcome i went into the poll thinking that ichigo versus geen would win um and it seems like a number of the commenters were also similarly surprised as well with a number of people voicing their concerns and saying you know shinji vs eisen is virtually non-existent as a fight it is incredibly short and over in the blink of an eye and those criticisms are definitely not unfounded this fight is as you will see very very short however going back through the battle again in preparation for this video i actually have a newfound appreciation for it and for what we actually get in many ways i'm grateful we get anything at all for this these two characters shinji and eisen have such a storied history together it really lends this battle a uniquely personal feel that kubo was quite clearly going for definitely trying to make the most out of the fact that these guys have an actual relationship which is actually something you can't really say for a lot of characters and eisen which is on on purpose eisen tends to see himself as aloof and above your sort of average person so it's very very interesting to see him come up against a character who can kind of match him with for whit um and i actually love that going back if i found there was an actual load to talk about about the respective characters involved in this battle thanks to the personal connection they have if you look at bleach as a whole this isn't really a criticism but a lot of fights they don't really involve a personal connection if you've just got a captain against an espada a lot of the time those are fights born out of duty so when something like this comes along it is very unique and intriguing before we begin however guys if you haven't hit subscribe yet make sure to do that now as you're in the perfect place of bleach content like this every single week and i would really appreciate the support and of course if you enjoyed this video don't forget to give it a thumbs up as well that goes a really long way to helping with the exposure of the video and making sure that as many bleach fans on youtube get a chance to see it just like yourselves and of course if you want to take that support from me a little step further we do now have a patreon for the channel as well where you can support me for as little as a dollar a month get early access to videos and of course a massive thank you goes out to everyone who is a patron so far i really appreciate it right so looking at the fight then between shinji and eisen and in many ways this fight is a bit of a weird one because of the length of it and because nothing that crazy happens in it i think it flies under the radar a lot of the time but it is actually quite a prominent and important fight this is of course the first time eisen has really stepped onto the front line something that is acknowledged by tozen as their fight is happening concurrently the manga lifespan for this fight runs from chapter 383 too early to trust to 387 ignited and a small fun fact too early to trust is one of my absolute favorite titles in bleach for a chapter i don't know why i just think it's totally badass and it's really really cool and really helps set that uneasy stage for the fight to come of course this fight is absolutely not four chapters long it is incredibly broken up and in my personal opinion if you were to take the disparate parts of this fight and smash them together you might get one chapter's worth of a battle i do think when you look at the timing of this fight there is a sense that this is when kubo was starting to have to speed things up a bit in the iran karak after taking a decent amount of time on the top three espada and the fraction battles before that as well it's no coincidence that suddenly a lot of events start overlapping each other the yammy fight ends just before this fight begins and is never seen again until after eisen is defeated eisen takes on shinji at exactly the same time as tozen takes on komomora and hisagi which means certain things are going to get pushed to the wayside a little bit um now don't get me wrong i'm glad that the common water fight gets a lot of spotlight because it's one of the best fights in the series as far as i'm concerned but i can't help thinking i'd have loved to have seen a little bit more from shinji versus eisen the start of this fight is very unique however as we are in a pretty dark and desperate situation for the good guys um eisen himself has just taken out the third espada hadabel and is now preparing to take on just about everyone by himself um and also he already has just been cut in half by gene now that might not sound like a big deal after reading the thousand-year blood war arc where gore and brutality and the violence of war were all around us but back in the day reading this weekly in the irancar arc which for all intents and purposes had treated the good guys pretty well seeing hiori be cut in half was a massive cliffhanger and it was like so up in the air as to whether or not she would actually survive um you know amazing panels like shinji holding he or his body while her legs are in the foreground somewhere really just awesome stuff all round it really helped to ramp up the tension and i think kubo knew and understood that which is why he then has shinji take on eisen almost immediately afterwards and this is a great way to open this fight i love the determined look on shinji's face this look of utter hatred in his eyes shinji is a character who will crack wise in almost any situation he's cool calm and collected and to see him like this really helps to hammer home just how much trouble they are in and how much he despises eisen as well and eisen plays on those feelings he's like do you despise me or come and face me then um and just the whole start of this fight is very unlike anything else we ever really get now i feel like shinji despite being this kind of jokester despite being a guy who seems very laid back he's always treated eisen quite differently and i think that's down to a couple of factors obviously their personal history but the fact that he is very aware of just how dangerous eisen can be now when shinji first arrives he basically immediately goes for eisen and tries to instantly take his head off which is again quite uncharacteristic and here and now shinji prepares to take eisen on with a very serious look in his face and again another fun fact for you this panel of shinji is like one of my absolute favorites in the series he just looks really cool very unlike his normal self the time for joking is not now you know normally he'd be up for a joke but not this time this is things are getting real here eisen of course does what he does best and uses his guile to mock shinji basically saying i like the look in your on your eyes they look like eyes that have come back to life after a hundred years and it's really cool seeing shinji sort of like clutch hiyori's the top half of her body in his hands you get the sense that he is doing everything he can to not just lunge your eyes and because of course doing so is essentially going to be uh asking to lose and so shinji approaches eisen instead you know in a sort of calm and collected manner what's really uh fascinating here is that eisen is the one to openly challenge shinji basically saying if you want to fight me then come you can do i'll make an exception for you and actually use my blade which is another moment i really love because you just get the sense again that eisen thinks himself so far above everyone else that he's like you know what i'll i'll give you the honor of actually drawing my zampa toe against you which is really cool just another great character moment one thing i really like about this scene as well is that although eisen is so clearly stronger than shinji and he knows it shinji knows it you kind of get the sense that eisen still feels he has something to prove here to his former captain eisen is uncharacteristically going out of his way to get shinji to actually fight him now it is eisens game to aggravate people and to mock people and to kind of cause them to act foolishly but here you do get the sense that eisen is desperate to prove himself and and to actually defeat shinji in a fight in a in a duel that's why he's like you know you know come here and and i'll take you on with my zam puck toe um that's a really nice moment you get the feeling as well maybe that shinji perhaps feels some kind of guilt here as well he has to take on eyes and there's more than just duty at stake here because he was eisen's former captain over 100 years ago he maybe feel some responsibility for either not stopping him back then or letting it get this far in the first place and so they ready to face each other um and just the whole intro here i was compelled to talk about it because it really is nothing like nothing else in bleach and it really kind of sets the tone for the fight moving forward now i honestly wish that eisen and shinji were given more time to talk because the two of them talk in a way that again is very unique for someone dealing with eisen shinji talks back to eisen like nobody else can kind of mocking the fact that eisen doesn't even trust his own men that there's no trust there between the two of them whatsoever and i think this is basically shinji's kind of shinji you know explaining and revealing that he knows eisen better than really anyone else could including his own men now of course shinji doesn't really know eisen but perhaps other than maybe gene i shinji certainly has the best idea the best read on eyes and out of everyone else here i just think it's really refreshing when you have the main villain of this whole series being talked down to or at the very least being spoken to almost like an equal after he's you know essentially revered as a god by the iran car for so long it's great to see shinji kind of verbally sparring with him and putting him in his place shinji says to hachi i need you to look after hiyori until ichigo arrives and then he begins to talk to eisen and eisen kind of mockingly says oh until ichigo arrives you're putting an awful awful lot of trust and faith in that boy in my opinion this is eisen kind of calling shinji out basically saying he's weak you know fight your own battles why you you know why are you putting so much trust in a human that human boy shinji retorts with you know well you would never understand you know it's pretty pretty standard good guy to villain stuff you would never understand this is coming from the guy who won't even trust his own subordinates bearing in mind of course they've all just witnessed eyes and cut harabel down eisen however says that trust is the same as dependency and that is something that the weak do and he and his allies have no use for it however shinji has a really nice comeback here and this is exactly what i mean by seeing someone sparring verbally with eisen of all characters basically saying well dependency that's pretty rich coming from someone who drags as many henchmen around with him as you do but perhaps you know maybe you just trick them into following you with your fancy words again just really nice and you have to understand as well while this fight is quite short half the battle is being done with words you know that's a lot of the barbs being thrown back and forth is with words um and i actually really love the dialogue here eisen rebukes this however by basically saying well i never told my followers to trust me simply to come with me now if you ask me this feels like an obvious half truth from eisen i think he must be aware of that as well um he while he may not have explicitly told the iran car to trust him certainly he must have been aware that they are very dependent on him hollows are intrinsically missing something from a part of themselves and many of them would have certainly looked to eisen his order his rule to have filled that gap and eisen clearly knows that based on the upcoming speech um it's just kind of sad in a way because clearly the hollows were used in in much the same way as the shinigami were eisen treats everyone like a play thing at the end of the day um the way eisen cuts harebelle down he's disposing of her he has no further use for her is very very telling the fact the way he doesn't care at all about the hollows um or what becomes of them despite having taken their home essentially and turning into his base and posing as a almost like not quite a messiah to them but certainly someone they can follow and be safe with only to cast harabel aside like that is very damning so having proclaimed this idea of them not needing dependency and calling it weak and then having demonstrated on how to belt that eisen was disappointed in how the hollows acted anyway he comments that unfortunately not really no none of those hollows were strong enough to follow through on eisen's own ideal um kind of reinforcing this idea that he is kind of better off on his own anyway we're now treated to one of eisen's best and certainly most famous speeches of all time as it really gives us quite a unique insight a glimpse into this man's mind and essentially his motivations and the way he views the people surrounding him now you have to understand if you weren't reading the series weekly at the time it was almost a bit of a running joke that not a chapter would go by without some kind of philosophical speech from eisen he was philosophical to a fault back here however i think this speech is highly effective it's very sinister in nature and it really does give you the idea of who shinji is exactly dealing with shinji and eisen are quite intriguing characters in their own sense and like i said earlier they're able to verbally spa with one another almost as though they are equals however it's this speech that i think really tells shinji exactly what he is up against eisen's speech is fairly simple this time around he says that all beings need to seek someone greater than themselves to follow and then they will blindly follow that person and give themselves a sense of purpose to avoid this pressure the recipients of that faith will then seek someone even greater themselves to also follow and this cycle of worship will continue eventually you get to the top and that person will also seek a greater power to follow this is how all kings are born and then crucially that's how all gods are born this idea of a constant cycle of worship a hierarchy of worship if you will again ending the speech in a pretty sinister way eisen says to shinji don't believe in me just yet shinji i'll take my time slowly showing you exactly who the god is that you should put your faith in and then believing in me comes after that this speech is great for a number of reasons it's pretty transparent that eisen considers himself to be that god at the top of the the hypothetical food chain as it were and of course we've seen this played out in real time with the hollow's dependency on him he's clearly clearly referencing their worship of him and how he has taken those people and built himself up to be a god that they believe in and i absolutely love the way kubo draws eisen when he says how all gods are born again it's very sinister very forceful and it feels like shinji himself can feel the weight of that proclamation you have to notice as well that shinji who up until this point has been pretty calm now begins to sweat which of course is done on purpose by kubo to show you the reader that now shinji is starting to understand exactly the kind of person he is up against the stakes are very real and eisen firmly believes in what he is talking about but not only that shinji knows it to be true as well he's seen it like i said with the hollows these people have seen eisen as a god now this isn't to say that shinji immediately thinks he's suddenly going to lose this fight but it's just more that shinji knows this speech rings true for some people um and the eisen became a god to the iranka but what's truly interesting about this fight in my opinion is as i mentioned the way kubo allows both sides to get their barbs in a lot of the time when eisen is involved in a battle or a confrontation of any kind it is depicted as being quite one-sided i would argue this is one of the few times where it isn't certainly not this part of the fight anyway eisen's just gone off on this spiel about being a god but shinji isn't ready to back down and in my opinion this is where the coolness of shinji harako really pays off he's able to spar with eisen on the same kind of level as him he's really the only person to challenge eisen in this way at least up until this point however and kubo makes a real point of drawing their eyes locking um at numerous points during this fight and they appear to be on the same level and i think artistically this is kubo trying to show that they are currently at least anyway equals both of them are speaking one after the other their eyes often exactly on the same level yeah and so i think that's definitely done to kind of get rid of this idea that eisen is above shinji for now at least anyway now kubo really takes his time getting to the point with this fight we see eisen slowly drawing his sword um but it is quite cinematic i like how it's done i like seeing the explosion in the distance reflected in the metal of the blade that's really cool and once again shinji goes on the offensive with his words shinji admonishes eyes and calling him a slacker and it's taken him a very long time to get to this point and this is really nice because they do they should have had in the past that kind of student mentor relationship now obviously they were both testing one another they were both in many ways deceiving one another even back then shinji of course famously having apparently always seen through eisen since he was in his mama's womb as shinji loves to say of course shinji never quite understood the depth of eisens betrayal the betrayal he didn't see and of course it all kind of comes to a head here now neither of them really know what the other one is truly capable of although shinji obviously has a good idea of what eisen and kyoku suigets can do eisen has no idea about what shinji can do and shinji kind of plays on that fear and kind of equating eisen with fear is pretty pretty strange to do but it works really well here eisen is totally silent throughout this next portion which is very uncharacteristic for him and cuba does a great job of of wordlessly telling you that eisen might momentarily be on the back foot shinji tries to rattle eisen by saying that he has no idea what his zampakto is capable of something that is technically true and then he activates sakanade now this was a pretty major moment for us as readers as well shinji has been a major character in the iran karak for some time now the de facto leader of the vaisard faction um and so finally seeing his chicai was pretty great um but i think that's partly why kubo draws it out so much but also because this fight is not the main focus it's technically the komamura battle and so the next part of the fight is essentially the end um and i have a couple of thoughts about this before we get into the actual what the play-by-play of what happens do i think that shinji is kind of underestimating eisen a little bit here yes i do shinji should have a pretty decent understanding of eisen's capability and i don't think it's entirely his fault i do think this fight was rushed to a conclusion so it could be tied up around the same time as the komamura battle which means it doesn't really get to end organically however i have to be honest i do think the way this fight ends makes shinji look like a bit of a fool and that's something we'll get into now in some ways i think shinji is kind of letting emotion get the better himself here and i do think he's the one doing the underestimating i think that's quite telling as well shinji definitely seems to be really enjoying playing and messing with eisen as he activates sakanade the sort of strange smell sets in that affects their senses and sends eisen into the inverted world it's very telling that eisen is just not saying a huge amount during this part and that's because eisen's a clever guy you know he's very very smart he doesn't trust shinji at all he has no idea what shinji is capable of and although eisen is well aware of his own strength and that he is categorically stronger than shinji he knows not to underestimate his former captain which is something i think shinji is failing to do here and he's making a mistake now the ability of sakanade the inverted world is pretty awesome this has been said a million times before but it's lovely how it was uh foreshadowed by kubo very early on shinji floating upside down when he first appears in the manga and also writing his name backwards in ichigo's classroom lovely little bits of detail there however i do think the limitations of this ability become apparent quite fast and again that might be down to the rushed nature of the ending of this skirmish it also doesn't help that shinji does the typical vizard thing and narrate the entire of his ability when it activates he basically tells eisen exactly what it does how it's working um and that is a little bit annoying um it's maybe not quite as egregious as rose's because perhaps shinji's is a little more obvious anyway but it is still very much the visor trademark that being said sakanade's power is undeniably cool and i think kubo does a good job of portraying it even if for the most part we just see shinji as being upside down to us as readers but that initial panel of the city in the sky that's really really nice you see eisen kind of ticking over in his head trying to deduce exactly what's going on here but shinji rushes at him immediately eisen however correctly deduces that shinji is actually going to be behind him not in front of him because that has been reversed as well something that shinji appears to be surprised by which is something we'll get into a little bit later on however although eisen has managed to correctly guess that he hasn't quite bested sakanade's ability as he brings in his blade to clash with shinji's he's suddenly utterly horrified at the fact that he has been sliced across his arm shinji reveals of course the eisen almost got the ability right but not quite yes they had been reversed that way but also they are reversed in the way shinji is attacking him so it's also a horizontal flip as well eisen goes in to block that side but shinji sword is actually coming in from the other way this is a momentous moment there's no other way of really saying it this is obviously a huge win for shinji there's a reason that this fairly basic cut takes up over half a page up until this point kubo had painted eisen as essentially being untouchable no one had actually damaged him on screen yet up until this point the closest we had got was kisque slicing off his vice captain's badge in turn back the pendulum but now someone has actually damaged eisen in the manga they have made him bleed and of course there is that old saying that if you can make god bleed people stop believing in him and that's quite obviously what this is supposed to be referencing shinji has proven that eisen is essentially just a man like everyone else um and it's no coincidence that from this point on everything snowballs and eisen starts actually taking visible damage continuously on screen leading to his eventual downfall so i love this moment and i think that shinji absolutely deserves to be the one to score this hit after all they have so much history together eisen is not only the reason he was exiled from soul society and nearly killed by the holification but there's that personal betrayal as well that he was eisen's captain and really shinji feels responsible in some way for not quite understanding eisen and for trying his best to keep him at arm's length but in doing so he opened everyone up to eisen's uh machinations so i think this is a lovely way of bringing that back around again back in term of the pendulum eisen spits in hirako's face he's like you know you didn't trust me and now you're paying the price for that and now hirako can kind of say the same thing and in many ways that's why i find the ending of this fight to be a disappointing cop-out if i'm totally honest that's what it feels like um and we're about to dive into why so we've had a pretty big moment eisen's just taken a hit on his arm and shinji says clearly you didn't notice everything and realistically how could you literally everything has been flipped up down left right forwards backwards and everything in this fight has been changed around even if you understand the ability it will take you far too long to get used to it shinji then says the stronger somebody is the more they fight instinctively and on reflex what he's getting at here is that because eisen is such a monster it's going to take him a bit longer to get used to what's actually going on he has a lot of fighting experience and a lot of strength and shinji i think is banking on being able to defeat him in time before he works it out but then without explanation whatsoever eisen simply appears behind shinji as shinji sort of like rushes to eyes and eisen is right behind him and it doesn't seem like eisen has lifted any kind of illusion or anything he doesn't even seem to be using kyokushi gets because he still has the injury on his arm it's difficult to say then exactly what is going on here it just seems like eisen has immediately figured out how to counter sakanade which is why i think it's such a cop-out and it's kind of it is disappointing in a way i mentioned earlier on that kubo allows these two to go one on one and realistically how long would shinji actually last against eisen in a one-on-one scenario probably not that long and of course we also have to take into account the fact that eisen did actually successfully realize that shinji would be behind him something that shinju was surprised by so it's clear that eisen was catching on perhaps a much faster rate than shinji had anticipated that being said it is undeniably disappointing and it really makes shinji look quite weak in my opinion or at the very least it makes sakanade look very limited eisen slices shinji across the back it's a pretty big hit as well although shinji himself is basically fine it is quite a serious looking injury and eisen says oh so your power is just an optical illusion well that's disappointing i thought it was interesting but it's absolutely nothing once someone gets accustomed to it in reality it's nothing compared to my ability which can control all five senses and when put so bluntly like that it's hard to disagree with him he's right sakanade is a vastly inferior kyokusuits and there's nothing shinji can do about it it's a little disappointing then that eisen completely overcomes sakanade like that without really doing anything um we know isn't incredibly smart one of the smartest minds in all of bleach highly analytical and as i mentioned earlier he clearly is not underestimating shinji he's trying to work out what's going on so i do kind of think shinji is at fault here in some ways for the way this fight plays out he really wanted that big chance at revenge and i think he let it slip away from him a little bit although he should of course take solace in getting that big win and slicing eisen across the arm i think i've read somewhere that it's not actually eisenhe cuts but i don't think that's the case at all i think eisen is not using illusions in this battle on purpose um to deal with shinji himself essentially um and that's that's literally the end of the fight because after that ichigo arrives and everything kind of gets a bit interrupted um tozen fight ends komamora screams at eisen and that's it for eisen vs shinji so i do find the ending of the fight to be a tad disappointing and i feel like it is a little bit of a cop out it felt like kubo really needed to wrap things up because the komomora and tozen fight was essentially ending in fact it had already ended really the previous chapter ends with his sagi stabbing tozen and kubo still has a ton of stuff to show for the shinji and eisen fight so he was like i need to end this fight now so let's just have eyes and immediately appear behind him and apparently already have sakanale figured out so in that sense the ending does feel a little bit empty and of course i'd have absolutely loved to have seen these two fighting for a little bit longer however i'm hard pressed to deny that i don't actually really appreciate what we get prior to the end of the fight i think the real sparring match here is of course with what they say to one another they're finally given a chance to speak face to face after over a hundred years since eisen's betrayal and there's just a wonderful sense that they are really feeling each other out maybe shinji is getting a little too cocky eisen is probably holding it back a little bit and actually analyzing the situation and i think that makes for a very unique fight with clearly a lot to talk about but i hope you enjoyed this video guys let me know in the comments below if you enjoyed the very small duel we got between shinji and eisen would you have liked to have seen a little bit more let me know in the comments below of course and as always if you haven't hit subscribe yet make sure to do that now and until next time guys i'll catch you later i'll see you then

Channel: MrTommo2304

Views: 65,864

Keywords: bleach, bleach manga, bleach anime, bleach discussion, bleach new chapter, bleach chapter review, bleach review, bleach full fights, aizen, shinji vs aizen, bankai, bleach tybw, bleach 20th anniversary, bleach hell arc, MrTommo2304, MrTommo2304 Bleach

Id: Fkqys8Zf2G0

Length: 31min 14sec (1874 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 03 2021