** spoiler alert ** I hadn’t realized it had been over a year since I picked up Bleach. I was sure that it was only a few months since I read number 33 (I keep records) so I pretty shocked to see that it’s now nearly 50 volumes long and the library got half way caught up. Honestly, if I wasn’t getting this free from the library I would have stopped years ago.

It opens with Orihime half way to rescued by Ichigo but the Espadas pretty much handed him and all his friends their butts last volume. Nel sheds her little girl form for her true Espada form, not that it helps much.

Just before the death blow, several captains appear to save the day sort of. Mayuri, Byakuya and Kenpachi (and their assistants) join the fray and we have another hundred pages of battle scenes and about 2 seconds of plot, most of it coming from creepy Mayuri.