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Warning: Contains spoilers for Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War part 3, episode #8.CGI in anime is always a divisive issue, andBleach: Thousand-Year Blood Waris no exception. While it’s fortunately been used sparingly, every instance has invoked the same common criticisms of poor visuals and animations, most notably with Komamura’s Bankai in part 2 and the Hollows from the series premiere, and they especially stand out when contrasted with the largely great 2D animation in most episodes.
What little CGI has been in theBleach: Thousand-Year Blood Waranimehas rarely looked good, and the anime’s latest episode is probably the worst example. Part 3, episode #8 had the heaviest use of CGI of any episode ofBleach, so far, and with how egregious it was,Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War’s latest use of CGI was so terrible that many people are hating the latest episode just because of it. Many of the reactions were greatly exaggerated, especially compared to other anime, but unfortunately, it’s not hard to see where some people are coming from.
Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War’s CGI Controversy Explained
Why People Are Criticizing Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War’s Visuals
Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood Warpart 3, episode #8 was primarily about Mayuri Kurotsuchi’s fight with Pernida Parnkgjas, one of Yhwach’s Schutzstaffel who was revealed to be the disembodied left arm of the Soul King. When the truth of Pernida’s identity came out, he took on his true form of a giant arm and began creating clones of himself, and unfortunately,Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood Wardecided to render Pernida’s true form with clunky and all-around ugly CGI.
It’s one thing for Pernida’s true form to be rendered in CGI, but what made it worse was how inconsistent the anime was. More often than not, CGI was only used to give Pernida an idle animation of sorts where he was swaying back and forth, and there were plenty of scenes where he was rendered in 2D that looked perfectly fine.The ugly CGI used to render Pernida inBleach: Thousand-Year Blood Warwas made worse by the moments where he’s depicted in good-looking 2D, and it’s odd that the anime didn’t just try and stick to the latter.
The rest of the episode also made the CGI a glaring issue.Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War’s latest episode featured creative and all-around great art and animation for its fight scenes, most notably during the scene ofMayuri’s new Bankai, soPernida’s ugly CGI inBleach: Thousand-Year Blood Waris made even more jarring by how so much of the rest of the episode was great to look at.Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood Warhas been praised for its visuals from day one, and it’s easy to see why people would see its latest episode as a step down from that.
How Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War’s CGI Compares To Other Anime
WithBleach: Thousand-Year Blood Wardrawing criticism for its CGI, there’s plenty of merit in comparing it to other anime that use CGI. Naturally, the CGI falls short ofsome of the best 3D CG animelikeBeastars,Trigun Stampede, andLand of the Lustrous, but even other anime that only use CGI sparingly likeAttack on TitanandBellehad better handlings of it, whether it was quality or quantity, soBleach: Thousand-Year Blood War’s use of CGI does fall short of other anime that have also tried to make use of the technology.
That’s not to sayBleach: Thousand-Year Blood Waris the worst example, of course. Not only have otherwise gorgeous anime likeDandadanandDemon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaibaoften struggled with 3D visuals, but as bad as Pernida’s animation was, it’s nothing compared to the infamously terrible animation of anime likeHand Shakers,EX-ARM, and 2016’sBerserk.Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War’s CGI, while bad, is nowhere near as bad as some of the worst examples in anime, and because of that, a lot of the criticisms levied at it feel nothing but exaggerated.
Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War’s CGI Helps Sell Its Bizarre New Villain
Does Bleach’s CGI Villain Actually Work?
Another point that might be in favor ofBleach: Thousand-Year Blood War’s CGI is how it plays into Pernida’s character. As the sentient arm of the Soul King, Pernida is a bizarrely inhuman character by design, something emphasized in his fight with Mayuri by his bizarre powers and his unique quirk of growing more intelligent over time, sothe use of CGI to render Pernida inBleach: Thousand-Year Blood Warmight have been done to emphasize how bizarre a character he’s supposed to be.
That idea could also explain the odd discrepancy between Pernida’s 2D and 3D scenes. The way the episode repeatedly switched between 2D and 3D visuals for Pernida was always jarring, but if the animation is meant to emphasize how weird a character Pernida is, thenBleach: Thousand-Year Blood Warrepeatedly switching between 2D and 3D visuals for Pernida could be another way of emphasizing how bizarre Pernida is thanks to how jarring it all was. All of that is purely hypothetical, of course, but it would still go a long way toward justifying the largely lackluster 3D visuals.
Will Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War Keep Using CGI For Its Villains?
Will CGI Be a Permanent Part Of Bleach?
Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood Warusing CGI for Pernida also begs the question of whether CGI will be used for the rest of the villains. Lille and Gerard both take on monstrous transformations in the climaxes of their fights, and while Askin always maintains a human form, his final attack is somewhat complicated on a visual level. Most of the remaining fights in the story see the villains doing something that could be hard to translate into 2D, soBleach: Thousand-Year Blood Warmight continue to use CGI to animate the villains in some of the remaining fights.
If CGI does continue to be used, it likely won’t be as bad as people think. As distracting as the CGI for Pernida was, it, like previous examples of CGI, was used rather sparingly, soany future uses of CGI inBleach: Thousand-Year Blood Warwill likely just be in small amounts so as not to distract from the cleaner 2D animationand the story, as a whole. As bad asBleach: Thousand-Year Blood War’s CGI can look, it’s never been as big a problem as people make it out to be, and hopefully, that won’t change in the slightest.
Bleach: Thousand Year Blood War
Cast
Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War is a sequel series to the popular anime from creator Tite Kubo. This anime follows Ichigo and his friends as they investigate why people are disappearing while trouble arises in the Soul Society. The first season was released in 2022 and has been critically acclaimed since its beginning.
