Noblesse Oblige.

This week's fight in Bleach features Love Aikawa and Starrk.
Love's zanpakutou's true form was revealed to be Tengumaru, a metal cudgel with spikes. We can't ignored that it is also twice the size of Love himself. I'm pretty sure this is the largest initial release we have seen yet.


Anyways, fitting its appearance and wielder, Tengumaru has a lot of brute power. It could dissipate/deflect several of Starrk's cero bullets. Not only does it have physical prowess, Tengumaru is also a fire-based zanpakutou, as Love shot a humongous fire blast at Starrk.
Aside from this new Shikai we got to see, the fight itself wasn't much. It mainly consisted of Love showing off all his techniques, while Starrk dodges them/gets hit but isn't hurt. Starrk reflects on Barragan's death and summons an army of wolfs - it seems he has finally gotten serious.

There's a rule, I call it rule of plurality, in anime that follows: as the number of homogeneous characters go up, their strengths exponentially decreases
This is my view on the wolf army...

Now for my opinion on Starrk:
Although I still think he is cool as sh*t, he has dramatically fallen in my personal Bleach coolness ranking. I feel like, as Primero Espada, he should have some quality that makes him the best, the strongest, the one that Aizen trusts. For example, Ulquiorra's got loyalty beyond any other Espada, Barragan's got the arrogance because he's the king of Hueco Mundo, and Halibel's got the hotness (another rule in anime: the more attractive the character, the stronger that individual will be).
Initially, Starrk's laziness could have meant he is so incredibly strong that he's just bored with life (the reason I thought he was badass). During his fight with Kyoraku, he pulled off a pose-less cero that perfectly matched his lazy personality. To me, this implied if he had tried, the cero might have been as strong as the Gran Rey Cero or Ulquiorra's Cero Oscuras. Now that Starrk have decided to try by releasing his true form, he should technically be overwhelmingly strong according to my hypothesis, right? Nah, the fight was still even against Shunsui and Ukitake with only their Shikais and now Love with his Shikai. Starrk could hardly gain what you would call an advantage, for he only left negligible scratches and burns on Shunsui that will definitely disappear once he Bankais (if he will even get to).
My point is, although Starrk is definitely strong, being able to fight against three captains Shikais consecutively, he fails to be menacing at the very least. I was hoping for something similar to Wonderweiss's instant pwnage of Ukitake or Halibel's
uber slash that cut Hitsugaya in half (albeit it was fake - stupid popular fanbase character hack, the next cheapest thing to the main character hack). Anyways enough ranting about my unfulfilled expectations on Starrk, hopefully he pulls out some trick that we'll remember for the ages. As for the wolf army, again, I don't expect much due to the rule of plurality. But hey, maybe they will surprise me. =]