- —Tagline
Sasuke VS Ichigo is the 60th episode of DBX, featuring Sasuke Uchiha from the Naruto series and Ichigo Kurosaki from the Bleach series in a battle between shōnen anime swordsmen.
Exhibition
A white fist punches toward the camera, revealed to be Kaguya Ōtsutsuki's Eighty Gods Vacuum Attack punching away Naruto Uzumaki in his Kurama Mode. Sasuke Uchiha leaps in the air and attempts to stab her with his Chidori Katana, only for Kaguya to block it with a force field. She blasts Sasuke away and opens a portal to another dimension using Yomotsu Hirasaka, which Sasuke careens inside before it closes shortly afterward. Naruto gets up from his knees, now forced to face Kaguya alone.
Meanwhile, Sasuke, having been teleported to Soul Society, rises from the ground and turns around to see Ichigo Kurosaki watching a cloud of smoke close by.
Ichigo uses Shunpo to speedily appear behind Sasuke.
Sasuke: Chidori Kōken!
Sasuke fires his Chidori Sharp Spear at Ichigo, who dodges and strikes back with his Zanpakutō Zangetsu. Sasuke is quick to defend himself from the Shinigami's strikes with his Sword of Kusanagi, and the two young swordsmen clash a few times. Sasuke directs Lightning Style chakra into his blade and electrocutes Ichigo, briefly stunning him. He seizes the opportunity to kick him away and fires a series of fireballs from his mouth. Ichigo recovers shortly afterward and manages to block and deflect few of them while dodging the rest using Shunpo. Closing the distance between him and his opponent, he jumps in the air and clashes his blade against Sasuke's, causing the shinobi to be knocked away into a nearby wall. With the fight now in his favor, Ichigo surrounds himself in blue energy and uses his Shikai's special ability, launching a Getsuga Tenshō at where he thinks his enemy is.
The attack destroys part of a wall, but after the smoke clears, Ichigo is shocked when Sasuke is nowhere to be seen. An airborne Sasuke suddenly reveals himself and tries to thrust his sword against Ichigo from behind, who jumps away to avoid it. Sasuke kicks Ichigo to the ground, and both swordfighters clash once more. Sasuke creates a shadow clone of himself and the two of them take turns attacking a defensive Ichigo. Now having the upper hand in the battle this time, both Sasukes stab Ichigo in the chest before pulling out their swords. As the two Sasukes charge back at him, Ichigo sends them away with a shockwave emitted by piercing the ground with his Bankai, causing the shadow clone Sasuke to be dispersed. Sasuke, lying on the ground, gets up to see Ichigo pointing his sword at him from a distance.
Ichigo: It's over! Bankai!
Ichigo engulfs himself in a beam of light and slashes Sasuke in rapid succession in multiple directions, who tries to counterattack to no avail. Overwhelmed by Ichigo's blinding speed, Sasuke uses his Chidori Current to shield himself from his nemesis' strikes, which momentarily proves successful only for Ichigo to use Ichigo Homerun to whack him in the air, causing him to explode into fireworks. The seemingly victorious Ichigo is immediately afterward revealed to have fallen victim to Sasuke's genjutsu, his eyes taking on the appearance of the Sharingan, meaning that the entire fight was an illusion in his mind and never actually occurred. With his foe helpless and completely immobilized, Sasuke swiftly decapitates Ichigo, instantly killing him.
Trivia
- The core connections between Sasuke and Ichigo are that they are both swordsmen and main characters of shōnen anime/manga which are part of the Big Three. In addition:
- Both are teenage heroes who are abnormally powerful in their respective universes, harboring unnaturally large amounts of their universe's life energy (chakra and Reiatsu, respectively).
- Both are highly skilled in their universe's form of martial arts and swordsmanship, and as such, considered prodigies by many (Sasuke was trained in taijutsu and kenjutsu, while Ichigo was trained in hand-to-hand combat by his father and is also a master of Zanjutsu).
- Both are reimagined versions of Japanese warriors (ninja and samurai, respectively).
- Both wield special swords (the Sword of Kusanagi and Zangetsu, respectively).
- Both are allied with skilled female tsunderes (Sakura Haruno and Rukia Kuchiki, respectively) and were mentored by snarky, but skilled and highly respected figures (Kakashi Hatake and Kisuke Urahara, respectively).
- Both come from a famous clan (the Uchiha Clan and Shiba Clan, respectively), have fathers who were of a highly respected position (Fugaku Uchiha, who was the head of the Uchiha Clan as well as the leader of the Konoha Military Police Force, and Isshin Kurosaki, who was the former captain of the 10th Division, respectively), and mothers who died at early points in their lives (Mikoto Uchiha and Masaki Kurosaki, respectively).
- Both are chosen ones in some way (Sasuke is considered one of the two Children of the Prophecy along with Naruto, having been chosen along with him by the Sage of Six Paths Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki to inherit part of his power, and is the reincarnation of Indra Ōtsutsuki, one of Hagoromo's two sons who was expected by many to succeed him in leading Ninshū, while Ichigo is a rare Shinigami-Quincy hybrid as well as being chosen as one of the candidates to become the next Soul King).
- Both have fought evil organizations with similar members (the Akatsuki and both the Espada and Sternritter, respectively), manipulative illusionists (Madara Uchiha and Sōsuke Aizen, respectively), and in major world-threatening wars (the Fourth Shinobi World War and the Quincy Blood War, respectively), serving as one of the catalysts for their side's victory, and are also descendants of their series' final antagonists (Kaguya Ōtsutsuki and Yhwach, respectively).
- At the end of their series, both married a girl who had a crush on them (Sakura and Orihime Inoue, respectively), and had a child with them who has the potential to surpass them (Sarada Uchiha and Kazui Kurosaki, respectively).
- While Sasuke serves as a dark-haired, aloof, stoic, and brooding rival to Naruto, Ichigo has a dark-haired rival with a similar personality to Sasuke's, that being Uryū Ishida. Both Sasuke and Uryū would challenge their rivals' ideals and later become evil before joining their side again at the end of their series, and both are voiced by Noriaki Sugiyama in Japanese.
- Both have appeared in multiple Shonen Jump crossover video games together, such as Jump Super Stars, Jump Ultimate Stars, J-Stars Victory VS, and Jump Force.
Errors
- The episode's description erroneously says "Which angsty, spiky haired hot head will has their sights set on victory?" instead of "will have their sights set on victory?".
- Kaguya uses a force field to defend herself from Sasuke at the beginning of the fight, an ability which she has never demonstrated in Naruto.
- At the very start of the fight, Sasuke exclaims "Chidori Kōken!" as he fires an attack. However, this is the Japanese name for the Chidori Light Sword, whereas the ninjutsu he actually uses is the Chidori Sharp Spear, whose Japanese name is "Chidori Eisō."