Highlights
- Gremmy Thoumeaux's ability to manifest his imagination into reality makes him theoretically unbeatable, but his overpowered nature and lack of stakes make him careless.
- Although Gremmy initially underestimates Kenpachi, he realizes the strength of his opponent and overcomes the possibility of his own demise. However, he still struggles with the double-edged sword of his own mind.
- Gremmy's lack of combat IQ and complacency lead to his defeat at the hands of Kenpachi. His perception of reality is influenced by witnessing Kenpachi's strength, which ultimately destroys him.
The following contains spoilers for BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War Part 2, Episode 7, "I Am The Edge", available for streaming on Hulu and Disney+.
Episode 7 of BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War Part 2 – The Separation, titled "I Am The Edge" saw the reveal of the abilities of potentially one of the strongest Sternritter introduced thus far. Sternritter V – The Visionary, Gremmy Thoumeaux was a major threat among the Quincy soldiers for his special ability gained from his partaking of Yhwach's blood, an ability so powerful that he considers himself to be the strongest of the Sternritter.
What does Gremmy's epithet, The Visionary, mean for his abilities and overall character?
Disillusionment
One of the most notable aspects of Gremmy Thoumeaux is his constant wearing of a vapid, almost condescending smile or grin on his face. The look in his eyes is lifeless despite his facial expression not necessarily communicating anything negative, and during his fight against Kenpachi we come to see that blasé break a few times. The reason for his attitude and overconfidence stems from the overpowered nature of the ability he inherited from Yhwach – the ability to manifest his imagination into reality. This goes as far as enabling him to imagine life into existence, as seen with the false Sternritter V – Guenael Lee, whose epithet, The Vanishing Point, was one of the many aspects of Gremmy's imaginative power. Guenael Lee's ability enabled him to make himself imperceptible to his target, with the strongest application of this ability enabling him to remove his existence from the mind of the target.
Gremmy's power is potent enough that the product of his imagination that was Guenael Lee was in fact a person in his own right, and he adjusts this ability while fighting Kenpachi to produce more of himself to "increase" his imaginative power. This kind of power makes Gremmy theoretically unbeatable at first thought because he could simply imagine one's demise or completely ignore the rules of the natural world to manifest all manner of death trap or scenario, and because of the lack of stakes that come with this level of overwhelming power made Gremmy careless.
A Worthy Opponent
Against Kenpachi, Gremmy barely even avoids Kenpachi's attacks, assuming a non-combative stance with his hands in his pockets, due to the lack of feeling the approach of imminent danger. He uses his ability to imagine his wounds have already healed, in addition to imagining Kenpachi trapped in a body of water in midair, to trapping him in the ground below and even going as far as to create multiple Gremmys. Over the course of the battle, Gremmy finds himself brimming with emotions he has never felt before due to never having felt the need to prove his strength, or even get the chance to. His bloodlust awakens and his usual smile gains a much more sinister, sneering appearance and the look in his eyes gains some life at various points over the course of the battle.
After Kenpachi bulldozes his way through each of Gremmy's manifestations, the reality of the strength of the legendary Shinigami starts to set in and the weakness to his ability slowly reveals itself: the limit to his conceptually limitless ability is himself – the bounds of his imagination are the limit, and if he imagines his own death, he could accidentally bring it to reality. He overcomes this grave possibility when Kenpachi asks him if he imagined himself losing, which prompts him to swiftly heal from the various wounds he suffered and proclaim that he has conquered death for he can no longer conceive of his own mortality. This moment was Gremmy overcoming the biggest threat to his life – the possibility that he could imagine his own demise or failure; however, that still did not address the possibility that his mind could be a double-edged sword.
The Abyss
A number of glaring issues arose with Gremmy's fight against Kenpachi, beyond his arrogance (he said he'd win without raising a finger, which he meant literally but intended it as a jab) is his clear lack of combat IQ. His power makes his "fights" only that in name; since he is capable of doing away with most almost immediately as he did Guenael, throwing him into a predicament similar to that experienced by the immortal or the overwhelmingly powerful – the lack of meaning or consequence suffered from having no need to struggle to attain power, and the subsequent emptiness of being (literally) without peer. Meeting Kenpachi was a major shift because it broke his disillusionment and gave him a goal: acknowledgment of his unparalleled power by the only person he could ever imagine being unable to defeat. The lack of a true sense of danger meant that Gremmy had no need to learn how to fight. While he could block and return many of Kenpachi's attacks, his complacency would see him stand in place when Kenpachi first attacks. Gremmy would also write off his opponent after each assault, being sure that he wouldn't be able to survive the kinds of scenarios Gremmy put him in; however, therein lay the limit of his own power.
He unconsciously thought he knew Kenpachi's limits, and when he realized that the man has none, it sent him down the path to his defeat. When he was terrorizing Yachiru in the beginning of BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War episode 20, "I Am The Edge", Gremmy used his imagination to turn her bones into cookies. When he broke her arm with the ease that it'd take to break cookies, he predicted that she'd end up thinking all of her bones are cookies, and she accidentally broke her other arm when she put weight on it.
Effectively what this scene was trying to communicate is the manner in which reality informs perception, which then informs the inner world that is the imagination. Seeing Kenpachi break through the situations that he was certain could not be escaped (even by himself, potentially) influenced Gremmy's perception of him. By Quincy standards, Gremmy Thoumeau himself is a monster, but upon laying eyes on Kenpachi's Shikai after destroying the meteor, he couldn't help but call Kenpachi that. His undoing would come from trying to emulate Kenpachi's strength, a feat that destroyed him because he couldn't conceive of anyone but Kenpachi being able to wield that strength. As Kenpachi put it, "You made me a monster in your own head."