It was a good episode to round out the prep phase of the current conflict. Plenty of potential for the next cour to bring lots of action and interesting tactics. I'm glad we don't have to wait too long. 🙂
And yeah, the Byakuya parts were very moving, if maybe a bit heavy-handed. Though I appreciate the show is sticking to what it knows best by keeping the characters relatively simple.
(Btw: upvoting and commenting from Mastodon. I wanna see how well this works.)