Bleach TYBW Delivered The Franchise’s Best Fight Yet

Bleach‘s newest story arc, the Thousand-Year Blood War story arc, has finally reached the apex of its world-shaking stakes early in cour 3. The first two cours already had high stakes, as the Wandenreich invaded the Soul Society with genocidal intentions, but destroying the Gotei 13 isn’t nearly as dire as Yhwach’s true goal: to merge all worlds into one and destroy the current world order. Those titanic stakes are why Ichigo Kurosaki crossed blades with King Yhwach back in the episode, “Kill the King.”

It was inevitable that protagonist Ichigo Kurosaki would fight Yhwach to end this war once and for all, an echo of when Ichigo saved the entire world defeating Sosuke Aizen in the fake Karakura Town. Unfortunately, this battle is not going Ichigo’s way so far, and this time, Ichigo doesn’t have the benefit of a last-minute training arc with his father in the Dangai to power up. Ichigo’s battle just proved that even if he’s the right person to face Yhwach, he is also somehow the wrong person, becoming Yhwach’s unwitting tool of world-ending destruction.

The Setup of Ichigo’s Duel With King Yhwach

Ichigo Fought Yhwach Because No One Else Can

The context for Ichigo’s duel against Yhwach was not unlike the leadup to Ichigo’s final clash with Sosuke Aizen back in the Arrancar saga’s climax. In both story arcs, the other heroes of Bleach gave it their all to take down the supervillain, only to fall in battle through a combination of inferior firepower and a lack of plot armor. Sosuke Aizen the supervillain shrugged off all the Soul Reapers and Visoreds who tried to mob him, and Momo Hinamori was almost killed in the process. More recently, in the new Bleach anime’s early Cour 3 episodes, the Royal Guard unit tried and failed to stop Yhwach’s squad from reaching the Soul King’s palace, with Uryu Ishida’s use of The Antithesis turning the tables on Senjumaru Shutara’s loom-based bankai. The Royal Guard had been the Soul King’s last hope — aside from Ichigo Kurosaki, that is.

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Cour 3 launched with the villains’ second wind, depicting Uryu taking down Senjumaru and freeing his fellow Quincy while Yhwach himself defeated Ichibe Hyosube once and for all. Ichibe did revive himself when Ichigo spoke his name, but Ichibe is in no shape to resume the fight as Yhwach finally approaches his true end goal. With no one left to inferfere, Yhwach confidently marched right into the Soul King’s palace and confronted that limbless being in person, all while Ichigo’s own team of heroes rushed onto the scene, always one step behind. To viewers’ horror, Yhwach thrust his curved sword right into the Soul King’s chest, nearly destroying the Soul King in the process. Once that happened, the three worlds began trembling, their very foundations threatened as the Soul King teetered on the brink of annihilation.

At the last possible moment, Ichigo Kurosaki and his motley allies showed up to stop Yhwach from finishing the job, and the cour’s most recent episode showed what happened next: Ichigo’s ferocious duel with Yhwach to save what’s left of the Soul King. That fight revealed much about the two fighters’ capabilities, including some symbolism, as well as their bizarre connection to one another.

What Happened in Ichigo’s Duel With Yhwach?

Ichigo Fought Hard, But His Quincy Blood Betrayed Him

In these characters’ last duel back in the Soul Society, Ichigo stood no chance, with Yhwach easily shattering Ichigo’s zanpakuto, but now that Ichigo has mastered his half-other powers, he has formed his final zanpakuto. This two-bladed weapon was exactly what Ichigo needed to keep pace with Yhwach as the battle began, fueled with both Getsuga Tensho and Getsuga Jujisho. Ichigo had the upper hand at first, using extreme speed and brute force to throw Yhwach around in the Soul King’s palace while his friends watched.

What Ichigo did and didn’t do marked his evolution as a fighter in that episode’s clash. For one thing, Ichigo’s Getsuga Jujisho has become his new ace up his sleeve, his ultimate attack that delivers devastating results, and it’s even symbolic. The Getsuga Jujisho takes the form of a giant yellow-gold cross, which may remind longtime Bleach fans of ther Quincy cross that Uryu once sewed onto the back of Kon’s head. Fans might read even more into it and compare the Getsuga Jujisho’s shape to the Christian cross, echoing Yhwach’s own Judeo-Christian themes. If so, then the Getsuga Jujisho that Ichigo recently used symbolically linked him to Yhwach and further distanced himself from his Hollow-based techniques from earlier.

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In the process, this fight helped prove what Bleach fans have no doubt predicted already: that Ichigo will not use his Hollow mask anymore. Ichigo’s inner Hollow is no longer a dark half-other power to be tamed — it’s an essential part of Ichigo, thus its role in forming his final zanpakuto without Old Man Zangetsu around. Ichigo and his inner Hollow are now one, so Ichigo can focus more on the powers and symbolism of the Quincy heritage he only recently discovered he has.

Unfortunately for Ichigo, his advantage could only last for so long. Once Yhwach activated the power of The Almighty, he turned the tide of battle and became too tough for Ichigo to defeat. Notably, Yhwach did not use The Almighty to try and kill Ichigo, or even knock him out. Instead, Yhwach evidently used The Almighty to merely discourage Ichigo from continuing the fight. After all, Yhwach’s goal wasn’t to kill Ichigo and his friends, and killing them won’t aid in his actual goal. In fact, as the episode showed, Yhwach actually needed to use Ichigo, so he needed Bleach‘s protagonist in one piece. Once the fight reached a stalemate, Yhwach shifted the focus to the Soul King, and that’s where Yhwach’s true victory unfolded.

Yhwach Used Ichigo’s Quincy Blood to Finish Off the Soul King

Ichigo Kurosaki Was the Only Person in the Universe Who Could Do It

While Yhwach shocked everyone by impaling the Soul King, that’s as far as he got, despite his incomparable power. Once Yhwach’s duel with Ichigo came to an uneasy end, Yhwach finished the job not by his own hand, but by Ichigo Kurosaki’s. Ichigo withdrew the sword from the Soul King’s chest to save him, but then Ichigo’s Quincy heritage came into play, and not in the way anyone expected. Yhwach controlled Ichigo like a puppetmaster through the latter’s Quincy blood, even stating that Ichigo’s Quincy blood won’t ever forgive the Soul King for creating a world order where the Quincy tribe had no place. Ichigo’s conscious mind resisted, but he was powerless to stop his body from obeying its Quincy heritage. To Ichigo’s horror, his body moved on its own accord and used Yhwach’s sword to slice the helpless Soul King in half.

As Yhwach explained, Ichigo was the only person who could finish off the Soul King because he had ancestry and/or powers from every faction in Bleach‘s universe. Ichigo was born as a human, but had latent Soul Reaper powers from his father and both Quincy and Hollow powers from his mother, and he had even become a Fullbring on top of that. Ichigo embodied the entire spirit world and its diverse powers, a feat no one else could have matched. So, that’s why Yhwach needed Ichigo to finish the job, since a pure Quincy like him was an incomplete package. The episode ended on that dire note, with the three worlds shaking harder than ever as the world order began to collapse.

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There are a few implications for this. To begin with, Yhwach might not even bother fighting Ichigo and his many allies for the moment, because if the Soul King is permanently dead, then there is no longer a point to the Wandenreich battling its enemies. The entire universe is about to collapse on itself to form a deathless realm, making battle a moot point right now. That means that in future episodes, the heroes’ stakes are not defeating Yhwach, but finding a way to save the Soul King if it isn’t too late.

There’s no hint of how the heroes will do that, but it’s their only known option, so they must pursue it. Another implication is that even if the Soul King is saved, Ichigo cannot defeat Yhwach as he is now, and there’s no more room for his powers to grow. Some outside force will be needed to make Yhwach’s downfall, an 11th-hour twist that fans can’t wait to see.

Bleach: Thousand Year Blood War

The peace is suddenly broken when warning sirens blare through the Soul Society. Residents are disappearing without a trace and nobody knows who’s behind it. Meanwhile, a darkness is approaching Ichigo and his friends in Karakura Town.

Release Date

October 10, 2022

Cast

Masakazu Morita , Johnny Yong Bosch , Takayuki Sugô , Richard Epcar , Ryûsei Nakao , Aleks Le , Karen Strassman , Neil Kaplan

Seasons

1

Story By

Tite Kubo

Writers

Tite Kubo

Network

TV Tokyo

Directors

Tomohisa Taguchi , Mitsutoshi Satô , Hikaru Murata , Hodaka Kuramoto

Showrunner

Tite Kubo

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