The Bleach anime has finally introduced fans to the series’ final and most terrifying villain of all: Yhwach, the king of all Quincy. He is the supervillain who holds the entire Thousand-Year Blood War story arc together, with his actions, goals, and influence spurring on the greatest war of all time between the feuding Soul Reaper and Quincy factions. However, King Yhwach isn’t just a plot device to stir up another action-packed arc in Bleach — he also has some personal and worldbuilding weight, too.
King Yhwach is not only the most powerful fighter in this new story arc, but also the reason Ichigo’s mother died and the reason Ichigo and his friend Uryu Ishida have become enemies once again. Most of all, Yhwach’s character arc sheds light on how the fabled Quincy tribe really operates while expanding on Bleach‘s worldbuilding in unexpected ways. Because of him, the three worlds whom the Soul Reapers all take for granted are in dire peril, and for that matter, so is the distant, wordless Soul King.
King Yhwach’s Goal is For the Good of All Quincy
He Wants All Worlds Merged Into One, as They Once Were
Every major villain in Bleach is after something, and King Yhwach’s own goal is loftier and more cosmic in nature than anything that came before it. Currently, the Bleach universe is split into three major worlds, those being the world of the living, the Soul Society, and Hueco Mundo, with an eternal cycle of souls rotating all souls between them to maintain balance. The Soul King and the Soul Reapers all maintain and protect that cycle, a flow of souls that involves constant death and rebirth. Most people accept that as the natural state of affairs, but King Yhwach doesn’t like it for various reasons. So, Yhwach’s ultimate goal is to collapse all those worlds into one, as they had once been.
Yhwach knows that the universe was once a singular place where death meant nothing, but at some point in the distant past of Bleach‘s lore, the godly Soul King split the universe into today’s three realms. His very existence kept the three worlds separate and stable while also regulating the flow of souls, and for two specific reasons, King Yhwach dislikes that and wants to merge those worlds together once again, even if it means killing the Soul King.
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To begin with, Yhwach wants to create a deathless universe where no one, especially not his fellow Quincy, have to live in fear of death ever again. If there’s no Soul Society, no Earth, and no Hueco Mundo, then no one dies or gets reborn, and people don’t have to be separated from those they love anymore. However, this would come at the cost of destroying the worlds that humans, Soul Reapers, and even Hollows fondly call home, which the Gotei 13 can’t accept.
Yhwach’s other goal in Bleach is to create a place where his fellow Quincy may have a sense of belonging, without any other faction trying to wipe them out. In the original deathless world, it’s implied that the Quincy could live in peace, but when the Soul King split the universe into the three worlds, the Quincy tribe had nowhere to go. Humans had Earth, the Soul Reapers had the Soul Society, and Hollows had the bleak deserts of Hueco Mundo, which left the Quincy tribe as a loose end. Worse yet, the Quincy tribe had a habit of utterly destroying Hollows with their spirit attacks, which took souls out of the great cycle, and that threatened to disrupt the entire system. The Soul Reapers tried in vain to discourage those Quincy attacks on Hollows, which led to the blood war that saw the Quincy tribe driven off and nearly destroyed. Yhwach wants to make sure that never happens again.
King Yhwach’s Motivations Are Halfway Sympathetic in Bleach’s Story
He Has Genuine Grievances About His People’s Mistreatment
For the most part, shonen supervillans are unsympathetic in what they do and why they do it, since these powerful antagonists tend to cause a lot of destruction, death, and misery en route to their selfish goals. But when anime series like Bleach introduce some moral ambiguity and give the villains some justification for what they are doing, then the narrative becomes more nuanced and engaging. Such is the case with King Yhwach, because purely from a plot standpoint, he has good reasons to be angry and do what he’s already doing. That’s because the plight of the Quincy tribe is absolutely real, with the Soul King creating a tri-world system where the Quincy tribe had no place.
Yhwach’s faction was left out, either by accident or on purpose, and they were nearly destroyed for protesting and trying to earn a place in the world. That’s why Uryu Ishida recently told Ichigo that enough Quincy blood has been spilled in this centuries-long war. The Bleach anime even showed a flashback where Ichibe Hyosube of the Royal Guard attempted diplomacy with Yhwach on the topic of Hollow destruction and the Quincy tribe’s place in the world, only for negotiations to break down, and fans know what came next: the breakout of the blood war and the Quincy tribe’s overwhelming defeat at the hands of the Gotei 13.
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Now, the Quincy tribe has just one last chance at survival, fighting their Soul Reaper enemies so Yhwach can get a chance to kill the Soul King and create that unified world where the Quincy can belong. Yhwach’s motives and his goals are both legitimate — these aren’t just made-up excuses to attack the Soul Reapers and go on a rampage. But even if Yhwach’s grievances and goal are both genuine, it’s still difficult to fully justify what he is doing. While the fate of the Quincy tribe is unfortunate, Yhwach and his allies are asking too much in return to make things right. Yhwach’s goal has serious and unavoidable consequences, because the collapse of all worlds into one will rob everyone else of the homes and jobs they cherish.
That’s asking a lot even from the Soul Reapers who have spilled Quincy blood before, and it’s asking even more from the Soul Reapers, humans, and Hollows who are innocent in all this. Billions of humans will lose their homes and world because of something the Soul King did millennia ago, and there are even some sympathetic Arrancars like Nelliel who would suffer as well, never mind everyone in the Soul Society. This is an example where two wrongs don’t make a right, because even if Yhwach’s grievances are real, the harm he’s doing to countless innocents is just as real, yet he’s choosing to let it all happen for his own purposes.
King Yhwach Has Connections to the Quincy, the Soul King, and the Kurosakis
He is Their Father and Source of Their Power
Much more so than Bleach‘s previous supervillain, Sosuke Aizen, King Yhwach has close ties to the major characters in the anime, both heroes and villains, and in more than one way. Aizen had an indirect connection to Ichigo thanks to his artificial Hollow being the reason Isshin Shiba and Masaki Kurosaki got together, leading to Ichigo’s half-other powers. However, Yhwach took things a step further by being Ichigo’s distant ancestor, as the father of all Quincy. While Aizen is a sort of bizarre matchmaker for the Kurosakis, Yhwach is actually in the family tree, which is why he calls Ichigo Kurosaki his son lost in the dark.
That shared blood was also why Yhwach was able to manipulate Ichigo into attacking the Soul King in recent Bleach episodes, since Ichigo’s Quincy blood could never forgive the Soul King for creating a tri-world system where the Quincy people didn’t belong. Another factor is Yhwach’s unique ability called Auswählen, with which he can re-absorb any Quincy’s power from a distance. Usually, Auswählen’s usage is fatal for the Quincy who have their powers taken away, as fans saw during the new anime’s second cour, with Robert Accutrone being reduced to mere bones once his powers were recalled with Auswählen.
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Years ago, when Ichigo and Uryu were children, Yhwach awakened and used Auswählen on a variety of Quincy on Earth, which killed Uryu’s mother Kanae Katagiri and robbed Masaki Kurosaki of her powers while sparing her life. Masaki may have survived Auswählen’s effects, but she was rendered powerless before the Hollow called Grand Fisher, who slew her with ease. For years, Ichigo knew that the monstrous Grand Fisher was his mother’s killer, but he didn’t know that Masaki had been a combat-capable Quincy archer who could have survived that encounter, only for Yhwach to steal Masaki’s powers at the worst possible moment.
Avenging Masaki may not be Ichigo Kurosaki’s #1 priority in the current story, but it’s still a factor that makes this personal for Ichigo as he fights to save the Soul Society from doom. All this also makes things personal for Uryu Ishida, who now feels more loyal to his tribe than he does to his friends, hence his defection to King Yhwach’s side in the anime’s new arc. Only a Quincy villain could have made things so personal for Uryu, who had never lost his pride and faith in the Quincy tribe, and now that is threatening to tear apart Ichigo’s and Uryu’s friendship forever.
King Yhwach’s Military Unity is a Lie
He Will Sacrifice His People to Save Them
At first, it seemed that Yhwach would set himself apart from Sosuke Aizen by being a supervillain leader who actually cared about his minions and the cause that they fought for. It soon became clear that Aizen didn’t personally care about any of his Arrancar minions, even if he told the Espadas that he had faith in them. Aizen saw them all as disposable tools unworthy of his respect, and he fought not to bring them happiness or salvation, but to grant himself power as the king in Heaven. After all, Aizen was a supremely selfish being who wasn’t even the same species as the Arrancars, so of course he wasn’t fighting for their sake.
Then, King Yhwach came along, who mixed things up by being the father and leader of his own people, complete with a cohesive and militarized empire called the Wandenreich. On both a thematic and power level, that seemed to make all the difference at first. Aizen’s Arrancar “army” was just a rabble of monsters who hardly even got along, and some of them even turned on Aizen, such as Grimmjow, who only pursued his shonen-style rivalry with Ichigo Kurosaki. Meanwhile, the Wandenreich boasted strong unity among all Quincy with their uniforms and common cause, and they fought well together in the first half of the renewed blood war.
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With his leadership and idealism, Yhwach kept his army under tight control to beat the Soul Reapers at their own game — until he didn’t. Recent plot twists in the new Bleach anime have proven that Yhwach is more like Sosuke Aizen than first impressions would have suggested. Yhwach turned on his own allies when he performed the Auswählen to seize the power of many Sternritter so he could revive the Schutzstaffel, which shocked and outraged most of the Sternritter, who viewed it as a betrayal. Robert Accutrone knew what was coming, but couldn’t prevent it, and Liltotto Lamperd and Giselle Gewelle only narrowly avoided that fate with their last-minute actions, as did Bazz-B.
Like Aizen before him, Yhwach was clearly lying about unity and trust among his people, sacrificing them as pawns so he could achieve his own goals. So far, Yhwach has shown favoritism to his four elite guards, the Schutzstaffel, since he betrayed the other Quincy for their sake. But even so, it’s clear that Yhwach is a hypocritical monster who will kill off his own people in the quest to save them, and it’s shocking that Uryu Ishida would ever fight alongside someone whose methods are the deadly opposite of the power of friendship.
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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