This week’s episode of BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War, Part 3: The Conflict was a standout from start to finish this week, featuring a variety of scenes new to the anime, some exciting action, and a plethora of lore reveals about the broader BLEACH universe.
Last week’s episode was the first of Part 3: The Conflict, starting off with a rather substantial amount of recap before moving on to covering the second half of Yhwach vs Ichibe and Senjumaru vs the Sternritter. That episode was spectacular, adding in new scenes to the already new fight involving Senjumaru’s Bankai and beautifully adapting the conclusion of Ichibe and Yhwach’s fight in a way that was appropriately faithful to the manga.
This week’s episode follows a similar pattern. Some elements are the same as in the source material and aren’t changed where a change perhaps doesn’t make much sense. Other aspects build upon the anime-original content introduced way back when Ichigo first began training with Squad Zero. Overall, the episode was new enough that I think even manga readers won’t know what to expect going forward. Combined with its overall high quality, I was quite satisfied with it.
Spoilers ahead for BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War, Part 3: The Conflict Episode 2 KILL THE KING
A Foreboding Opening Sequence
The opening sequence was the first bit of new content of the episode and it did its job immediately drawing in the viewer and acting as a strong lede to the remainder of the content. We see a young then growing Yhwach in a pool of water while a distant figure stands between 3 stakes reverberating in the water and causing ripples to flow in each direction. The scene transitions as Yhwach is swallowed by waves, followed by a scene depicting what is seemingly the Soul King losing his limbs and several images that are intentionally two muddled to fully recognize or dissect.
All the while, soft, curious music plays, before twisting into the “screams within my heart” that Yhwach describes, contrasting some calm recollective moments with motifs of pain, agony, and the power Yhwach has to redistribute and reclaim power.
I don’t have too many conclusive thoughts about this opening sequence, and I think that’s sort of the point of it. Everything about these scenes felt like I was being invited to be curious about the origins of Yhwach and the Soul King. BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War has already treated us to flashbacks of the ancient past that weren’t present in the manga.
This set of scenes, to me, feels like the beginning of a habit of BLEACH and Tite Kubo: showing something mysterious and adding detail by detail to it until the original presentation reveals some new information. In the same way that we slowly learned about the truth of Ichigo’s powers over the course of the series before the revelations came to a head during the first season, I think we’re seeing similar breadcrumbs about the Soul King that ultimately will reveal a lot. If the goal of this section was to make me think, then it certainly succeeded.
Ichigo vs Yhwach and the Fall of the Soul King
This episode also brought us a long awaited rematch between Ichigo and Yhwach after they initially fought during the latter’s initial invasion of Soul Society. Personally, I felt they didn’t really fight nearly enough times in the manga, so this was a good opportunity to show off Ichigo’s new powers and level of strength.
Given Yhwach opted not to use The Almighty during the first portion of their battle, it almost seemed like a nudge in the direction of thinking that Ichigo has reached the same levels of power as the pinnacle of Squad Zero, as he fought non-Almighty Yhwach on pretty even footing and didn’t perform too differently than Ichibe against Yhwach making use of The Almighty.
Animation, art, and execution wise, I thought the fight was enjoyable though a bit more indirect than I’d have preferred. It often felt like the frequent cuts and fast-paced aerial scenes took away from some moments of potential close combat, which I personally tend to find more satisfying. I also would have appreciated some more of the effects that were present when Yhwach used The Almighty against Ichibe. Even with that in mind though I loved this fight and loved seeing the constant exchange of super moves between the two. Yhwach’s voice always makes the announcements of those moves particularly satisfying.
The middle section of the episode, covering a mixture of Yhwach doing some exposition / lore hinting and the Soul Reapers rendezvousing with Urahara, was valuable for Yhwach. It exposed some more rationale for his actions, rationale that was largely missing by this point in the manga. Painting him as someone who wants to build a new world makes the villainy of destroying the current one feel less sharp. We also get the revelation of the name of the Soul King, Adnyeus, something which isn’t necessarily impactful but was definitely notable for a figure that has gone unnamed for over a decade.
Finally, we have the climactic moment, music and all, of Ichigo cutting down the Soul King. Perhaps the most significant change from the manga this episode was Yhwach revealing that he needed the powers of Ichigo, someone who carries human, Soul Reaper, Hollow, Quincy, and Fullbringer powers within him, to fully break the seal on the Soul King. Not only does this have some strong lore implications about what powers were used to seal the Soul King to begin with, but it gives more of a reason for having Ichigo strike down the Soul King rather than Yhwach just finishing the job himself.
Final Thoughts
Overall, I felt this was a strong episode with a lot of bridges to lore and other considerations about the BLEACH universe writ large. I think as far as battles go, this instance of Ichigo vs Yhwach wouldn’t necessarily top the list, but that’s more so because of how many spectacular battles BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War has given us so far.
What made this episode great for me was the lore and the breadcrumbs it left out for more exposition into the origins of the world and the Soul King. Previously, these sorts of details were only touched on in the BLEACH novels after the manga had concluded, so it’s nice to see details even beyond those novel ones touched on in the anime. I’ll be looking forward to more deep dives and flashbacks in future episodes.
© TITE KUBO / SHUEISHA, TV TOKYO, dentsu, Pierrot
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