BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War (TYBW) Part 4 The Calamity released its first episode today and with it comes the return of a member of Shonen Jump’s Big 3 — my personal favorite of the trio. BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War first aired in October of 2022, marking over a decade since the original BLEACH anime had aired and absolutely stunning fans with the return of the series. The second cour of TYBW aired in 2023 and the third in 2024. We’ve had to wait a remarkably short time for these releases and it’s quite lucky that this final cour is available as quickly as it was.
What’s been most exciting about BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War is the opportunity it gives BLEACH to make updates and revisions to the story and its characters. Due at least in part to the somewhat rushed pace and sudden ending of the BLEACH manga, a lot of characters were left either underutilized or relegated to the status of jobber. Squad 0 was introduced with aplomb before being quickly killed off, Yhwach’s background and motives felt somewhat nebulous, and the development of Ichigo during the war was somewhat lacking. All of this and more have been improved in TYBW (though I still think that Squad 0 got done dirty). This gives me a lot of hope for an ending much better than the ending that we saw in the manga. If such an ending is to come to fruition, it’ll be in this final cour.
Speaking toward the first episode, it was a good, but not show-stopping adaptation of the corresponding chapters, with the battle scenes seeing the most notable improvements. This was true especially for Uryu’s part, now that his combat abilities have been massively upgraded in TYBW. The star of the episode was Yoruichi though, whose unique abilities and…assets too center stage alongside some prodding (both literal and figurative) from Urahara. This episode felt like an appetizer, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. This cour was recently confirmed to be 10 episodes, adapting the roughly 25 remaining manga chapters. Considering some early episodes of TYBW covered nearly 4 chapters in a single episode, this means the anime has plenty of time to make the pace steady and, hopefully, fill any lulls with anime-original content. Overall, this episode did its job.
Uryu Back on Track
The episode opened in a way that I liked a lot, with the first moments showing Yhwach dreaming of Ichigo happening upon him and cutting him down. This dream, described by Yhwach as “no better dream than a nightmare” is interesting — the vignette style with which it’s depicted reminded me of the flashbacks of the primordial world that were shown in previous cours, Yhwach in the dream is not making use of The Almighty, and Ichigo’s outfit and Shikai are those matching his appearance long ago in the series prior to him awakening his Fullbring. Most notable perhaps is that this dream is happening now. While I won’t divulge any major details about this dream beyond what was shown in the anime, I will note that this is not where it occurred in the manga. That being said, I think it works well as an opening section. The music cutting away suddenly is jarring and demands one focus. And the events of the dream itself immediately make the audience start asking questions.
This immediately transitions into a birds-eye view of where everyone is since the events of cour 3. I appreciated this gentle reminder of most characters’ status rather than a long recap; while the pacing needed adjustment from the manga, I don’t think a recap episode aired as part of the season would have been necessary. The remainder of the opening sequences of the episode dispatch various characters to their stations for combat. Ichigo and Uryu have a heartfelt conversation where Ichigo leaves Haschwalth to him with a smile. Ichigo leaves a variety of stone statues to Chad (weirdly, frowning at the idea despite having basically just smiled at the same conversation with Uryu) and hurries to the throne room alongside Orihime.
Moving back to Uryu, the episode makes way for a one on one fight between him and Haschwalth, who is now using The Almighty. The anime inserts a new action sequence with a nice set of interactions between The Almighty and Uryu’s updated powers. Haschwalth is able to dodge all of Uryu’s arrows and constructs with relative ease, moving smoothly and leaving behind a sort of afterimage effect that’s visually pleasing. The choreography of the fight was fine but not fantastic. I can’t help but compare it to Ichigo and Uryu’s fight, which contained a lot more up close and personal action and had more impact to it. In contrast, this fights arrows look a lot more CG than previously and didn’t move quite as smoothly on screen in my opinion. The sections where Haschwalth is dodging them looked smooth precisely because the Heilig Pfeil themselves look like beams of light when moving quickly and linearly. This quality seemingly improved in Uryu’s final scene of the episode, making me think there were some conscious choices about where and how to animate them. Overall, this was, again, a fine but not fantastic fight. A final note on it though — I found it deeply amusing that Uryu’s glasses are strong enough to not shatter when being stabbed by a sword, making them seem more durable than Uryu himself.
Poison and the Cat
I was never a huge Askin fan when I read the manga, but he’s honestly grown on me a bit, I think in large part because of the wonderful voice acting for him. It perfectly conveys a good amount of snark and laziness that I’ve come to appreciate in contrast to how absolutely busted his abilities are. This section of the battle involving him, Yoruichi, and Urahara (and Yushiro I guess) was a pretty faithful adaptation of the manga, down to the title card for the episode being proudly emblazoned directly on Yoruichi’s left a*scheeck. This section of the episode does drag a bit (so does the corresponding section of the manga), with BLEACH taking the time to re-articulate who all of the Special Threats as well as go through a decently long conversation between Yoruichi and Askin.
Eventually, someone does throw a punch, and we’re treated to a nice hand to hand sequence. It’s plenty smooth and has some satisfying quick movements, but I can’t help but think that the quality and clarity of the background dropped a distracting amount. It made it easy to focus on the fighting itself, but it feels odd to have so much of what’s on screen be out of focus, at least to me. This only lasts briefly though; once we finally do get the reveal of Yoruichi’s much anticipated new form, it immediately becomes clear where the focus of the episode is meant to be.
Yoruichi’s Thunderous Black Cat Battle Princess form is cool, at least visually. At face value, I dislike that Yoruichi’s most powerful state to date manages to remove even more of her clothes, has her rubbing all over Urahara, and is a form in which she doesn’t have real control of her actions. If I set that aside though, it’s a very cool combination of her cat abilities and her Shunko abilities. TYBW‘s biggest upgrade to BLEACH is perhaps its lighting, and this ability takes full advantage of it. The lightning effects are bright and incredibly dynamic, with the energy crackling around Yoruichi’s body the entire time. While it’s only active for a few minutes, the blows she dishes out are real ones, and the anime actually (mostly) shows the impact of how fists and claws rather than cutting away. This fight was definitely the better of the two, though even it had a bit of a slow first half. Askin isn’t down for the count though, and I’m excited to see Urahara fight himself, as he’s without question one of the most entertaining combatants in the entire franchise.
Looking Onward for BLEACH: TYBW Part 4 – The Calamity
Overall, I would give this episode a 7/10. It delivered well in a few places but the sluggish animation during portions of the Uryu fight and the unevenly distributed quality during Yoruichi’s fight bring it down meaningfully for me. That being said, it was a perfectly fine entry into this cour and one that’s leaving me excited for the battles to come. It adapted roughly 3 chapters of the manga, meaning at the current pace there is plenty of room for more anime original content. And that’s even more exciting.
You can watch BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War (TYBW) on Hulu and Disney+.
© Tite Kubo/Shueisha, TV TOKYO, dentsu, Pierrot
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