Shinji Hirako

Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War is the long-awaited return of Bleach, one of the biggest action anime of the 2000s. The first Bleach TV series stopped in 2012 before the final story of Tite Kubo's manga could be animated. Ten years later, Studio Pierrot came back to finish it. Tomohisa Taguchi directed, and Kubo himself helped supervise the project closely. This first part, sometimes called "The Blood Warfare," aired from October to December 2022 and has 13 episodes. The adaptation is split into four parts, with breaks between them. Later parts are "The Separation" (2023), "The Conflict" (2024), and "The Calamity" (2026). The hero is Ichigo Kurosaki, a teenager with orange hair who has always been able to see ghosts. Earlier in the series, a meeting with a Soul Reaper named Rukia Kuchiki gave him the powers of a Soul Reaper. Soul Reapers are warriors who guide the souls of the dead to the afterlife and fight Hollows, evil spirits that attack both the living and the dead. Soul Reapers fight with special swords called zanpakuto, which each have their own spirit and abilities. The world of the Soul Reapers is called the Soul Society. In this final story, a new and terrible enemy appears. They are the Quincy, humans with the power to fight spirits using bows made of spirit energy. Long ago, the Soul Reapers nearly wiped them out. Now the survivors have gathered into an army called the Wandenreich, and they are ruled by a mysterious leader named Yhwach. The Wandenreich strike the Soul Society suddenly and give a short, cold warning of total destruction. Their elite fighters seem to have strange new ways to counter the Soul Reapers' greatest skills. Ichigo, his friends, and the thirteen Soul Reaper captains must face this threat. The story also digs into the past. Old secrets about how the Soul Society was founded, and about Ichigo's own family, start to come out. Fans learn more about characters who had stayed in the background for years. The tone is darker and more serious than much of the original show. The battles are fast, bloody, and very stylish, with strong use of color and shadows. The new music and sound design also got a lot of praise. Many fans felt the series looked better than ever. Critics have praised both the animation and how faithful it is to the manga, and Kubo even added scenes and ideas that were not in the original comic. This series works best for people who already know Bleach. New viewers can follow the basics, but the emotional payoffs depend on years of history between the characters. It has a very high score on AniList and brought many old fans back to the franchise.