The Fall 2024 Anime Preview Guide

Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War Part 3 - The Conflict

The final battle for the Seireitei rages on as Yhwach and the Stern Ritters advance towards the Soul King. While the members of Squad Zero do their best to hold off him and his forces, they are no match for Yhwach's power of The Almighty, which allows him to see all possible futures and stop anyone from harming him. Now that Ichigo and the others have finally arrived on the scene, will they be able to turn the tide, or will Yhwach achieve his desire to destroy the foundations of the three worlds?

Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War Part 3 - The Conflict is based on the Bleach manga by Tite Kubo. The anime series is streaming on Hulu or Disney+ on Saturdays.

Bleach: Thousand Year Blood War is back for its third round, and it feels like it never left. I mean that quite literally, as this premiere spends about half its runtime recapping the fight that the season stopped midway through. As for the conclusion of said fight, it's a continuation of Bleach's never-ending game of Reverse Uno, as after Ichibei seemingly has the upper hand by using his Zanpaktou to steal Yhwach's name and power, Yhwach reveals that his true ability grants him precognition and makes anything he can see unable to kill him, which makes him unstoppable. Even Ichibei's Bankai can't do anything to stop him, and with Squad Zero left in shambles, Yhwach has a clear path to the Soul King. It all certainly looks cool, but the outcome of this fight was never in doubt, so it seemed silly to leave it as a season-long cliffhanger.

Beyond that, there's nothing else to say here except that it's more Bleach. While I've had a bit more fun with the animated version of this final arc than I did with its manga counterpart and got a pretty good kick out of the first season, the second reminded me of why I wasn't too big a fan of this final arc in manga form as it's just been one long stream of fights that are largely carried by lore and rule of cool, which is fun in chunks, but exhausting on a week to week basis, even with how much the anime has managed to condense some of the fights. With Yhwach having seemingly achieved his goal, it seems like things might get moving again storywise. Still, even with my vague recollections from reading this arc a decade ago, I know that we're nowhere close to the end here, so there's bound to be a few more wrinkles on the path to his final showdown with Ichigo.

As much as I have my complaints about how the plot is playing out, visually, this looks fantastic. Tomohisa Taguchi and Hikaru Murata and their team at Pierrot Films are doing a great job translating everything great and stylish about Kubo's art into animated form. The visual direction we've gotten here has been the best the franchise has ever offered. The presentation has been enough for me to keep having a good time with it, but with how much of this final arc we have left to go, I am a little worried about whether or not that'll be enough to keep things from feeling dragged out. Regardless, I'm here for the long haul at this point. I'm pretty sure no one who's gotten this far needs me to tell them to watch more Bleach, so if you're here for everything it offers, I'm sure most fans will have as good a time as ever.