Warning: Contains spoilers for Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War: The Calamity episodes #1-#3.22 years after its conception, Bleach’s final season is almost here. Between the initial decade-long hiatus after the Lost Agent arc and Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War breaking its annual release schedule after part 3, things have certainly been rough for Bleach fans, but the fact that so much love is being put into Bleach’s final arc after the story seemingly faded from relevance is still nothing short of amazing.
Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War part 4, The Calamity, is set to be an amazing conclusion to the series, but there’s still a bit of a wait, as part 4 won’t premiere until July 25, almost a month into the summer anime season. Fortunately, fans can already get a sneak peek at what part 4 has to offer; for the next week, the first three episodes of Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War: The Calamity are playing in theaters as a feature presentation, and for anyone who can see it, there’s no doubt that it will be well worth the wait.
Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War’s final season will be amazing, and one of the biggest reasons why is its visual spectacle. Not only is the artwork as gorgeous as ever, but as seen with fights like Yoruichi vs. Askin and Ichigo vs. Yhwach, the animation and overall direction are as amazing as ever, with how fluid everything looks and how creative the camerawork was, making for some of the most gorgeous animation in the entire franchise.
The incredibly gorgeous visuals of The Calamity especially shine in the original content; in addition to expanding on the powers of Urahara’s Bankai, the fights of Ichigo and Orihime vs. Yhwach and Uryu vs. Haschwalth had tons of content that wasn’t in the manga, and the anime used that as a chance to fill the anime with some truly amazing action and animation to flesh things out. Acclaimed animator Hikaru Murata returned to the director's chair after taking over in part 3, and his work has inarguably gotten even better.
Over two decades after its first episode aired, one of the all-time biggest anime series is finally ending, and its conclusion is just a month away.
One of the major hallmarks of Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War has been its commitment to both respecting the manga’s original vision and expanding on what Tite Kubo originally made, something the staff reiterated in an interview after the screening, and with how great the art and animation are in canon and original scenes alike, it’s more than succeeded at every turn. Part 4 looks to be taking all of that to its logical extreme, and even with just three episodes, it’s poised to be the best season of Bleach in the history of the franchise.
As great as the animation is in Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War: The Calamity, what really ties it all together is the story being told. With everything that’s happened across the first three seasons, Thousand-Year Blood War part 4 has reached the natural endpoint of the anime’s story, and between the characterization of villains like Askin and Haschwalth and how intense the drama of Ichigo and Yhwach’s fight is, it feels like as strong a climax as a person could ask for.
Much of what made the writing so great is once again owed to Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War's original content. Not only did the anime benefit from expanding on the Vizards and especially Orihime in the final battle, but it also greatly expanded on Uryu’s fight with Haschwalth by both coming up with more uses for Uryu’s Vollstandig and giving Haschwalth a new form mirroring Yhwach’s fusion with the Soul King. It expanded on the source material in the best of ways, and it was a perfect showing of what makes Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War so great.
Not only that, but just like in previous seasons, part 4 further fleshed out the narrative by including content from Bleach’s sequel, Can’t Fear Your Own World, which added some much-needed context to Yhwach’s plan and gave Ichigo even more character development. The writing was nothing short of amazing, and with that just being the first three episodes, the rest of the season is bound to be a masterpiece.
It’s been well-documented that a combination of Tite Kubo’s health issues and Weekly Shonen Jump’s gruelling schedule left Bleach’s final arc rather short on content, and while sequel stories and interviews helped flesh things out, it still resulted in the ending feeling rather lackluster. Because of that, Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War has gone to great lengths to flesh out the worldbuilding and character writing of the original manga, much to fans' and critics’ unanimous joy, and just from the preview screening, The Calamity will do the best job of that yet.
Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War won’t come back until the end of July, but just from the preview screening, it’s already anime of the year material. Not only is the animation and overall direction shaping up to be the best the anime has ever put out, but when combined with the amazing story being told and how much it’s expanding on the manga, it’s an incredible experience for old and new fans alike, and with how long it took to reach this point, that’s everything a Bleach fan could ask for.
During Bleach’s original run, Bleach became incredibly divisive among fans and critics for how both the anime and the manga were handled, and in the decade that followed, it has become increasingly common for people to write it off as garbage. Some people even go so far as to say anime like Jujutsu Kaisen, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, and even Boruto: Naruto Next Generations, of all things, should replace Bleach in the “Big 3” of anime, and that level of constant disrespect has been nothing but disappointing to watch.
As frustrating as the disrespect levied at Bleach can be, the phenomenal work put into Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War has proved its worth as a story time and time again, and with the amazing writing and visual spectacle promised by part 4, that will soon become even harder to deny. Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War is perfectly poised to bring the series to an utterly grand finale after 22 years, and it will be great to watch it all unfold from July 25 onward.
