Bleach Just Made a Huge Change to Its Original Finale & Shocks With Big Death

Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War has entered truly uncharted territory with its newest episode as it has made a huge change to how the manga’s final arc originally played out, and it’s shocked even further with a big death. Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War – The Calamity is now halfway through its run of final episodes for the long running anime franchise, and Ichigo Kurosaki is in the midst of his biggest fight in the series to date. And dealing with Yhwach has been much tougher than Ichigo ever could have prepared for.

While previous seasons of Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War made changes to Tite Kubo’s original Bleach manga to further flesh out its events, the newest episode of the anime has made some of the most significant changes to the story yet. Not only did Ichigo unlock a brand new Bankai form not seen in the original series, but this change ultimately resulted in the death of one of the franchise’s biggest characters, Orihime Inoue, as she made the ultimate sacrifice to save Ichigo from Yhwach.

Orihime Sacrifices Herself to Save Ichigo

Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War – The Calamity made a huge change to how this final fight between Ichigo and Yhwach originally played out in Tite Kubo’s original manga version of the events. In Episode 45, Ichigo is able to unleash his Bankai form that turns him into “Blood Chains Ichigo.” This is a completely new form created by Kubo himself, and was never seen in the manga. This change then completely alters how the rest of the episode goes as Yhwach is finally on the back foot for a while. But then he overwhelms Ichigo, and Orihime is pushed to her breaking point.

She had been brought to the fight to support Ichigo against Yhwach as her abilities to reject reality had been a major help against Yhwach’s Almighty power, and that was ultimately what helped saved Ichigo. Yhwach had killed both Orihime and Ichigo many times with all kinds of fatal blows, and only her abilities were enough to save them from the brink of death. But she makes the ultimate sacrifice towards the end of the episode as Yhwach tries to fully wipe out everyone.

Did Bleach Really Kill Off Orihime Before the Anime’s Finale?

Orihime then pushes her power beyond a level never seen before and is able to jump in front of Yhwach to save Ichigo one last time. The both of them are wiped out completely, and this seems to be the death of one of the series’ biggest characters. But that also can’t be the case considering how fans have known how Bleach really ends for ten years at this point. Orihime can’t be fully dead unless the creator is making a massive swerve that would take even long time fans by surprise.

In the original events of Bleach’s final arc, this never happens as Ichigo never fully gets to reveal his new Bankai. Yhwach stops him before he was able to do so claiming that the Almighty power gave him the ability to see how big of a deal that form was in another kind of timeline, and that might end up happening here. This just might be a doomed timeline that will hopefully never come to pass. Or Orihime really has died. We’ll just have to see as Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War continues to air its final episodes with Hulu and Hulu on Disney+.

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