Bleach Readies for Its Grand Finale With a Major Time Travel Twist

Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War is quickly approaching the anime’s grand finale, and the final season has brought the series back to its official timeline with a major time travel twist in the latest episode. Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War has been the most complete version of Tite Kubo’s original Bleach finale yet as the creator has been working closely with the anime’s production team on all of the episodes so far. That has resulted in some major twists and turns that even the most dedicated fans were not able to predict.

Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War – The Calamity had shocked fans with a major turning point in the final season as it went completely outside of the bounds of the manga’s original story, and revealed a major death that never happened in the original series. But the latest episode took things even further and used the true power within Yhwach’s Almighty ability to basically reverse all of those events and return the anime back to the manga’s canonical timeline. It’s like Episode 5 never even happened.

Bleach Uses Time Travel for New Canon Ending

Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War – The Calamity Episode 5 took a major turn from how the manga originally ended with the reveal of a brand new Ichigo form and Orihime sacrificing herself in order to defeat Yhwach. This seemed to open up the anime to a whole new kind of ending, but that was revealed to not be the case with the start of Episode 6. Yhwach revealed himself to not only be totally fine, but his Almighty ability basically made it to where that episode never really happened. It’s a timeline that he altered completely.

Yhwach reveals that the true power of Almighty is not to see the future, but it’s to alter it in any way that he wishes. He basically explains that he can see multiple timelines and alter them to a way that makes him the victor, and it completely takes Ichigo by surprise. He breaks Ichigo’s Bankai before he can fully activate it, and that’s what happened in the original manga release. This episode essentially returns the anime back to its faithful adaptation of Kubo’s manga, but it’s even more faithful thanks to the fact we’ve seen such a reality warping of Almighty in use. We watched as he literally overwrote the events of that previous episode.

This Makes Bleach’s Finale Hit That Much Harder

One of the major criticisms of Bleach’s original finale was the fact that fans were aware that Kubo had to rush through the final chapters of the series because Shueisha was looking to end the manga sooner rather than later. It led to a final fight between Ichigo and Yhwach that felt lacking, and when Yhwach breaks Ichigo’s Bankai in the original, it felt like another way to cut the fight short. But now that the anime has not only revealed that Bankai in full, and used Yhwach’s power to overwrite that future, it’s a greater demonstration of Yhwach’s godly ability.

It’s a change that uses the criticism of Bleach‘s original finale, and the fact that Kubo has been working so closely with the anime team to ultimately make this the best version of the final fight thus far. With only a few more episodes left before it all comes to an end, there’s a hope that this anime is going to be able to stick the landing after reaching such heights thus far. Make sure you catch up with it all now streaming with Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ in the meantime.

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