Bleach Creator Breaks Silence on the Anime’s Most Shocking Death Yet

Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War has reached the halfway point of the anime’s final season, and the creator has shared a special tribute following the shocking death of the anime’s biggest character to date. This new era of the anime has been making all sorts of adjustments and changes to the final arc from Tite Kubo’s Bleach manga thus far, but the latest episode has made one of the most significant changes yet. Kicking off a strain of events never seen before, the anime is now in completely uncharted territory thanks to a huge sacrifice.

Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War – The Calamity shocked fans when it made a major detour from the original events of Kubo’s original manga version of the events with not only the reveal of a brand new Bankai form for Ichigo, but the episode came to an end with Orihime pushing to a new limit of her power to sacrifice herself to save him from Yhwach. And series creator Tite Kubo has taken to social media to make this death hit even harder with a special tribute sketch for Orihime that you can check out below.

Bleach Creator Pays Tribute to Orihime After Her Death

Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War – The Calamity has reached the halfway point of its final slate of episodes for the anime’s grand finale, and with it saw Orihime using her powers with a ferocity never seen before. Ichigo’s brand new form was clearly not enough to deal with Yhwach’s Almighty power, and Orihime had been pushing herself beyond her bodily limits to heal him as soon as possible. But with the end of the episode, Orihime decides to reject him even more resolutely and seemingly wipes both her and Yhwach out of existence.

It’s yet to be revealed if this was enough to defeat Yhwach, but this is a massive change from the original events of Kubo’s manga. This is a huge detour in the midst of the fight between Ichigo and Yhwach, which had never had a moment like this where Ichigo was able to unleash his final Bankai form. There’s a hope that the anime is planning some major time travel twist as it was always teased that Yhwach had the ability to alter timelines thanks to the true nature of Almighty.

Is Orihime Really Dead in Bleach?

This is such a massive change from Bleach‘s original finale that there’s no real way that Orihime has actually died. Given how the original series ends, and what comes after it, there’s no way that such a key character will not make it to the end of the anime. That’s why there’s a hope that this is all part of Kubo’s plan to extend and further flesh out the anime to make it the most complete version of the final arc. But that remains to be seen as the anime is also far from over with half of its run left to go.

Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War’s final season has been a massive hit with fans, but this brand new episode has elevated the series to a whole new realm of reactions as it revealed that Kubo and the anime’s production team are willing to make massive swings that would go against the conventions of the manga. Now it just remains to be seen whether or not it’s going to be able to ultimately stick the landing.

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