Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War

Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War (BLEACH 千年血戦篇, Burīchi: Sennen Kessen-hen), also known as Bleach: The Blood Warfare, is a Japanese anime television series based on the Bleach manga series by Tite Kubo and a direct sequel to the Bleach anime series. In March 2020, Weekly Shōnen Jump and "Bleach 20th Anniversary Project & Tite Kubo New Project Presentation" livestream announced that the manga's last story arc, "Thousand-Year Blood War", would receive an anime project. In November 2020, it was announced that the anime project would be a television series. The trailer and visual for the series were revealed at the Jump Festa '22 in December 2021.

The series is directed by Tomohisa Taguchi and premiered on TV Tokyo in October 2022. The series will run for four cours with breaks in between. The first cour, The Thousand-Year Blood War, consists of 13 episodes and ended in December of the same year. The second cour, subtitled The Separation, began airing on July 8, 2023.

Tatsuya Kitani performed the opening theme "Scar" (スカー, Sukā), while SennaRin performed the ending theme "Saihate" (最果て, "The Farthest Reaches"); In addition, Kitani also performed the special ending theme for the first episode, "Rapport", which was previously used as the main theme song for the series' 20th Anniversary Exhibition, Bleach EX. For The Separation cour, the opening theme is "Stars" by w.o.d., while the ending theme is "Endroll" by Yoh Kamiyama.

In October 2022, Viz Media announced that the series would stream on Hulu in the United States and Disney+ internationally outside of Asia; Viz Media's English dub of the series began streaming on Hulu in November of the same year.

Storyline

The Wandenreich, a group within the Quincy lead by the Evil Yhwach, will finally rise to strike back against the Soul Respers and the Soul Society, resulting in an all-out war between the two factions. The world of the Soul Society is also under siege from a dramatic imbalance of Hollows being destroyed. All of this conflict sends Ichigo back into action, forcing him to become stronger in order to face his greatest challenge yet.