Bleach: Sennen Kessen-hen

Substitute Soul Reaper Ichigo Kurosaki spends his days fighting against Hollows, dangerous evil spirits that threaten Karakura Town. Ichigo carries out his quest with his closest allies: Orihime Inoue, his childhood friend with a talent for healing; Yasutora Sado, his high school classmate with superhuman strength; and Uryuu Ishida, Ichigo's Quincy rival.

Ichigo's vigilante routine is disrupted by the sudden appearance of Asguiaro Ebern, a dangerous Arrancar who heralds the return of Yhwach, an ancient Quincy king. Yhwach seeks to reignite the historic blood feud between Soul Reaper and Quincy, and he sets his sights on erasing both the human world and the Soul Society for good.

Yhwach launches a two-pronged invasion into both the Soul Society and Hueco Mundo, the home of Hollows and Arrancar. In retaliation, Ichigo and his friends must fight alongside old allies and enemies alike to end Yhwach's campaign of carnage before the world itself comes to an end.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kurosaki, Ichigo Main

Morita, Masakazu Japanese

Ishida, Uryuu Main

Sugiyama, Noriaki Japanese

Urahara, Kisuke Supporting

Miki, Shinichiro Japanese

Zaraki, Kenpachi Supporting

Tachiki, Fumihiko Japanese

Aizen, Sousuke Supporting

Hayami, Show Japanese

Kuchiki, Rukia Supporting

Orikasa, Fumiko Japanese

Hitsugaya, Toushirou Supporting

Park, Romi Japanese

Kuchiki, Byakuya Supporting

Okiayu, Ryoutarou Japanese

Jaegerjaquez, Grimmjow Supporting

Suwabe, Junichi Japanese

Kyouraku, Shunsui Jirou Sakuranosuke Supporting

Ootsuka, Akio Japanese

Negishi, Genki Producer

Tominaga, Yoshihiko Producer

Hijikata, Makoto Producer

Honda, Tasuku Producer

Reviews

Oct 20, 2025

Zamasu_Amasadu

Recommended

In short: the new Bleach is beautiful to look at, but empty of feeling. It's a visual spectacle that forgot the essence that made the anime a masterpiece in the Soul Society and Hueco Mundo sagas.

Visually, the anime is impeccable, no one would argue with that. Pierrot's animation and the use of color and effects elevate Bleach to an impressive technical level. The problem begins when we look beyond the aesthetics: the narrative pace is rushed, the fights lack emotional weight, and Bleach is too concise, stripping away the depth of the characters and the battles.

The Quincy King, the villain who should be one of ... the most menacing presences in the series, is afraid of dying, lol, but he kills a lot of people. If you kill, you have to be ready to die too. The script feels cramped and lifeless. And when we finally reach the ending, what could have been an epic conclusion becomes a confusing sequence of events, with power-ups taking center stage in the fights and little coherence in the development.

Another disappointing point is how the anime attempts to "modernize" Bleach with stylized cuts and cinematic transitions, but lacks the soul that characterized the original. That sense of tension and mystery that permeated older sagas like Soul Society and Hueco Mundo is practically gone.

Reviewer’s Rating: 2

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Apr 15, 2025

ChrissyKay

Mixed Feelings

Coming back to anime after nearly half a decade, I've been excited to catch up. All that time has allowed quality shows to pile up, and near the top of my to-watch list was the supposedly-astounding adaptation of Bleach's Thousand-Year Blood War Arc. I was a massive Bleach fan when I was a teenager. I read the manga all through Soul Society, and I followed the story as the Arancar arc came out, bit by bit. However, by the time Aizen had been sealed up, so had my enthusiasm. After a fascinating start, Bleach had steadily devolved into a smoosh of power-level nonsense, deus-ex power-ups, ... and no meaningful thematic throughlines.

However, what offended me more than all of that, was Bleach's sheer level of predictability. See, I'm actually a big battle shonen fan, and I can forgive most flaws in a good one as long as it doesn't commit the crime of being boring. Bleach, though? Bleach got boring. Every relevant plot point was resolved by a fight. The fight was decided before the outcome based on the direction the story was headed and how important the characters were. The importance of the fight determined how many back-and-forth twists occurred before the inevitable end of the fight. The world of Bleach: its politics, quirks, hierarchies, and more, were all completely irrelevant, and it wasn't worth investing in them because at the end of the day the solution to every major problem boiled down to 'how hard can these guys swing these swords,' with Ichigo's sword being the swingiest and most big. Whenever there was a new power to be had, Ichigo would get it, assembling a collection of unbeatable powers in the dullest way possible: he is fast and can swing big sword strong. Ya kidding? That's it

The only exception is Urahara, who actually had PLANS that DID things to affect the story. But he wasn't around much.

Enter Blood War. I was stoked. No, really. My impression was that this was the arc when Bleach got back on track, its Chimera Ant-style magnum opus which focused on more than just 'how big and strong is Ichigo's sword' and instead developed the bloody and sordid history of Soul Society and all of the generational violence and hatred between the Soul Reapers and the Quincies in a way that was interesting and thought-provoking. There's so much you can do with a story like this! How did these layers of resentment get written into both sides? How does this conflict test the loyalties of those who straddle the line? Maybe the conflict isn't 'the world is ending' this time, but is instead about how to put an end to a millennium of mutual bloodshed? Maybe Ichigo can take a more interesting role: not that of 'big sword swing guy' but instead of diplomat, leaning into Ichigo's character strength of rejecting revenge and anger as motivators and pursuing truth. Maybe we can get more about the captains, and juxtapose them against their predecessors to show how they both still embody the ruthless ideals of the first Gotei 13 while also showing how much of their bloodlust they've actually lost over the years. Maybe we can get more about Quincy society in a nuanced way, and showcase the ways in which it is both superior and inferior to the soul reaper world. Maybe we can have an antagonist who is as sympathetic as they are terrifying. Maybe...

Maybe we can scrap all of that, and do the same shit all over again.

Gah, what a disappointment. The adaptation is beautiful, no doubt, and the quality is super high, but the story is just so freaking boring. Any pretense of nuance is quickly dropped: the Quincy King is just a total piece of shit who everyone hates, the soul reapers are the good guys who had no choice but to stop the crazed Quincy actions, and we quickly find ourselves in the same position as always. There's a super strong guy who needs to be beaten by a guy with a big sword, so Ichigo sets off to go get new better stronger powers while we fill the time until the inevitable sword-swinging showdown with lots of side fights with all the captains and lieutenants and such. Most of the new antagonists are just one-note bit characters with nothing to offer. Most are also raging psychopaths to give the conflicts zero nuance. Any Quincies that are likeable switch sides and join the soul reapers, so that we don't have any interesting conflicts. Long gone are the days of Ichigo versus Zaraki, where both sides were likeable. Now it's just 'what total piece of shit is Renji going to fuck up so that he can look cool?' It's dull, it's repetitive, and I'm over it.

If you liked the Arancar arc, you'll like this one. It's probably a bit better at doing what that arc did. There are a sprinkling of character backstory episodes given throughout, and some of them are kind of interesting. However, if you were like me and that arc's monotony burned you out, I am sorry to say that we are not in uncharted territory. Blood War hasn't finished airing yet, but in 39 episodes it has done nothing to surprise or interest me. Instead, it has done its best to steadily remove every intriguing element so that we can eventually reach our final line-up of important fights between the 'good guys' and the 'crazy genocidal freaks.' Some Blood War. It's just 'let's stop Hitler' written from the Allies' perspective, except Ichigo's repertoire of moves are somehow more dull than trench warfare.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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Jun 4, 2024

Hhirata

Not Recommended

Funny

Beautiful art ... bad history ... bad characters and cringe as hell ...

Bleach : Sennen kessen-hen is the last arc of bleach. The main story is about a normal living guy that has contact with ghosts(???) and shinimigamis, he gets powers and the chaos starts.

This time they put some money on this bs, cause everyone that watched bleach must be kinda old nowadays.

History (1/10) : I´m really a fan of shoujo and shounen ́s histories, but they must be good and bleach is not one of those. History wise is a bs with lots of cliches, hey the good boy is losing ? He gets ... power from his ass and beats the bad guy/a random and more powerful dude appears and beats the crap out of the bad guy...

Hey a good guy is losing ? Ok, he didn't die (cause hell yeah ?) and he goes through a training kinda fast training to beat the bad guy.

And that pretty much resumes bleach, bad guys are pretty bad guys, some ppl on the army of the bad guys join up with the good guys ...

But the bad ones just wanna beat the crap of the good guys and seek power. THE END.

Characters (3/10): Nothing original here, This one is the cring..e naruto, not even good naruto, just plain normal shonen characters with cring..e, and most of the time useless. Genius cringe child ? Mommy and sexy cr..inge ? Crazy and crin..ge ? Fighting spirit cringe ? Old but strong cringe ? Cool and deadly crin..ge ? Beauty but crin..ge ? Small child but crin..ge ? You can find everything you want in bleach ...

Music (8/10): At least they got really good music, if you can go through the cringe parts, characters and history the music is pretty good.

Art (7/10): The photo of this anime is pretty nice ... but the fights are just bad .. Choreography is horrible ... The flashy and shiny things are good, but that's all. Sometimes I forget I was watching an anime or a fashion show. Walk and stop and pose and 180 and walk and leave the catwalk.

Overall (4/10): if i was younger and there ́s few options to watch, maybe this one could remain in my memories , but sorry is too cringe for me ...

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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