HORN OF SALVATION! GOTEI 13 UPSCALE! Bleach Thousand Year Blood War Episode 43 Spoilers!

In the previous Bleach: Thousand Year Blood War episode, Kisuke Urahara finally reveals his Bankai, Kannonbiraki Benihime Aratame.

Chapter Adapted

Episode 43 is titled, “Blood of my Bone”

Episode 43 will adapt Chapter 658: “Fatal Matters are Cold” (pages 7-17), Chapter 659: “There Will Be Frost” (pages 1-5), Chapter 666: “Dull, Doll, Null” (pages 14-17), Chapter 667: “Bigger, Louder, Stronger”, Chapter 668: “Bigger, Faster, Stronger” (pages 1-4),  and Chapter 675: “Blood of My Bone”, where the episode title is from for a total of 60 pages adapted and 6 chapters chosen.

Altogether, the compilation movie adapted a total of 177 pages or a full volume of content, which is expected for a 67 minute film.

Now this leaves remnants of Chapter 674 onwards yet to be covered for a total of 12 chapters remaining for the 7 episodes.

A More Updated Episode

The movie version was lacking in so many details that it almost looks unfinished.

In the first Gerard fight, we see a lot of necessary additions, such as blood coming out of Gerard’s nape when stabbed by Shinji, Mashiro and Kensei having their auras when they charge towards Gerard, lighting from those auras appearing when Hachi, Love and Lisa make their ambush and finally, a super quick zoom in and out of Gerard as he poses on Kenpachi at the end of the episode.

ANIME-ORIGINAL: Orihime UPSCALE

At the start of the episode, we see Orihime wrest Ichigo from Yhwach’s Black Spiritual Pressure.

Yhwach then makes Orihime kneel down with his Spiritual Pressure, bringing back the old style of presenting Spiritual Pressure that the first two cours have not delivered.

As noted in our preview, the episodic version adds unnecessary effects to an already decent display of the team’s effort to replicate the old style’s Spiritual Pressure effect, primarily by adding additional flaming aura around the area, distorting the visual and making it less subdued.

Despite getting beat up, she stands back up and resists Yhwach’s Spiritual Pressure crush, using her Shiten Koshun to reject Yhwach’s Spiritual Pressure.

This reminds us of Aizen’s comment on her ability reaching the realm of the divine, which Yhwach comments as well, as she is a human who have overstepped her bounds.

The “Can’t Fear Your Own World” light novel has confirmed that Orihime is a Fullbringer and stated that all Fullbringers have fragments of the Soul King, the mutilated, humiliated God of Bleach, who is currently absorbed by Yhwach.

This is a necessary confrontation for Orihime as well as she is facing her progenitor.

Aizen’s Hogyoku was confirmed to also contain fragments of the Soul King, in this case via Rangiku Matsumoto’s soul, which held the Soul King’s Nail, which explains her glance at Gerard Valkyrie, the Heart of the Soul King, in Episode 39: “The Visible Answer”.

Orihime throws back the Spiritual Pressure crush but this does nothing, although he smirks at this, acknowledging the effort and power she holds.

According to one viewer of the movie, this new Orihime scene was instead taken from “Kubo-sensei’s answer at the end of the original art exhibition”.

NEW FORM: hAschwAlth (Almighty Haschwalth)

The anime adds a new form dubbed “hAschwAlth”, capitalizing all the “A’s” in his name to represent the Almighty.

In an interview after the compilation film was done, the chief director Tomohisa Taguchi and author Tite Kubo explained that since Haschwalth lacked the ability to manipulate Reishi, this form was his version of Vollstandig.

In a way, the same can be said of Yhwach absorbing the Soul King to gain a “second form” of sorts and that Vollstandig is tied to the power Yhwach gave the Sternritters anyway.

NEW LORE: Black is Chaos, the Spiritual Pressure of the Soul King

As Ichigo declares his intent to kill Yhwach, Yhwach corrects him, saying that he has much hubris and that to kill Yhwach is to kill the world, finally revealing something that should have been in the manga as well: telling Ichigo about Ichibei’s plan to turn him into the next Soul King.

This is because the Soul King holds the power of Black like Ichibei or rather than his essence and Spiritual Pressure are Black itself, that is to say Chaos, the primordial essence of the universe.

Kubo has already planned out this lore reveal for a long time, as far back as Klub Outside Question No. 149 on July 19, 2021,

Question: Why is the Shihakusho uniform worn by Shinigami black? Is it so that the Monk can give them power in case of an emergency?

Answer: The color was decided upon during the days of the first Gotei generation, and the reason for it was so that “you didn’t have to throw it away every time it got stained in blood”. But the idea regarding the Monk is also nice.

This is how Yhwach starts the question, of why Ichigo is clad in black.

Black is the color of every Soul Reaper’s Shihakusho or their uniforms.

And it so happens that when Ichigo activates Bankai, his Shihakusho represents his Spiritual Pressure as stated in Chapter 382, which was already early foreshadowing of the true nature of Black.

Black is the color of ink and therefore explains why Ichibei, who existed 1 million years ago alongside Adnyeus the Soul King and the five Great Noble ancestors, was able to control the True Names of all Things.

All names hold Black.

Ichibei can control the Black while the Soul King is Black incarnate.

Ichibei controlling Black as the Author with the Pen for a sword also implies that he controls the story, with the Soul King as that story or his ink supply, a supply needed for the world to exist but lacks the control to do so.

And so Ichibei was born to act as the controller via the power of the Pen: Ichimonji.

Now this revelation is massive because it explains the existence of Ichigo Kurosaki’s Final Getsuga Tensho, which was able to weaken a fellow Transcendent like Sosuke Aizen.

This could also go back to Ulquiorra’s Segunda Etapa form because Uryu Ishida noted that his Spiritual Pressure in that form did not feel like Spiritual Pressure and when Yhwach saw Ichibei’s Shikai, Ichimonji, he noticed there was no Spiritual Pressure in it.

When a being notices there is no “Spiritual Pressure” in something, that is code for Transcendence, as shown when Aizen was unable to feel Dangai Ichigo’s Spiritual Pressure.

Ichibei’s Shikai and his very existence transcended Yhwach while the Almighty was sealed away for 999 years due to the same person.

All of these are tied to one phenomenon: access to the power of Black.

As Ichigo makes his counter to Yhwach’s warning, we see Rukia and Renji struggling to get up amidst the rubble left in the wake of Gerard Valkyrie’s fight, a good transition towards their eventual involvement two episodes later.

MODIFIED FIGHT 1: Shinji and Vizards vs Gerard Valkyrie

This whole scene has many necessary alterations for the sake of cohesion.

First, we do see most of their fight, which the anime properly initiated via Episode 40: “My Last Words”, was offscreened like in the manga, but since they initiated the fight and were doing fine, Hiyori’s line to Hachigen was changed from “He’s taken everyone down” to “He made you pee your pants a little, Hachi”, which Hachi denies.

Second, Momo Hinamori remains a witness to the events, unable to do anything as she lets the Vizards do their thing, with her last appearance being where she sees Gerard mow all of the Vizards down with his right arm.

We see four new attacks: first from Shinji using his Shikai, Sakanade, to invert Gerard’s perception, then stab him from behind as a distraction.

This is followed by Rose tying up Gerard’s left arm with his Shikai Kinshara and triggering an explosion with a new attack Tritone, Kensei using his Bankai Tekken Tachikaze and Mashiro attacking with Super Mashiro Kick attacking together.

Then we see the attacks from Hachigen, Love and Lisa that

We also have the confirmed Cero colors for the rest of the Vizard who did not use them.

Previously, we saw Shinji’s Crimson and Mashiro’s Lime-Green Ceros.

For the rest:

Hiyori: Red (fired as a triangular beam from her two hands and mouth, just like in the manga)

Lisa: Blue (fired from the tip of her Shikai, Haguro Tonbo)

Love: Cyan (fired from the handle of his Shikai, )

Rose: Purple (fired from the tip of his Hollow Mask’s beak-like nose)

Hachigen: Pink

Kensei: Orange

However, Shinji’s Cero color has been altered to yellow, to be more in-line with his hair color perhaps rather than the default Crimson of a Hollow Cero or this could be a result of his growth with his Zanpakuto and Hollow powers after resuming his post as Captain of Squad 5.

Furthermore, we see Shinji fire the yellow Cero beam from the guard of his sword.

However, we see in the anime that Gerard pushed the Vizards back with the right, shield-less arm as he charges towards them at basic giant slow speed.

If the Vizards did not stare or wait too long, they could have dodged or moved away but instead, Gerard simply charged back.

This is somewhat dumber than how the manga did it since only Hachigen, Lisa and Love’s assault was shown and those three were just within close proximity.

Unusual End Credits Placement

Interesting, the episode ends 16 minutes in as Ichigo awakens his Half-Hollow form.

It makes sense since that should have been the ending we got but somehow, production really messed the overall flow by making the last four fights of the series happen at the same timeframe and instead after the end credits, we cut to the remainder of the Gerard fight, which lasts another 6 minutes, the longest “post-credits” scene ever.

On a side note, every episode has a highlight character at the start of each ending, similar in concept to Bleach ending theme 3, Hōki Boshi by Younha.

Last episode, it was Kisuke Urahara.

Now it is Orihime Inoue.

MODIFIED FIGHT 2: Toshiro, Byakuya and Kenpachi vs Gerard Valkyrie

Everything plays out exactly as in the manga up until the first time Kenpachi nicks Hoffnung, wherein the anime wanted to show how it affects other people.

Without hindsight, this looks dumb as Toshiro and Byakuya, two intelligent Captains, could see what is happening and figure out it is a bad idea.

However, it was clear the two were trying to use long-ranged attacks to save Kenpachi from certain death, which is actually more of an improvement if anything.

And this is where the episode ends, as it sets up Kenpachi’s proper fight against the Miracle.

Next Episode Poem: Kenpachi Zaraki

“My life is ever-changing…”

We get another Kenpachi Zaraki anime-original poem but interestingly, it is spoken with adult Yachiru Kusajishi’s voice.

This is the Shikai, adult form speaking, not the Bankai, who takes on the appearance of child Yachiru.

Furthermore, we notice this difference through the use of “waga” (my) and therefore “wagahai”, which is normally for older, more formal individuals, while Yachiru uses “watashi”.

Once again, Kenpachi’s only manga poem is never used, which is quite lengthy and philosophical from the short ones he has received.

However, this poem does bring up something potentially relevant for the near future of Bleach.

Some fans have noticed that Kenpachi’s face in Bankai form resembles a butterfly, like the Hell Butterflies that are one of the central mysteries of the upcoming Hell Arc.

Given that Kenpachi also resembles a demon, it is possible that we could see Kenpachi’s connections with Hell.

After all, he was also somehow able to manifest the Bankai form of his Zanpakuto into the physical world without even knowing Nozarashi’s name or Shikai release.

Bleach: Thousand Year Blood War Episode 44 is titled, “The Perfect Crimson”

This will cover the entire Gerard Valkyrie fight, from Chapter 668: “Bigger, Faster, Stronger” (pages 5-17) to Chapter 671: “The Perfect Crimson 2”

This means Episode 45 will lead to the Horn of Salvation and even True Bankai content.

Episode 44 will be released on August 15, 2026.

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