The Bleach anime has officially reached its end. Episode 50 of Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War - The Calamity aired in Japan yesterday, wrapping up the final arc of Tite Kubo's manga and bringing the TV anime that started back in 2004 to a close after 22 years.
VIZ Media, the English publisher of the manga, marked the occasion on X with a message thanking fans who followed the series from the very start. Check it out down below:
The finale also came with a special ending sequence created just for the last episode. VIZ Media shared it shortly after the broadcast, calling it "The number one ending from the number one finale!" You can watch it here:
A Finale Fans Waited Over A Decade For
The original Bleach anime premiered on TV Tokyo in October 2004 and ran for 366 episodes before ending in 2012, well before Kubo finished the manga. That left the Thousand-Year Blood War arc, the manga's final storyline, unadapted for a decade. Fans spent years asking for it, and the announcement of Thousand-Year Blood War in 2020 was a huge moment for the fandom.
Thousand-Year Blood War premiered in October 2022 and was split into four parts. The first cour was followed by The Separation and The Conflict, before The Calamity took the story through the final war against Yhwach and the Wandenreich. Recent delays pushed the last two episodes of The Calamity to late October, and the anime dropped its last trailer with only two episodes left before the big finish.
During its original run, Bleach stood alongside Naruto and One Piece as one of the so-called Big Three of Weekly Shonen Jump, and its anime was a fixture of late-night TV blocks around the world. Songs like "Asterisk" and "Ichirin no Hana" became anime staples, and characters like Ichigo, Rukia, Byakuya, and Kenpachi turned into some of the most recognizable faces in the medium. That history is a big reason why the final episode landed with so much weight for longtime fans.
The Team Behind Thousand-Year Blood War
Studio Pierrot, which produced the original series, returned to animate the final arc. Tomohisa Taguchi led the production as director, and Shiro Sagisu came back to compose the music, bringing back many of the themes fans have associated with the series since the 2000s. Kubo was also heavily involved in the new anime, contributing new material and designs that expanded on scenes from the manga.
The voice cast saw many of the original actors return. Masakazu Morita has voiced Ichigo Kurosaki in Japanese since the very first episode, while Johnny Yong Bosch has played him in English for just as long. VIZ Media shared videos from both actors following the finale, and the official account later posted a short message that hinted at the final episode's closing moments.
Where To Watch Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War
In the US, Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War streams on Hulu, with the subtitled version of each episode arriving shortly after it airs in Japan. The English dub runs on a delay behind the Japanese broadcast, so dub viewers will get to the finale a little later than everyone else.
The original 366-episode series is also widely available on streaming, and with the anime now completely finished, anyone who never got around to watching Bleach can now experience the entire story from Ichigo's first encounter with Rukia Kuchiki to the very last chapter.
Fans who want more of Soul Society will still have somewhere to go. The mobile game Bleach: Mirrors High is set to launch this week with an original story set after the war, and Kubo's world remains one of the most popular in Shonen Jump history.
Did the Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War finale live up to the wait, or did you want the anime to keep going even further?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.