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 Bleachmanga series by Tite Kubo and a direct sequel to the Bleach anime series that ran from 2004 until 2012. In March 2020, Weekly Shōnen Jump and "Bleach 20th Anniversary Project & Tite Kubo New Project Presentation" livestream announced that the manga's final story arc, the "Thousand-Year Blood War", would receive an anime project.[1] In November 2020, it was confirmed that the anime project would be a television series adapting the entirety of the arc. The trailer and visual for the series were revealed at the Jump Festa '22 in December 2021.[2][3]
The anime series is directed by Tomohisa Taguchi and premiered on TV Tokyo in October 2022.[4][5][6][a] The series will run for four cours with off-season breaks in between.[6][7] The first cours, titled The Blood Warfare, consists of 13 episodes and ended in December of the same year.[8][9][b] The second cours, titled The Separation (訣別譚, Ketsubetsutan), also consists of 13 episodes and was broadcast from July to September 2023.[10][11][c] The third cours, titled The Conflict (相剋譚, Sōkokutan), premiered in October 2024.[13][14][15]
For The Blood Warfare cours, the opening theme song is "Scar [ja]" (スカー, Sukā), performed by Tatsuya Kitani, while the ending theme song is "Saihate" (最果て, lit.'The Farthest Reaches'), performed by SennaRin;[16] in addition, Kitani also performed the special ending theme song for the first episode, "Rapport [ja]", which was previously used as the theme song for the series' 20th anniversary exhibition, Bleach EX.[17] For The Separation cours, the opening theme song is "Stars", performed by w.o.d. [ja],[11] while the ending theme song is "Endroll [ja]", performed by Yoh Kamiyama.[18] For The Conflict cours, the opening theme song is "Kotoba ni Sezu Tomo" (言葉にせずとも, lit.'Even if You Don't Say It'), performed by Six Lounge [ja], while the ending theme song is "Monochrome", performed by Suisoh [ja].[14]
In October 2022, Viz Media announced that the series would stream on Hulu in the United States and Disney+ internationally outside of Asia;[19] Viz Media's English dub of the series began streaming on Hulu in November of the same year.[9]
^@BLEACHanimation (November 8, 2021). #ジャンプフェスタ 2022スーパーステージEX『BLEACH』配信決定! [#JumpFesta 2022 Super Stage EX We're going to distribute "Bleach"!] (Tweet) (in Japanese). Retrieved December 12, 2021 – via Twitter.
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