Adios, Adyneus! The Most Important Bleach Episode! Bleach Thousand Year Blood War Arc Episode 28 Review!!

This weekend’s episode of Bleach: Thousand Year Blood War arc is nothing short of a masterpiece, combining spectacular animation with Tite Kubo’s poetic and gripping storytelling.

Episode 28 of Bleach: Thousand Blood War Arc is titled, “KILL THE KING”

This episode adapts Chapters 613 to 615 with some essential rearrangements to the content but is prominently anime-original, consisting of a 7-minute fight between Ichigo vs Yhwach and key lore provided by Bleach author Tite Kubo.

Warning: There will be manga spoilers below.

Storyboarding Quality

Chief director of the adaptation, Tomohisa Taguchi takes the helm as the storyboarder and it shows with his creative shots

My favorite example is the ripples that are shown upon the first shaking, which happened after Yhwach stabbed the Soul King and brought him between life and death.

This echoes back to the Cour 2 flashes showing the Soul King as wading in the water with a sword, which we finally see expanded in this episode as three ripples form from the King’s act while Yhwach watches.

His maturation indicates that “time” or “maturity” have passed in this primordial world, which echoes back to the Book of Genesis and the original state of the world

Even the rearrangement of the chapters aligns with the artistic vision of Tite Kubo and Taguchi.

The best example is with how the Soul King Palace events of Chapter 615 are placed in the events of Chapter 614.

Yoruichi uses “Tenshiheisō: Hissakikumoi”/”Heavenly Gifted Armament: Tearing Spider Net” (which received their name for the first time via the anime) to prevent Yhwach from moving but with little effort, the Quncy king burns the reishi wires, which also causes the curtains behind him to catch her and expose the hidden truth, the death of the Soul King being imminent.

Ichigo vs Yhwach

The action highlight of the episode is definitely the fight between Ichigo and Yhwach, which allowed for more flexing between the two parties.

One of the best shots of the episode happens to be the aftermath of Ichigo’s Getsuga Jujisho after the pair smash through the various castles of Squad 0.

The fallout of Getsuga Jujisho is shaped like the eyes of the Soul King, who had four pupils that form a cross-pattern, which is the motif of both Zangetsu and the Quincy.

Though the movesets are limited, with Ichigo using only his True Shikai form’s Getsuga Tensho and Jujisho and Yhwach with his “Sankt Bogen”, the Quincy spells “Qualkreis”, and “Kirchenlied:_Sankt_Zwinger”, there is a reason why.

At first Yhwach was seeing with his normal eyes, which is strange since he just awakened the Almighty,  but suddenly, indicating a new change in that Yhwach can deactivate his Almighty at will, which was seen in the flashback in Episode 24: “Too Early to Win, Too Late to Know”.

Following up on last episode, Yhwach activates the Almighty at exactly 9 minutes, 9 seconds into the episode (the opening theme is counted).

When he uses the Almighty, Yhwach does not use too many specific moves and instead focuses on raw attacks or displacing Ichigo when he does perform them. Although the negative color effect is not used, we can see that some of the scenes seem “cut” out, leading to him grabbing Ichigo’s face and channeling his Reiatsu through “Blut Vene Anhaben”.

Another small but great addition after the 7 minute straight brawl is when Orihime uses her Soten Kisshun to heal Ichigo when he goes after Yhwach again, giving her more to do in the fight against Yhwach and setting up Orihime’s crucial role in the final outcome of the Thousand Year Blood War Arc.

BIGGEST LORE DROP: Adyneus, the Soul King

During the episode, Yhwach casually drops the name of the Soul King and it is “Adyneus”.

“Adyneus” is a variant of the word “Adonai”, as well as “Adonaios”, the Gnostic Archon or divine ruler of the Sun.

We have actually seen the name of the Soul King a bit earlier.

In Episode 25, when Yhwach casts the Auswahlen to empower his Schutstaffel and himself, he invokes this spell:

Raise them! Silver emblems, ashen meadows, circular path buried in light. Eye of agate, tongue of gold, skull cup, coffin of Adnyeus. The object we raise is your heart. Auswählen.

These words are actually descriptors for the Soul King.

EYES OF AGATE- Adnyeus pic.twitter.com/wux0jV4urc

— shonenkon (@shonenkon) October 12, 2024

The eye of Agate references the multicolored Soul King’s eyes, seeing all colors that represent the Reiatsu of every race (Human, Fullbringer, Shinigami, Quincy and Hollow) and being the progenitor of the Fullbringer, Shinigami, and Quincy.

To Yhwach, these eyes are a “mark of a true Quincy”, meaning that Quincy blood really has diluted over the centuries and thus Yhwach is the purest of his kind and thus he uses this to justify his “right” to absorb the life force of all unworthy Quincy.

The tongue of gold could be another Soul King organ that was removed, preventing the Soul King from revealing his true sentiments.

Yhwach’s tongue was silenced by Ichibei during their battle for a time until Yhwach pierced his throat to restore his voice.

The skull cup represents the Brain that was removed, another subtle hint that Gremmy is the Soul King’s Brain and it fits since the Schrift “The Visionary” ties into the Almighty’s reality-warping abilities.

The coffin of Adnyeus is the first hint to the name of the Soul King and might as well be the name of the crystal shell that seals the King.

The coffin also resembles a chrysalis, the term Aizen used when referring to his initial Hogyoku transformation that covered his entire body in white Hollow matter.

His face looks familiar, right?

The visual representation of Auswahlen also aligns with so many themes tying Yhwach, the Soul King, Ichigo and Old Man Zangetsu together.

Old Man Zangetsu hated the rain, which meant despair and surrender and Yhwach’s Auswahlen manifests as rain that takes away spirit energy from its targets, including Ichigo’s mother, a Quincy who died on a rainy day.

The ocean of rain in Ichigo’s inner world was around since Ichigo felt guilty for being responsible for his mother’s death as a kid and would often surface whenever Ichigo was sad.

His mother Masaki was considered the “Sun”, so you can see some parallels there with how both Yhwach and Ichigo drowned in their inner worlds of raining oceans.

The deathless world is an ocean and Yhwach brings down rain upon defeating both Yamamoto and Ichigo on the same first invasion.

EYES OF AGATE- Adnyeus pic.twitter.com/wux0jV4urc

— shonenkon (@shonenkon) October 12, 2024

However, the Auswahlen that wipes out most of Yhwach’s Sternritters, his most devoted Quincy knights, takes the form of Reishi rain that drains their life, even disintegrating them into ashes the same way Yamamoto’s Fire Zanpakuto does.

All of this is to say that the rain are Yhwach’s tears turned into rage and malice towards a father that chose to leave his son and the world to ruin.

How Yhwach Became “Human”

Before incarnating as a human, Yhwach wept as he also had the Almighty and saw the future suffering he would experience and the injustice of his father’s choice.

https://twitter.com/KYUUJOH/status/1845380043456848366

As his father was being mutilated, Yhwach would drown and the anime visualizes Yhwach’s “becoming human” as him drowning in the Primordial Sea and his body morphing into that of a baby that was black.

The color black is associated with Ichibe Hyosube, the leader of Squad 0 and the wielder of Ichimonji, whose ink can erase names and interfere with reincarnation.

Ichibe blotted Yhwach’s divine essence in black ink, erased his name and therefore his divine power, turning him into a human baby with a body covered literally or symbolically in black ink that has taken away his senses.

However, Ichibe could not prevent the Almighty from reawakening as Yhwach managed to regain the Almighty after many centuries.

In Episode 24, we see Ichibe come down to greet Yhwach in Licht Reich to ensure that Yhwach stays in the Human World but in reality, he was also here to seal the Almighty for good using the Left Arm of the Soul King, which was the deciding factor for Yhwach’s first defeat a thousand years ago and thus his sealed state.

Yhwach is basically Jesus in a way. The Soul King feels like a Godhead, with Yhwach as a “part of the Soul King” or at least the “firstborn son of creation” rather than the same God

And like the story of Jesus, Yhwach became man, “for our sake and our salvation”, as his soul was distributed to save people and create miracles.

The bond between the Quincy and their Emperor Yhwach was tied in blood and spirit like a church communion.

Even the ceremony of receiving a Schrift from Yhwach involves drinking Yhwach’s literal blood from a small cup.

Why Only Ichigo Could Kill the King

Although Yhwach stabbed the Soul King, some, even manga fans, are wondering why Yhwach did not finish his father off and manipulated Ichigo to do it instead.

At first, some just brushed it off as Yhwach being evil and wanting to mess with Ichigo but the anime finally gives us a proper explanation.

Yhwach had no power to truly kill his father.

That is because only someone with the Reiatsu of a human, Shinigami, Quincy, Fullbringer and Hollow can break the Soul King’s seal and kill him.

In other words, only another Soul King can kill the original.

This has actually been setup multiple times throughout the anime.

In Episode 7: “Born in the Dark”, when Ichigo fights Yhwach for the first time, you can see Ichigo’s Reiatsu change multiple colors: Yellow as Soul Reaper, Red for Hollow, Blue for Quincy, and Green for Fullbringer.

These four colors would resurface in Episode 17: “Heart of Wolf” when Ichigo undergoes training in Irazu Sando

As we know, Ichigo Kurosaki holds the Reiatsu of a Shinigami, Quincy, Hollow, and Fullbringer through the many circumstances of his life.

In Episode 11, “Everything but the Rain”, we learn that Aizen sent the Hollow White, made from many Shinigami souls like an Asauchi, to test himself and ended up infecting the body of Masaki Kurosaki, a Quincy who would become Ichigo’s mother.

White would be the base for the Zanpakuto Spirit, Zangetsu (White Ichigo), as well as his Hollow powers.

Although he received Rukia’s full powers to become a Shinigami, he would only receive his full Shinigami powers by forging his True Zanpakuto in Oetsu Nimaiya’s forge in the Soul King Palace dimension.

Because of his training with the first Substitute Shinigami Kugo Ginjo, Ichigo awakened his Fullbring abilities.

In the Ryogo Narita and Tite Kubo light novel “Bleach: Can’t Fear Your Own World”, it is established that the Fullbringers gain their Fullbring not from Hollow attacks that happened while in the womb but because they had fragments of the Soul King.

What the Hollow attacks simply do is awaken their spiritual potential as vessels of the Soul King fragments.

This was Ichigo’s purpose in Yhwach’s plans, the whole meaning behind Ichigo as Yhwach’s “son born in the dark”, a title that could also be given to Yhwach as Adnyeus’s son.

Still Silver and Many Setups

As the worlds were collapsing from the death of the Soul King, we check the World of the Living, where we see the characters there feeling concerned over what’s going on.

Two important characters, however, are prepared for action.

One is Ryuken, who is still in his office but he seems to be looking at some metal crumbs or pearls.

This sets up Still Silver, a plot point that was jammed into the endgame quite late, with only Chapter 659: “There will be Frost” and revealing itself in Chapter 682: “The Two Sided World End” when Ryuken and Isshin show up in Warhwelt to deliver the Still Silver arrow to Uryu.

This Still Silver arrow felt like a plot contrivance as we only learned close to the end that it was formed as a clot from every Auswahlen victim and was the only way to momentarily strip Yhwach of his powers.

By having the silver together with Ryuken looking at his family portrait, it allows the audience to understand the connection between Auswahlen, which was cast in Episode 25, which was only 3 episodes ago, and the mysterious silver that seems to be connected to Katagiri, a victim of the Auswahlen.

We also see Jushiro Ukitake directly healing Kenpachi, which was only hinted at in the manga as in Chapter 613: “The Ordinary Peace”, Ukitake came out of an operating room to treat the wounded Captains and seated officers and now we see that Ukitake’s Reiatsu control allows him to heal others with Kaido like Unohana and members of Squad 4.

Mimihagi Poem

The episode ends with a poem showing Jushiro Ukitake’s back along with a mysterious dark substance emerging

“I was once you

Soon, you will become me

I can only pray the lives you carry

Are not a burden to you.”

The voice actor is Hideo Ishikawa, who plays Jushiro Ukitake but it might as well be Mimihagi speaking.

This could be directed to either Ukitake himself or possibly to Yhwach, since the line “the lives you carry” more align to Yhwach bearing the souls of others, which is why he resented the Soul King in the first place, so indeed those lives have become a burden.

It is also possible that Mimihagi, who has gained a will of its own, might be referring to his progenitor, the Soul King and his burden as the linchpin.

Episode 29 is titled, “The Dark Arm” and will be released on October 19, 2024.

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