The Small Detail in the BLEACH TYBW Part 3 ED You Missed

The following contains heavy, plot-shattering spoilers for BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War, available on Hulu and Disney+.

BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War Part 3 is well underway and, like the cours before it, it features an immensely dazzling opening and ending sequence that cleverly reflects the events taking place over the course of the season. Part 3’s ending theme is “Monochrome” performed by suisoh, and in the 6th episode, Yhwach successfully assimilated the Soul King and completely reformed the Royal Palace into a stronghold that demonstrates his ideals as the bastion of a new world – a true world.

Fans who paid attention to the ending of BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War Part will have noticed something different about the ending sequence from episode 6 onward, but it may have slipped beyond the eyes of others. The angel is in the details.

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Part 3 Ending: New World Edition

A Brilliant Easter Egg

The original ending to BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War Part 3 can be found above for ease of reference. The first image that one sees in the ending is the juxtaposition of Yhwach’s Welt on the left with the ruined Seireitei, complete with the blood-red sky, shown on the other side as if they are standing back-to-back. This is a reference to the fact that the Wandenreich hid in the shadows of Soul Society, but since the invasion, their existence has come to light, which is why Welt is on the sunny side of the image and Soul Society on the dark side.

As soon as suisoh’s vocals kick in, the image shifts to Yhwach, post the activation of The Almighty, which almost gives the impression that we should associate what is said with him. After Yhwach, we get similar close-ups of Uryū and then Ichigo before we see shards of a shattered crystal – the one that once imprisoned the Soul King. Some are tinged with an amber colour while others are tinged with a light blue, set against a backdrop of a strange staircase that separates Ichigo and Uryū, who replace the crystal shards that correlate with the colour with which they are associated. Uryū faces the left, where Welt was, while Ichigo faces the right.

The sequence begins a montage of still images of other characters, starting with Captain-Commander Kyо̄raku and his Lieutenant, Nanao Ise, panning across the mangled backdrop of the Seireitei as more Gotei 13 officers appear, each of them in various poses from the throes of combat, including Nemu Kurotsuchi, Mayuri, Byakuya, Renji, Kenpachi, Rukia. Then the members of Yhwach’s Schutzstaffel appear in a similar fashion with noticeably colder colours than those the Shinigami got, which continues to communicate the concept of polarity that has been a core tenet of the final arc of BLEACH.

There are moments where the crystalline fragments reflect the faces of various Shinigami or Quincies, but what’s significant about these shards is that they come from the bifurcated remains of the Soul King. What’s interesting about the ending sequences throughout the Thousand-Year Blood War arc is that they’re always intimately connected to the major events or relevations that take place in their respective part. Put simply, there are two ending sequences, with the aforementioned elements showing up one way before Yhwach creates Wahr Welt, then a different way after Uryū defeats Renji. The second ending sequence features the same imagery as before but reversed, and there’s a perfectly good reason: it is a reflection of Uryū Ishida’s Schrift.

Sternritter A – The Antithesis

Event Reversal On a Destiny-Altering Scale

You’re probably wondering when Uryū’s epithet was revealed in the anime. It wasn’t. In the anime, we’ve seen Uryū make use of the associated ability a number of times already, notably in the first episode of Part 3, titled “A”, when Uryū managed to remove himself from the fate-sealing abilities of Shutara Senjumaru’s Bankai and kill her instantly where the other members of the Schutzstaffel had been felled. Uryu Ishida is Sternritter A – The Antithesis, and the Schrift’s ability is similar to Jugram Haschwalth’s B – The Balance in that it is concerned with event or concept reversal, but according to Yhwach, this Schrift rivals the future-altering, omnipotence of The Almighty.

The Antithesis allows Uryū to reverse the events that have transpired between two targets, like how he enabled Yhwach to escape Kirio Hikifune’s Cage of Life by swapping the Quincy King with the Quincy medallion he threw from the cage, or how he wrapped Senjumaru in her own cloth of fate, or, how he reversed the relationship between the various parts of the ending sequence, making what came before come after and vice versa.

If Uryū sustains heavy damage from an enemy, he can swap the event (the injuries caused by an enemy) between the targets (himself and the enemy), but it is important that the targets between whom he’s reversing an event need to be connected to each other by that event. So, as powerful as the ability is, he can’t simply injure himself and send those wounds over to his enemies. The ending sequence going backwards illustrates the concept behind Uryū’s Schrift, and interestingly, the part of the sequence where Ichigo, Uryū and Yhwach come into view and open their eyes also depicts Yhwach’s belief that it can undo The Almighty, because the reversal leads to Yhwach’s eyes being closed once again, a metaphor for returning to a state prior to his awakening. The Soul King’s crystal can also be seen repairing itself in the “True World” version of the ending theme.

Bleach: Thousand Year Blood War