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During the Jump Festa 2026 panel for Bleach anime, a video message from author Tite Kubo was played for the attendees after new information regarding the upcoming cour 4 of the Thousand Year Blood War arc’s adaptation was revealed.
In his message, Kubo gave updates on the progress of the upcoming cour, which will also be the final instalment of the Bleach anime adaptation.
The author revealed that he was “heavily involved in absolutely everything” regarding cour 4 of the anime, noting that he has finished supervising the storyboards and that the overall production was pretty much completed at this point.
Furthermore, he added that the voice recording for the upcoming cour was also halfway done.
“Well, regarding Kashintan [The Conflict], at this point, my supervision of the storyboards and such for the entire run is pretty much completely finished. And, the voice recording is also half done—we have turned the corner on that. I am heavily involved in absolutely everything, and I think it is shaping up to be something good,” Kubo said.
The author elaborated more on the dubbing aspect in his message on Klub Outside. He noted that the dubbing session which took place last week was the final one for this year. He also added that due to the scheduling, the final episode of cour 4 was recorded first.
“Because of production scheduling, we ended up recording the final episode first, so the studio had this unexpectedly ‘final episode’ kind of atmosphere. Everyone felt a bit floaty and out of it, it was kind of funny,” a translation of his message read.
Coming back to his Jump Festa video message, Kubo acknowledged the high expectations fans held for the final cour of the Thousand-Year Blood War arc. He particularly hoped that a scene featuring Toshiro Hitsugaya in the upcoming episodes would be executed well. While the author did not specify which scene he was referring to, fans were quick to point out that this could be one where the character finally reveals his true Bankai.
Kubo also reiterated that Cour 4, like the previous ones, too will have original content which will expand on the source material, and this was something that he was particularly interested in.
“There is some [anime] original content this time, so that is the part I am personally most interested in,” Kubo said.
In addition to his above involvement, the author also coined the title of the fourth cour – “Kashintan”. While the name has been localized to “The Conflict” in English version, a breakdown of the kanji translates the title to – “A Tale of the Advancing Calamity.”
The voice actors who were present during the stage event revealed that Kubo did the calligraphy for the Thousand Year Blood War arc text in the key visual, and he also came up with the catchphrase for the KV called ” To those once called Calamities.”
The Bleach panel at Jump Festa had revealed that the final cour of TYBW will release in July 2026.
The first cour of Bleach: TYBW aired in 2022, more than a decade after the anime had gone on a hiatus. Cour 2 and Cour 3 of TYBW released in the following years, chronicling the story of the Quincy leader Yhwach and his followers trying to take over the Soul Society, with Ichigo and the other Soul Reapers trying to put a stop to his plans.
Thousand Year Blood War is the final arc of the Bleach manga written and illustrated by Tite Kubo. The manga, which originally ran in Weekly Shonen Jump from 2001 to 2016, has over 130 million copies in circulation.
Source: Comic Natalie
