PowerRankings

One cited deathBleach · 2016
Does this death move the ranking?

Upset

The lower-ranked entity killed the higher-ranked one. The record and the ladder disagree.

Ichigo Kurosaki vs Yhwach

The killerIchigo KurosakiBleach · rank 2
1 places
The victimYhwachBleach · rank 1

The ladder holds, and two separate things hold it. The first is staging: the cut required a blade remade twice, a Quincy firing a shot whose only purpose was to interrupt the target's own ability, and the previous villain of the series physically keeping him in place. Remove any one and the record does not contain this outcome, so reading a coordinated finish as a one-on-one result measures the wrong thing. The second is that the manga declines to close it. The bisection is on the page and is not in doubt. What happens afterwards is left deliberately unresolved — his reiatsu is shown persisting, and the epilogue does not say whether he is dead, sealed or waiting. This page records the blow as landed and stops there, because stopping there is what the source does.

The connecting record

shownBleach · 2016

Ichigo Kurosaki killed Yhwach in Bleach.

Aizen held him, Uryu's arrow landed first — and the ending leaves the rest open

What each of them is ranked on

The killer · Ichigo Kurosaki · rank 2

Substitute Shinigami — manga

MangaClassic animeBlood War animecomicanimationfilm

He cuts Yhwach in half, which is the result the entire final arc is built toward and the only clean finish anybody gets against the tier above. It is second rather than first because of what it took to arrange: a blade reforged twice, a Quincy carrying stolen power, and the man who spent a hundred chapters as the previous villain holding the target still. Ichigo lands the blow. He does not do it alone and the arc never pretends he did.

  • shownBleach · Thousand-Year Blood War arc

    Bisects Yhwach with his reforged Bankai. — 2016

  • shownBleach · Arrancar arc

    Defeats Ulquiorra Cifer in a transformed Hollow state. — 2009

Ichigo Kurosaki on the Bleach ladder

The victim · Yhwach · rank 1

The Father of the Quincy — manga

MangaBlood War animecomicanimation

He takes the Soul King out of the structure of the world and installs himself in the gap, which is the largest completed act anybody in this franchise manages. Before that he goes through a Gotei captain-commander who has been the strongest thing in Soul Society for a thousand years. His ability to choose which future occurs is the part to be careful with — it is explained far more often than it is demonstrated, and the explanations are doing work the panels do not.

  • shownBleach · Thousand-Year Blood War arc

    Absorbs the Soul King and takes its place. — 2015

  • shownBleach · Thousand-Year Blood War arc

    Defeats Genryusai Yamamoto in direct combat. — 2013

  • statedBleach · Thousand-Year Blood War arc

    The Almighty is described as showing and altering all futures. — 2016

Yhwach on the Bleach ladder

What this does not settle

One death in one work. It is the only place the record puts these two in the same room, and it is evidence about that meeting and nothing wider — not a general matchup, not a rematch, and not a ranking of its own.

The ladder above it is argued from everything either of them has been shown doing; this page is argued from one citation.

Where the two disagree, the disagreement is the point, and it stays visible rather than being resolved by whichever of them happens to be on this page.