Bleach character explained: Yhwach's BROKEN POWER

Bleach character explained: Yhwach’s BROKEN POWER

Imagine the perfect power that is dubbed as the all-knowing and all-powerful. I am, of course, describing Yhwach’s ability, the Almighty. Fans have also described this ability to be the most broken power within all of Bleach. For a long time, I have wanted to break down and analyze Yhwach’s signature ability, which has saved his life multiple times.

Admittedly, it had started to become frustrating to see him repeatedly come up with the perfect counter to any opponent. After all, it was the Almighty which saved him from being defeated by Ichibe and Ichigo. This ability was pretty confusing because there is such a lack of understanding when it comes to this power, so it’s pretty easy to assume that the ability is an enigma every time it was used.

And it’s for this reason that in this blog, I will explain how the Almighty works, speaking about its strengths and any weaknesses that it may have. And hopefully, by the end of this blog, I will go over some exclusive information about the Almighty that we learn about within the Can’t Fear Your Own World light novels. So definitely make sure you stick around till the end of this blog.

If Yhwach had such an incredible ability, then how was it that he was defeated by Head Captain Yamamoto over a thousand years ago? We can assume that he did not have the powers of the Almighty during the first war between the Quincy and the Shinigami, or he may have had a very unrefined version of this power.

We know that he had split his soul into several pieces in order to power the Sternritter, and this had drained his power, and it may have been the reason why he was unable to use the Almighty against Yamamoto back then. After he returns from being sealed, it seems like Yhwach has so much more power now that he could defeat anyone with this Almighty ability.

Literally the very second that he becomes bored with the enemy, he decides to defeat them with this power. This was the case when he was battling against Ichibe. The very second that he had gotten bored and no longer wanted to entertain him, he literally had blown him up thanks to the Almighty.

Yhwach was sealed for over a thousand years, and it had taken 900 years for his heart to be restored, 90 years for him to regain his intellect, nine years to regain his power. Additionally, we learn in chapter 610 that if he were to have opened his eyes, meaning use the Almighty before the final nine years were up, then he may have lost the ability to control the maximum potential of his power.

By taking this risk, he would have lost control and taken back all of the power from his most loyal subordinates. It is only once his power is properly restored that Yhwach finally regains his full strength. Upon activating the ability, he gains two irises and pupils in both of his eyes. We learned that the Almighty ability is shared between Yhwach and his right-hand man, Hashwad.

During the day, it is held by Yhwach, and during the night, Hashwad controls it while he is asleep. In chapter 614, after activating the Almighty in front of Ichigo and the others, he states that his eyes appear different because they now see everything, and they are the proof of a true Quincy. He tells Ichigo that he is aware that they had met Ichibe before coming to confront him, he knows that they had helped resurrect him, and that Ichibe had talked them into coming here.

He reveals he has foreseen everything that is about to happen, as he knows that Ichigo would show up to challenge him, and that it would be too late for him to prevent the death of the Soul King. He had prior knowledge of all of this thanks to the Almighty, so how does this broken ability work? How is it that Yhwach is able to see into the future and know about the outcome of events prior to them unfolding? The Almighty allows Yhwach to see into the future, but this is not a linear future.

Bleach character explained: Yhwach's BROKEN POWER

In fact, he can see multiple different futures that have occurred through different outcomes in the present. After he is able to see his desired future, he chooses that timeline and brings it to the present. He had done exactly this to counter Ichigo’s new Bankai, which he had admitted was far too formidable and had to be taken care of immediately.

By using the Almighty, he had selected a timeline where he had broken Ichigo’s new Bankai, and he brought this to the present, thus explaining why Ichigo’s Bankai immediately broke after activation in chapter 677. He describes being able to see the future with the analogy of each future being like a grain of sand that is swept away by the wind. Each grain represents an isolated future, in other words, a possible outcome.

He is able to watch over all of the grains of sand from a higher plane, and using this knowledge, he is able to perfectly counter his opponents and already be aware of any actions that they may take against him. This is just one aspect of the Almighty that Yhwach reveals. In chapter 678, he reveals that the true power of the Almighty is to alter the future into any outcome that he desires.

He demonstrates this power by setting up traps against Ichigo and proving to him that he is aware of his every move, thanks to his power. He is even able to attack his opponents before they realize that they have been hit. He is also able to bypass Orihime’s shields, allowing him to strike Ichigo, demonstrating that he can overcome any defensive abilities or counter-attacks. In chapter 684, he uses the Almighty to rewrite the future in which he dies, allowing him to effectively prevent his own death.

Only Yhwach is able to use this aspect of the Almighty, as Hashwad explains in chapter 675, that he is only borrowing the powers and thus is unable to use the full extent of them. The Almighty allows Yhwach to give power to others as well as being able to take them away too. He bestows power onto others by sharing a piece of his soul with them.

This results in enhancing the life of that individual. In the same vein, he can also steal these powers back from others by having the pieces of his soul return to him. This happens automatically when those that he shares his soul with die, or he can take the powers back by force using his ability, Ashwanen.

When he sees into the future, he is able to understand what happens in those futures as long as his vision is not impaired. He can change the future by moving from one possible future to another. Johobak describes the Almighty as being able to rewrite the future, and we are able to understand that he does so by altering an event within the present, which will directly result in his desired future.

People get confused by this because Yhwach is not actually changing the future in the conventional way that we know of, which is by changing the present directly. He is, in fact, affecting the present by altering the future. He is jumping to another future that has his desired outcome, which explains how he is able to negate almost any power that is used against him.

Adding to this, Yuhobak is able to understand how an ability works, and he is then able to negate the effects of it, meaning that it can no longer harm him. The aspect of the Almighty that allows him to see into every possible future is reliant upon his eyesight. However, this power appears to not work on the Soul King and his body parts, as well as Udyu, because he has the ability called the Antithesis.

So, if a power exists that can affect Yhwach’s eyesight, then this will prevent him from being able to see into the future, thus explaining why Eisen’s Kyokasugatsu was so effective against the Almighty. Speaking of ways to overcome the Almighty, let’s now turn our attention towards the weaknesses of this broken ability.

Bleach character explained: Yhwach's BROKEN POWER

One of the most glaring weaknesses of the Almighty is when it swaps between Yhwach and Hashwad, it becomes weaker when it is wielded by Hashwad, as he is unable to change the future with it. Busby had also stated in Chapter 630 that by killing Hashwad when he is in possession of the Almighty, it will destroy the ability. Another weakness of the Almighty is that the Soul King and his body parts, like MiMi Hagi, are unable to be affected by it, which explains why he did not foresee Mimi Hagi appearing to restart the Soul King.

Unlike I just mentioned, anything that affects the perception of Yhwach will affect the power of the Almighty because this power is reliant upon Yhwach’s five senses being intact. When Kyokasugatsu is used against him, it affects the Almighty and prevents him from being able to predict that Ichigo would have struck him from behind, delivering a fatal blow. This would have been enough to end that battle if Yhwach didn’t change the future in which he dies.

Yuha’s power is also affected by any power that has the ability to alter the past. After he changes the future to break Ichigo’s new Bankai, it ends up being restored by Tsukushima, who has the power to change the past. Additionally, Udyu’s ability, the Antithesis, is able to also overcome the Almighty, as it appears to work by being able to swap events that have already occurred between two targets. The biggest weakness of the Almighty is the Silver of Stillness, which forms like a blood clot within the heart of any victim of Aswanen.

If this silver makes contact with the blood of the Caster of Aswanen, then it will temporarily disable its power, giving anyone a perfect opportunity to defeat Johobak while his powers are nullified, thus stopping him from altering the future in which he dies. Now, within the Khan for your own world, the light novels, we learned that the Almighty was, in fact, a key ability of the Soul King. This power ended up being inherited by Johor Bach, similar to Yuha.

This power had allowed the Soul King to be all-knowing and all-powerful. It was because of this power that the Soul King was aware of the future. We also learned that Ichibe and Yhwach had assumed that the Soul King was aware of his own death millions of years before it had happened. The version of the Almighty that the Soul King had possessed was powerful enough to allow the ancestors of the five Great noble families to split the singular world into three separate Realms of Hueco Mundo, the Human World, and the Soul Society.

It literally was responsible for creating the cycle of life and death. After being imprisoned as the linchpin of reality, it was the power of the Almighty which regulated the souls that flow between the separate worlds. Without the Sulking or the Almighty, the balance of souls will be lost and the worlds would merge into one.

Lastly, when the Almighty is activated, it makes a maximum of three pupils per eye when used by Yhwach, but we see that it makes four pupils appear within the eyes of the Soul King. This leads me and others to believe that the Soul King was in possession of a superior version of The Almighty.

So we’ve now reached the part of the blog where I want to hand over the discussion to all of you. What did you think about the Almighty? Did this blog help you to appreciate this power more, or are you still frustrated by the way that it was implemented within the manga? I look forward to reading all of your thoughts, so definitely continue the discussion within the comments, and let me know if there were any parts of the Almighty that I’d forgotten to mention. Lastly, thank you for making it to the end of this blog, and I can’t wait to see you in my next Bleach explained blog.