Memories of an Eternally Living Clan

As Ichigo Kurosaki and his friends comb Karakura Town for the missing Uryū Ishida, the bandaged Quincy collapses in the rain and is found by Yoshino Sōma, who takes him in. The next day she serves him tea and admits she saved him because of his lonely eyes. Yoshino explains that centuries of life have numbed her to the ringing of the town bell and the passage of time, and that she watches humanity from above without ever taking part. Meanwhile, at the Bount Mansion, Jin Kariya gathers his followers and promises that their release from the shadows is near.

Yoshino recounts her past: as a girl she never aged while friends grew old and died, until neighbors branded her a witch and drove her to the brink of suicide, only for a younger Kariya to save her and call her his reason for living. She once believed in an eternal Bount love, but came to see it as an illusion Kariya used to hide his ambition. In the Seireitei, the Eleventh Division learns that Maki Ichinose, who left the squad after Kenpachi Zaraki won the captaincy by slaying Kenpachi Kiganjō, is alive in the Human World, and Kenpachi orders them to leave him be.

Yoshino reveals Kariya's true plan, the Power Hold, to enter Hueco Mundo and make himself a god among the Bount, and vows to stop him. Her real grievance is that Kariya devoured a living human's soul with the same mouth that professed love to her, awakening the human heart she thought long dead. She insists on acting alone and tells Uryū to hide until he heals, but he confesses he stayed because he glimpsed a light of hope in her eyes and wants to help. Outside, Gō Koga approaches the building. This is an anime-original episode, the 74th of the series; a Picture Book segment has a receptionist mistake Hitsugaya for a child.