Rescue Hirako! Aizen vs. Urahara

Urahara and Tessai confront Lieutenant Aizen and his accomplices Gin and Tōsen at the scene of the ruined investigation. A wounded Shinji, newly masked, demands to know what Aizen is doing, and Urahara sees through the claim that Aizen merely stopped to heal the fallen team, concluding that Aizen orchestrated the entire Hollowfication affair. Tessai strikes with Hiryū Gekizoku Shinten Raihō, but Aizen blocks it behind Dankū, and in the ensuing blast the trio vanish.

As Shinji's transformation worsens, Tessai insists Urahara can reverse it and uses forbidden kidō to freeze time and teleport the eight afflicted Shinigami to the Twelfth Division, where Urahara reveals the Hōgyoku and sets to work. By dawn, the effort has failed. Both men are arrested on Central 46's orders, framed for the very experiments Aizen carried out, and told that Aizen never left the Seireitei and has witnesses to prove it. Central 46 sentences Tessai to imprisonment and Urahara to permanent exile stripped of power, and condemns the Hollowfied Shinigami to death.

A masked rescuer breaks into the chamber and frees them. Beneath Sōkyoku Hill, she reveals herself as Yoruichi, having brought the Hollowfied Shinigami and prototype Gigai along, and asks for Urahara's plan. He resolves to craft Gigai within twenty hours that will fully mask their Reiatsu and to repair everything from the Human World, no matter how long it takes. The pendulum then swings back to the present, where Shinji marvels that Urahara's only miscalculation was never making one, and the Visored head out to join the battle against the Espada.

Urahara deduces that Aizen engineered the Hollowfication incident. Tessai attacks Aizen but the trio escape unharmed. Urahara fails to reverse the captains' and lieutenants' Hollowfication, then he and Tessai are framed and sentenced by Central 46, Tessai to imprisonment and Urahara to exile, with the Hollowfied Shinigami marked for death. Yoruichi rescues them and provides the Gigai prototypes, and Urahara vows to save them all from the Human World. In the present, the Visored depart for the war.

The episode adapts chapters -98 and -97 within the Turn Back the Pendulum flashback storyline and contains no fights. It depicts the origin of both the Visored and Urahara's exile. A comedic closing segment shows Renji retrieving his Gigai from Ichigo's room, only to find Rukia had it repaired into a ballerina costume after spilling curry on it.