The Battle

Bleeding heavily, Retsu Unohana cuts Kenpachi Zaraki again, then springs clear to mend herself with Kaidō, reminding him that she learned healing for exactly this purpose. Dragging her fist along her blade to coat it and the surrounding ground in deep red fluid, she releases her Bankai, Minazuki, and declares the playful phase over. Kenpachi answers with a roar of delight and throws himself at her.

As they clash, he feels his body dissolving and sees his own flesh and her face stripped down to bone, a sensation that at last makes him understand he has been dreaming his way through their exchanges without knowing a word for such total immersion. Thanking her for showing him how a genuine battle feels, he attacks with renewed ferocity and confesses he cannot help loving combat, a truth she says she recognized in him long before he did.

Unohana reflects that while he learned to suppress his strength to prolong his joy in fighting, she learned to heal for the very same reason, and now grasps that her power existed solely for this one duel. Only one Kenpachi can exist in any era, she reasons, and the strongest must forever devote themselves to killing or nurturing the next. Bidding farewell to the one man who ever brought her joy, she lets him run her through with his sword.

Unohana heals with Kaidō and releases her Bankai, Minazuki. Kenpachi perceives the fight in a dreamlike, skeletal vision and realizes he has fully awakened to true combat. He embraces his love of battle as Unohana confirms she always saw it in him. Accepting that only one Kenpachi can exist per era, she allows him to deliver the fatal blow.

The chapter reveals Unohana's Bankai, Minazuki, and reaches the climax of her duel with Kenpachi during the Thousand-Year Blood War arc. Its events were adapted in Episode 376, "The Battle."