Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War – The Calamity: Every Sternritter Who Survives the War and How They Do It

While the Bleach manga ended a few years back, the anime has just entered the final saga of the series with Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War – The Calamity, the final chapters of the long-awaited climax battle between the Soul Reapers and the Quincy. Talking about the Quincy, the Sternritter are basically the heart and soul of the final arc’s narrative.

While many of you long-term fans already know about them, a few of you might still be curious about which Sternritters survived after the end of the Thousand-Year Blood War. Well, here’s the list for you. Be aware that this list contains heavy spoilers for anime fans.

TITLE	Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War
CREATOR	Tite Kubo
RELEASE DATE	October 11, 2022
IMDb RATINGS (as of July 27, 2026)	9/10
WHERE TO WATCH	Hulu, Disney+

1 Uryu Ishida: The Quincy Who Turned On Yhwach And Walked Free

Uryu was always the wild card wearing that white coat. Yhwach handed him the letter A, “The Antithesis,” and kept him close as part of the Schutzstaffel, but Uryu was playing a longer game the entire time.

When it mattered most, he turned his bow on the king who made him, helping Ichigo land the final blow. He walked out of the war as a Sternritter still breathing on his own two feet, no strings attached, no zombie tricks needed.

2 Liltotto Lamperd: The Glutton Who Chewed Through Betrayal And Lived

Liltotto never planned on dying for a king who saw her as disposable. Once Yhwach’s Auswählen started ripping power away from his own soldiers, she and Giselle turned on him outright, marching into his throne room to settle the score.

She lost that fight badly, left bleeding out on the floor of Wahrwelt. What saved her wasn’t luck; it was Haschwalth’s quiet aide, who patched her up in secret and gave her a second shot at life she never expected to get.

3 Giselle Gewelle: The Zombie Queen Who Rebelled And Still Woke Up

Giselle spent the whole war putting other people in the ground and bringing them back as puppets, so there’s some irony in how close she came to needing the same trick herself. She sided with Liltotto’s rebellion once Yhwach started treating his own Sternritter like spare parts, and the two of them paid for it in blood.

Left for dead after their loss, Giselle only pulled through because Haschwalth’s aide couldn’t stomach watching her die and stepped in to heal her instead in Can’t Fear Your Own World. It’s basically that the one who played with corpses almost became one in the end.

4 Bambietta Basterbine: The Bomber Turned Into Someone’s Puppet

Bambietta, one of the best TYBW-designed characters, went out swinging, overwhelmed, and eventually lost her fight with Sajin Komamura. By every normal measure, that should have been the end of her story. Instead, Giselle refused to let her go, turning her into a zombie thrall rather than a corpse. Interesting fact: Bambietta was technically killed by Giselle and then turned. Unlike others, a Quincy has to die to become Giselle’s zombie. Therefore, Giselle technically killed Bambietta, Candice, and Meninas.

It’s not exactly a happy ending; she’s still bound to someone else’s will, but she’s up and moving through the aftermath of the war with the rest of her old crew instead of gone for good. While she technically survives the TYBW, she is far from being alive.

5 Candice Catnipp: Knocked Out Cold But Never Actually Killed

Candice picked a fight with Byakuya Kuchiki, and it went about as badly as it could go, left face down and bloodied on the ground. She was possibly left dying after Yhwach performed Auswählen. In the anime, that’s actually where her story as a living person ends; Giselle finds her afterward and raises her as one of her zombies, and Candice spends the rest of the war fighting on Giselle’s side instead of Yhwach’s.

Supplementary material like the Can’t Fear Your Own World novel series that fans wanted turned into a movie tells a slightly different version where Mayuri Kurotsuchi’s division scoops her up for research instead. Still, the show itself goes with the zombie route.

6 Meninas McAllon: The Powerhouse Who Fell Hard And Got Back Up

Meninas goes down hard mid-war, and rather than let that be the end of her, the anime has Giselle step in and bring her back through her zombie ability. From there, Meninas is fighting alongside Liltotto, Giselle, and zombified Bambietta as part of that same undead unit, loyalty to Yhwach no longer really a factor.

In Can’t Fear Your Own World, a spin-off light novel series written by Ryogo Narita, Mayuri’s division picks her up as a test subject, but that’s a footnote compared to what actually plays out on screen. Being someone with the Schrift “P” for power, her fate and status still demand a design overhaul from Tite Kubo.

7 NaNaNa Najahkoop: The Man Who Slipped Past His Own Execution

NaNaNa spent his last real scene getting shot in the back by Bazz-B, of all people, right in the middle of the rebellion against Yhwach, and the story treated it like a clean, quiet death. He wasn’t actually finished, though.

The follow-up material confirmed he survived that hit and was later scooped up by Mayuri’s division alongside Candice and Meninas, used as a test subject rather than tossed aside for good. He’s not exactly free, but at least he’s not a name sitting on the casualty list either.

STERNRITTER	SCHRIFT
Uryu Ishida	A – The Antithesis
Liltotto Lamperd	G – The Glutton
Giselle Gewelle	Z – The Zombie
Bambietta Basterbine	E – The Explode
Candice Catnipp	T – The Thunderbolt
Meninas McAllon	P – The Power
NaNaNa Najahkoop	U – The Underbelly

Did you know about these names, the Sternritters who survived the Thousand-Year Blood War? Do you think someone else deserved to survive? We’d love to hear your opinions and picks in the comments below.

All Episodes of Bleach, including the Thousand-Year Blood War Arc, are available to watch on Hulu and Disney+.