Why Bleach's Return is a HUGE Deal👑

I'm just gonna come out swinging. Bleach is my favourite of THE BIG 3. I think each of them is worth watching (or reading through) and they all excel in different aspects. One Piece has the best world building in all of anime, Naruto is worth watching solely for Rock Lee vs Gaara, which is my favourite fight of all time and Bleach has the best character designs, aesthetic and soundtrack.

©Tite Kubo/Shueisha, TV TOKYO, dentsu, Pierrot

I'm a HUUUUUGE Bleach fan. Got all 3 complete manga box sets and a fair amount of dvds, but not a big enough fan to read the light novels 😂, cmon I ain't a nerd, if I don't see images I bounce.

 

I remember first watching Bleach around 2014. It was one of my first 30 or so anime I've watched and oooh boy did I love it. Admittedly, some of the filler arcs kinda sucked, which is somewhat of a problem considering 45% of the anime is filler😭 Remember the Bount arc? Yikes. No joke, I personally know 2 different people that dropped Bleach because of it, one of which came back and rewatched the series years later and said it was awesome. I don't think the arc is all bad tbh, I loved the moment where the main vampire guy whose name I forgot confronted my man Byakuya and the fight between Kenpachi and that dude with the rainbow zanpakuto was pretty good too. I think people tend to disconnect with the series at that point as we've just come from the phenomenal Soul Society arc and all the sudden, the plot with Aizen goes nowhere for a solid 45 episodes. To play devil's advocate, this does give the anime a naturally occurring time skip so that when the Arrancars arrive, it makes the time between Aizen's betrayal and his conquest of Hueco Mundo longer and therefore more believable.

 

That's not to say all filler was bad tho. We have the obligatory beach episode, which is always welcomed and the Zanpakuto arc is honestly great. If you watched Bleach without the filler, I'd recommend giving the Zanpakuto arc a watch. Another good one is the Gotei 13 Invading Army arc where the Captains fight clones/reigai of each other. The villain sucks but the fights are good, especially Komamura vs Soi Fon's reigai.

 

Filler aside, the giant arc which encompasses the arrival of the Arrancars, Hueco Mundo and the Karakura Town War is easily my favourite arc in all of bleach despite everyone saying Soul Society was the best. I don't care dude. The Arrancar arc has the best fights, the coolest characters and the most interesting setting. Uryu vs Mayuri, Ichigo vs Kenpachi and Ichigo vs Byakuya are among the best fights in the series, but Ikkaku vs Edorad, and Ichigo vs Grimmjow, Ulquiorra and Aizen are superior overall and that's not even accounting for all the other phenomenal fights in the grand Arrancar arc.

©Tite Kubo/Shueisha

In terms of characters, if I had to rank my favourite group/faction it would be the Espada, Gotei 13, Visored, Sternritter (more on them later) and finally the Fullbringers. I love Byakuya and he was my favourite for a long time, but I'm ready to admit Grimmjow is my favourite character (3rd will be Ikkaku and 4th will be Askin Nakk Le Vaar). Finally, in terms of setting, the Soul Society is just a big ol city. Its rule of cool factor isn't even close to the vast emptiness of the Hueco Mundo's desert surrounding the massive hollow night palace Las Noches.

Massive tangent on why I prefer the Arrancar arc over the Soul Society arc aside, let's address the Fullbringer arc. When I first watched it, I honestly didn't really like it and like others I thought it's a somewhat weak conclusion for the anime. However, when I read it like 4 years later, I loved it. I think it's just a more sombre arc that's gonna resonate better the more mature you are as it deals with loss and a certain sense of identity crisis. The fights are not on the level of the previous arcs although I do enjoy rewatching Ikkaku vs Shishigawara, Byakuya vs Tsukishima and Ichigo vs Ginjo. Then...this was it. This was all we had. It was crazy to think of. Bleach ended. It was the shortest running member of The Big 3 with the latest start and the earliest finish. 10 years without the Bleach anime changes a man. The Big 3 were no more...

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UNTIL NOW!!!

©Tite Kubo/Shueisha

BLEACH IS BACK BABYYYYYY! The black sheep of the Big 3 is coming back with a BANG. Haters said it was never gonna happen. They said it couldn't and shouldn't be done. Well I say SUCK IT! After years of anticipation and us fans not letting go of our hope, it's really happening later this year. 2022 is LIIIIIT🔥🔥🔥

 

For almost a decade, Bleach content consisted of fan animations and a mobile game featuring new abilities and transformations, whose relation to the canon is highly debatable. The fact that we'll finally see the Thousand Year Blood War arc after years of waiting is a HUGE DEAL!. One Piece is still going strong and Boruto (which I lowkey refuse to watch) has some good fights from the random clips I've seen. This means The Big 3 will officially coexist in animated form yet again in 2022. The iconic series that defined 2000s battle shounen are all alive and ready to fight for screen time and viewer attention with the new battle shounen whippersnappers😂 I think I mentioned this before but the fact that Jujutsu Kaisen somehow has more members on MAL, making it rank higher in popularity than Bleach is a huge upset in my book. It's not that Jujutsu Kaisen is bad, but Bleach is far superior and it lowkey hurts seeing it fall down in the ranks just because a new show is more accessible and a smaller time commenter. Yes, I'm fully aware I sound like a boomer👴

Yup, I own these bad boys

Obviously, having all the physical manga, I've read this final arc and it did not disappoint. In fact, I read it around 2018/2019 when the box set first came out and I couldn't put the volumes down. This was the first time I was so starved for content I read the 20+ volumes in 2 days. In terms of enjoyment, I'd probably rank it slightly above the Soul Society arc as my 2nd favourite arc in Bleach. I'm hoping the adaptation will knock it out of the park! LET'S GO BOIS!!!

 

That being said, the arc isn't without its flaws. The most common criticism of Bleach as a whole is the somewhat repetitive story structure where a certain character from the main gang ends up with the enemy team consisting of a dozen or so new enemy characters, so the rest of the main gang goes busting into their lair and a series of fights breaks out. I think this critique has merit to it, but when examining on a deeper level, each arc has nuances and unique factors that are not addressed when criticising it so broadly. If you wanna talk about a series that genuinely suffers from such a repetitive story structure, give Saint Seiya a watch. The Sanctuary, Asgard and Poseidon arcs are structurally the exact same lol.

 

Going back to Bleach's Thousand Year blood war arc, yes a character from the main group goes to the opposing group, yes the Sternritters are this arc's new faction of villains and yes a grand series of fights does break out. Again, there are nuances which I'm glossing over now, but at the end of the day, I'm watching a battle shounen for the battles. As long as they introduce cool new characters and have them fight with the cool old characters, the story structure is allowed to be simplistic enough to where it functions as a tool to make those factions face off. That's not to say it's weak. In fact there are some phenomenal revelations and a fair amount of fan service, where characters return, die, power up and complete mayhem ensues. Just don't expect something too different in terms of the tried and tested structure that has worked well for Bleach in the past.

©Tite Kubo/Shueisha via BLEACH EX.

Finally, I wanna cover two last points. The first is the arc's ending. I've been careful to avoid any spoilers and will not mention anything in particular, buuuut at this point it's public knowledge that the ending of the manga was rushed because Shounen Jump wanted Kubo to hurry up and wrap it up. The final chapter is very satisfying, but the final fight which took place before did feel pretty rushed, with the way of defeating a certain character making no sense considering their powers should have countered what happened. However, Tite Kubo is involved in the adaptation which makes me along with other fans theorize that he can have a chance to conclude the arc properly, without being rushed and give us his true vision of the ending.

 

The second and final point I wanted to cover is the manga's return and its implications for the future of the series. Bleach came out with a brand new manga chapter this year, which picks up after the original manga's finale and basically starts an entirely new arc in an absolutely phenomenal way. I recommend you give it a read, but long story short, the main gang of characters will be going to Hell in order to fight powered up versions of...well you should find out for yourself. It's worth experiencing and will reignite your hype for the series! So far the new Hell arc has this one special chapter, so my assumption is that everyone's waiting to see if the Thousand Year Blood War arc's anime will be a success, thus determining if the revival of the manga is warranted.

 

In conclusion, BLEACH IS BACK! Both in anime and manga form. I'm beyond excited for its return and will be making a lot more content covering it so stay tuned and let's get the word out for our boy! Lateeer ✌

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