With its genesis dating back to the start of the 2000s, Bleach is one of those anime that fans of the genre have heard about even if they haven’t seen it. Tite Kubo’s series rose to stand among One Piece and Naruto as the holy trinity of long-running shonen to have come out of the 2000s. However, it hit a point where it started to lag behind the other two, with an eventual cancellation in 2012 after a little over 350 episodes. This upsetting turn of events for the fans happened for multiple reasons. At that point, Bleach had pretty much caught up with the manga and thus would have to resort to making more lackluster fillers, and with the anime’s decreasing ratings that was just not feasible. The drop in popularity was also felt in regards to the manga, with the defeat of Aizen marking the point at which it started to steadily go downhill.
This was in 2012. What has happened to Bleach since then?
The manga has long concluded. The anime is ongoing.
Tite Kubo’s manga reached its conclusion with volume number 74, which came out in November 2016. Unfortunately, it was not well received by most fans. However, we shouldn’t be too harsh on Kubo, the author was not at peak health when he was working on ending his long, much-beloved series. A fan on Reddit justified Kubo’s decision to not take a longer break in order to recover due to the suffocating constraints of Japanese work culture. They wrote: “Kubo admitted that he felt like a failure every time he took a break. And he took more breaks in the final arc than the entire rest of the series.” It is easy to forget the sheer amount of pressure that authors of popular ongoing manga have to deal with, but we — as lovers of the genre — definitely shouldn’t. They might be the gods of the universes they create, but mangaka are only mortal at the end of the day.
Regarding the Bleach anime, it thankfully returned in late 2022 with the premiere of the adaptation of the manga’s extensive and battle-heavy final arc — the Thousand-Year Blood War — which sees the Soul Reapers and the Quincy on opposing sides of a brutal conflict. The Thousand-Year Blood War is currently on its second cour. At the time of this writing, episodes are coming out on a weekly basis on Saturdays, with the next one, episode 24, coming out September 23. The final arc of the series is expected to be a total of 52 episodes, adapting a little over 200 manga chapters.
