For the most part, Netflix has avoided hopping on streaming’s most infuriating bandwagon and erasing original content from existence and allowing it to aimlessly float around the ether, but Bleach was one of the few that wasn’t quite so fortunate.
On Aug. 19, the live-action adaptation of the beloved manga that gave rise to an equally-popular anime quietly disappeared from the content library, despite being billed as a Netflix original in virtually every country it aired. Rights and distribution fees may have been the stumbling block, though, seeing as the movie was technically a Warner Bros. production licensed out to the platform.
With One Piece currently sailing towards a status as one of the biggest on-demand hits of the year, erasing Bleach less than two weeks before its genre bedfellow premiered was seen as a strange move by many, but the good news is that the film has risen from the ashes and has once again been welcomed into the Netflix family as of today.
An action-packed fantasy that scored strong reviews from critics, the sword-swinging adaptation may not have appealed to non-fans as much as it did those who religiously followed the source material, but it’s not as if effects-heavy extravaganzas haven’t always been one of Netflix’s most popular lines of content.
We’ll just have to wait and see if absence has made the heart grow fonder, but it wouldn’t be a surprise were Bleach to make an immediate return to the worldwide watch-list to celebrate its short-lived sabbatical from the company’s roster of in-house exclusives.
