Bleach (stylized in all caps) is a Japanese anime television series based on the manga series Bleach by Tite Kubo. It was produced by Studio Pierrot and directed by Noriyuki Abe. The series aired on TV Tokyo from October 2004 to March 2012, spanning 366 episodes. The story follows the adventures of the teenage Ichigo Kurosaki after he obtains the powers of a Soul Reaper—a death personification similar to the Grim Reaper—from a Soul Reaper named Rukia Kuchiki. His newfound powers allow him to take on the duties of defending humans from evil spirits called "Hollows" and guiding departed souls to the afterlife. In addition to adapting the manga series it is based on, the anime includes original self-contained storylines and characters not found in the source material.
Viz Media obtained foreign television and home video distribution rights to the Bleach anime in March 2006. Bleach was broadcast in the United States on Adult Swim from September 2006 to November 2014.
Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War, a sequel series covering the manga's final story arc, also animated by Studio Pierrot (by studio Pierrot for the first two parts and by Pierrot Films for the third part) and directed by Tomohisa Taguchi, aired its first 13-episode cours on TV Tokyo from October to December 2022. The second 13-episode cours aired from July to September 2023. The third 14-episode cours aired from October to December 2024. The fourth and final cours is set to premiere in July 2026.
Plot
The series adapts Kubo's manga with the main story arcs and introduces anime exclusive ones. In Karakura Town, high school student Ichigo Kurosaki becomes a substitute , when Rukia Kuchiki puts her life at risk to protect him from a Hollow who attacks Ichigo's twin younger sisters. Although initially reluctant to accept his responsibility, he takes her place, and during this time they discover that a few classmates are spiritually aware and have their own powers: Quincy survivor Uryū Ishida uses spiritual particles, Orihime Inoue has a group of protective spirits called Shun Shun Rikka and Yasutora Sado ("Chad") has strength equal to the Hollows encased in his arm.
When Rukia is sentenced to death for transgressions in the human world and sent to the Soul Society, Ichigo meets Kisuke Urahara and Yoruichi Shihōin, the duo of exiled Soul Reapers. They allow him and his friends to save Rukia. After this, it is revealed that ex-squad captain Sousuke Aizen framed Rukia for the crime and has been illegally experimenting on Soul Reapers and Hollows. Aizen plans to conquer the Soul Society by using the Hōgyoku, a legendary powerful substance turning Hollows into half Soul Reapers. After faking his death and his reappearance caused a fight with some people, Aizen escapes into Hueco Mundo, the realm of Hollow, and later kidnaps Orihime as she is instrumental in creating the Oken, a power that will allow him to kill the Soul King, the ruler of the Soul Society.
After being trained by the Vizards, other Hollowfied Soul Reapers and the victims of Aizen's experiment, Ichigo and his friends travel into Hueco Mundo. Facing a group of Arrancar, who are Hollows given Soul Reaper abilities, led by an elite group known as the Espada, which are composed of ten Arrancars with exemplary strength. Espadas serve as commanders in Aizen's army and each has the factions of weaker Arrancars. Along with Aizen, Gin Ichimaru and Kaname Tōsen, the Espada as a group possess comparable strength to Soul Reaper captains. After Ichigo rescuing Orihime, Aizen reveals her kidnapping was a distraction to allow him to take Karakura Town, as its spiritual energy is what is needed for the Oken. After being trained by his father Isshin, another exiled Soul Reaper, Ichigo sacrifices his Soul Reaper power to seal Aizen away when the Hōgyoku rejects its master, and the Soul Reapers defeat the Espadas.
Months later, Chad and the members reveal themselves as Fullbringers in a group called Xcution. They can give up their powers to restore other ones and they plan on doing so for Ichigo, who uses the power of Fullbringer. However, it is all a ruse by their leader Kugo Ginjo, a Fullbringer and former Substitute Soul Reaper, to extract his powers and empower all of them. Ichigo has his Soul Reaper powers restored, when he gains his trust from the Soul Society. After helping other Soul Reapers defeat Ginjo's team, Ichigo resumes his duty as an official Substitute Soul Reaper.
Several anime exclusive story arcs are introduced during the series. The first arc focuses on the Bount, a group of spiritual humans who are immortal longer by stealing souls. Their leader, Jin Kariya, seeks to destroy the Soul Society in revenge. However, Ichigo and his allies defeat them. The second arc focuses on Shūsuke Amagai, a Soul Reaper captain replacing Ichimaru. Amagai seeks revenge against Captain Yamamoto for the death of his father and uses the clan's forbidden experiment. However, Amagai realizes his mistake and kills himself. The third arc features the evil Zanpakutō spirit Muramasa, who turns itself and other ones into spiritual beings to take revenge on the Soul Society for imprisoning its master Kōga Kuchiki. After succeeding, he is double-crossed and transforms into a monstrous creature that Ichigo defeats, but after Muramasa reveals the intention was to have Soul Reapers and Zanpakutō communicate on equal terms. The fourth and final arc features an event in which Kagerōza Inaba creates modified copies of all Soul Reapers in Reigai bodies. He attempts to fuse with Nozomi Kujō into an original being Ōko Yushima. However, Nozomi sacrifices herself to defeat Inaba and Ichigo loses his power.
Voice cast and characters
{| class="wikitable" style="border-collapse: collapse;"
! Character
! Japanese
! English
|-
| Ichigo Kurosaki || Masakazu Morita || Johnny Yong Bosch
|-
| Rukia Kuchiki || Fumiko Orikasa || Michelle Ruff
|-
| Orihime Inoue || Yuki Matsuoka || Stephanie Sheh
|-
| Uryū Ishida || Noriaki Sugiyama || Derek Stephen Prince
|-
| Yasutora "Chad" Sado || Hiroki Yasumoto || Marc Worden (until 85)<br/>Jamieson Price
|-
| Kon || Mitsuaki Madono || Quinton Flynn
|-
| Kisuke Urahara || Shin-ichiro Miki || Michael Lindsay (until 214)<br/>Doug Erholtz
|-
| Yoruichi Shihōin || Satsuki Yukino<br/>Shirō Saitō (cat form) || Wendee Lee<br/>Terrence Stone (cat form)
|-
| Renji Abarai || Kentarō Itō<br/>Reiko Kiuchi (young) || Wally Wingert<br/>Yuri Lowenthal (young)
|-
| Byakuya Kuchiki || Ryōtarō Okiayu || Daniel Woren<br/>Yuri Lowenthal (young)
|-
| Shunsui Kyōraku || Akio Otsuka || Steve Kramer
|-
| Tōshirō Hitsugaya || Romi Park || Steve Staley
|-
| Rangiku Matsumoto || || Megan Hollingshead
|-
| Shūhei Hisagi || Katsuyuki Konishi || Steve Staley
|-
| Kenpachi Zaraki || Fumihiko Tachiki || David Lodge
|-
| Yachiru Kusajishi || || Dina Sherman
|-
| Ikkaku Madarame || Nobuyuki Hiyama || Vic Mignogna<br/>Michael Sinterniklass (stand-in)
|-
| Yumichika Ayasegawa || Jun Fukuyama || Brian Beacock
|-
| Jūshirō Ukitake || Hideo Ishikawa || Liam O'Brien<br/>Kim Strauss (stand-in)
|-
| Sajin Komamura || Tetsu Inada || Kim Strauss (first voice)<br/>JB Blanc
|-
| Gin Ichimaru || Kōji Yusa || Doug Erholtz
|-
| Mayuri Kurotsuchi || Ryūsei Nakao || Terrence Stone
|-
| Genryūsai Shigekuni Yamamoto || Masaaki Tsukada || Neil Kaplan
|-
| Ulquiorra Cifer || Daisuke Namikawa || Tony Oliver
|-
| Isshin Kurosaki || Toshiyuki Morikawa || Patrick Seitz
|-
| Karin Kurosaki || Rie Kugimiya || Kate Higgins
|-
| Yuzu Kurosaki || || Janice Kawaye
|-
| Kūgo Ginjō || Hiroki Tōchi || Travis Willingham
|-
| Sousuke Aizen || Show Hayami || Kyle Hebert
|}
Casting
Japanese
Ichigo's voice actor, Masakazu Morita, tried to re-create the mood that he felt when he read the manga and imagined hearing the dialogue. In an interview with Elicia O'Reilly of the Japan Foundation, Morita said that to get into character, he would say a line that epitomizes that character.
English
Studio City, Los Angeles-based Studiopolis was hired to dub the anime. The English-language cast was assembled from experienced industry actors that have dozens of roles in other anime series, films and video games. Originally, Johnny Yong Bosch, Ichigo's English voice actor, found pronouncing the names of the characters to be difficult and tried to emulate the deep gruff voice of Ichigo. Bosch acknowledges that the directorial control was loosened as the work progressed; stating around episode 10, as he was guided into the role of Ichigo and the growth of the character.
On October 5, 2024, Aniplex released an animated video to celebrate the anime series' 20th anniversary. The video features climactic scenes from the series, animated in the new Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War anime style.
Music
The soundtrack of Bleach, composed by Shirō Sagisu, was released in four volumes and an anniversary box set. A series of character song albums, the "Bleach Beat Collection" albums, and best-of albums composed of the theme songs were released, all by Sony Music Entertainment Japan.
Five volumes of Bleach Soundtracks have been released. Bleach Original Soundtrack 1 has twenty five songs, released on May 18, 2005. Bleach Original Soundtrack 2 has twenty three songs covering up to episode 64 of the Bount Arc and was released on August 8, 2006. Bleach Original Soundtrack 3 has twenty seven songs and was released on November 5, 2008. Bleach Original Soundtrack 4 was the fourth and final album that has thirty songs, and was released on December 16, 2009. The fifth anniversary box set was released on July 29, 2009, with a CD including 21 previously unreleased songs.
The Bleach Beat Collections is a set of CDs published by Sony Music featuring recordings by the original Japanese voice actors that provide a look at the personalities of the characters they play, as well as the voice actors themselves. The first CD was released on June 22, 2005, twenty-one volumes followed across four named sets called Sessions.<!-- This source generally has the entire list -->
A number of additional collections have been released. Two volumes were released as "The Best", with each volume containing twenty four songs each on two discs; the first volume released March 21, 2007, and the second one on March 18, 2009. The "Bleach Breathless Collection" contains six releases featuring five tracks of the individual Soul Reaper. The six volumes feature Ichigo, Rukia, Renji, Toshiro, Shuhei and Byakuya, respectively. Three Radio DJCD Bleach 'B' Station season CD sets, each containing six volumes, have been released in Japan.
Release
Bleach premiered in Japan on TV Tokyo on October 5, 2004. The series was directed by Noriyuki Abe, and produced by TV Tokyo, Dentsu and studio Pierrot. It ran for 366 episodes, finishing on March 27, 2012. 88 DVD compilations were released by Aniplex in Japan from February 2, 2005, to January 23, 2013.
Viz Media obtained the foreign television, home video and merchandising rights to the Bleach anime from TV Tokyo Corporation, and Shueisha on March 15, 2006. Viz Media had later licensed its individual Bleach merchandising rights to several different companies. In North America, the series first premiered on Canada's YTV channel in the Bionix programming block on September 9, 2006. Cartoon Network's Adult Swim began airing Bleach in the United States on September 10, 2006. Adult Swim stopped broadcasting episodes of the English adaptation on October 13, 2007, after airing the first 52 episodes of the series. It was replaced with another Viz Media series, Death Note, to provide Studiopolis more time to dub additional episodes of Bleach. The series resumed airing on March 2, 2008, but went back on hiatus on November 21, 2009, after the 167th episode. The series returned to the block with new episodes on August 28, 2010, replacing Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. The anime joined the relaunched Toonami anime block, when it returned to Adult Swim on May 27, 2012. The series ended on November 2, 2014, and continued airing reruns on Adult Swim until February 1, 2015.
Viz Media had released the first 135 episodes on 32 DVD compilations of the English adaptation of the anime from November 28, 2006, to September 21, 2010, and released the entire series on 26 box sets from October 6, 2008, to September 29, 2015. In July 2016, Viz Media announced the uncut Blu-ray box-set release of the series. The 366 episodes were collected in thirteen sets, released from July 19, 2016, to December 7, 2021.
In the United Kingdom, Bleach premiered on AnimeCentral on September 13, 2007, with episodes airing weekly. Anime Limited started releasing the series on Blu-ray in the United Kingdom on November 4, 2024. The English dubbed version of Bleach premiered on Animax Asia on December 18, 2009, with the first 52 episodes; the "season 2" premiered on March 18, 2011, this time with the original Japanese audio with English subtitles.
Thousand-Year Blood War
In March 2020, Weekly Shōnen Jump and "Bleach 20th Anniversary Project & Tite Kubo New Project Presentation" livestream announced that the manga's last story arc, "Thousand-Year Blood War", would receive an anime project. In November 2021, it was announced that the anime project would be a television series, . The trailer and visual for the series were revealed at the Jump Festa '22 on December 18, 2021. Tomohisa Taguchi replaced Noriyuki Abe as the series director at studio Pierrot. Taguchi is also overseeing the series scripts alongside Masaki Hiramatsu; Masashi Kudo returned as the character designer and Shirō Sagisu returned to compose the music. An advanced screening of the first two episodes was held in Tokyo on September 11, 2022. The series will run for four cours with breaks in between.