Summary

• Bleach ended early due to Tite Kubo’s health issues and the declining popularity of his manga series.
• The manga industry has become more aware of the stresses on manga artists after the passing of Kentaro Miura, vindicating Tite Kubo.
• The new anime adaptation of Bleach’s final arc gives Tite Kubo a chance to end the story as he originally intended, which may help restore Bleach’s good name.

Author Tite Kubo helped make shonen history in 2001 when he launched his greatest work to date, a shonen action series simply titled Bleach. Within a few years, it joined Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto and Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece as part of the shonen “big three,” but as the years went on, those three manga titans faced different fates. While Naruto ended well and One Piece is still ongoing, Bleach ended rather abruptly, and fans at the time were not pleased.

In the mid-2010s, the Bleach manga’s final arc came to a seemingly hasty end, depriving fans of several developments and events they were hoping to see in the series. Over time, though, the many disappointed fans have made peace with the reality behind Bleach‘s early end, and that reflects in current trends in the manga industry. Also, fortunately for the Bleach franchise and its many devoted fans, the anime adaptation is helping to keep Bleach relevant and popular today, no matter what happened in the 2010s.

Why Did the Bleach Manga End Early?

By today’s standards, ending a manga series after 74 volumes is not ending things “early.” Even the epic Attack on Titan is less than half that length, and the ultra-popular Demon Slayer told a complete story in a brisk 23 volumes. However, Bleach was written in an era where lengthy series were the norm, and author Tite Kubo intended to keep his series going longer than he actually did. To him, the most important thing was to tell as much story as he planned to, not reach a certain quota for volume releases. Ideally, Bleach would have been a complete and satisfying tale that could take however many volumes it needed to finish. Unfortunately for all involved, it wasn’t meant to be, and Bleach ended early due to a few factors working in tandem.

One major factor was author Tite Kubo’s health, which suffered more and more as serialization of Bleach continued. No doubt Mr. Kubo knew from the outset that drawing weekly manga would be a demanding job, but even so, the reality of working as a published manga artist caught up to him. By all accounts, Mr. Kubo began experiencing more frequent and intense colds and other ailments, to the point he would need a week to recover in bed or even end up in the hospital. Those increasingly serious health issues eventually convinced Mr. Kubo to end his series while he still could, and so he did. Even the most talented and popular manga artists are only human, and they know better than anyone what’s best for them.

The other major reason was business-oriented – Bleach‘s gradually declining popularity. Both then and now, Bleach is widely praised as a worthy part of the big three, but relatively speaking, it was falling apart. The staff of Weekly Shonen Jump eventually decided that Bleach needed to end and cut their losses, and that, combined with Tite Kubo’s health issues, led to Bleach‘s unexpectedly early end. That meant not just concluding the entire series ahead of schedule, but also cutting the story’s final, longest, and most epic arc short as well. Given time, the Thousand-Year Blood War arc could have become the series’ best, but the early, rushed ending changed all that.

Tite Kubo’s Health Problems Now Resonate In the Manga Industry

When the Bleach manga reached its early end, depriving the TYBW arc of its true potential, plenty of fans must have been upset and confused. In hindsight, though, plenty of shonen fans are sympathetic to Tite Kubo’s experience, and time has been kind to him. Since then, everyone involved in making, publishing, and consuming Japanese manga has become much more aware of how stressful it is to be a manga artist, and the paradigm has shifted. Now, manga artists are treated with more leniency, with everyone aware that artists like Tite Kubo are only human and need to care for themselves if they are to keep making their art. Fans could say that without the manga artist’s health and happiness, there can be no manga, and then everyone loses.

Tite Kubo’s health troubles and his early ending of Bleach‘s final arc were unfortunate, but that actually wasn’t the case that made everyone so cognizant of how tough this job can be. In May 2021, author Kentaro Miura of Berserk fame died from a heart condition, sending shockwaves across the manga industry for more than one reason. Mr. Miura’s passing didn’t just put the future of Berserk into doubt – it also forced everyone to reassess the position manga artists are in, and not treat manga artists like machines that crank out endless pages of art to meet deadlines. Mr. Miura’s tragic passing has helped change the conversation about manga artists and their work, which helps vindicate Tite Kubo and his own manga’s abrupt, unpopular ending.

Now, as of the mid-2020s, practically everyone involved is sympathetic to manga artists and their limits as hardworking human beings. Breaks from work for health reasons have become more common and widely accepted since then, such as My Hero Academia author Kohei Horikoshi, who has taken many health-related breaks while drawing his manga’s climactic final arc. While My Hero Academia has not yet ended, it’s possible that Mr. Horikoshi will do what Tite Kubo always wanted to – finish his shonen manga’s final arc according to his own vision, and manage his health the entire time. It may be too late for Bleach‘s last arc, unfortunately, but at least now the manga industry knows that compromises must be made so a manga series can be finished as per the author’s intentions.

What is Bleach’s Thousand-Year Blood War Arc About?

Although many fans still cite the Soul Society arc as Bleach‘s best, the Thousand-Year Blood War arc also has a lot to offer, and it finally resolves many lingering mysteries that have existed for years in Bleach‘s extensive lore. Taking place not long after the short Xcution arc, the Thousand-Year Blood War arc presented the Soul Reapers and Ichigo’s team with their ultimate nemesis – the Wandenreich, or the hidden Quincy empire. Bleach once suggested that Uryu Ishida and his father were all that remained of the Quincy tribe, but the hidden Quincy empire proved otherwise. The Quincy, led by their king Yhwach, were eager for revenge after losing to the Soul Reapers in the last war 1,000 years ago, hence the final arc’s name.

The Thousand-Year Blood War arc pushed Bleach‘s heroes to the very limit, even more than Sosuke Aizen and his Arrancar army ever did, and the Soul Reapers were forced to make some hard decisions to protect the future of the Soul Society. Along the way, many of Bleach‘s best heroes discovered a new side of themselves, both emotionally and as warriors, and that struggle brought out the best in characters like Byakuya Kuchiki, Shunsui Kyoraku, protagonist Ichigo Kurosaki, and even Captain Kenpachi Zaraki, who soon became more than a token brute character. The Thousand-Year Blood War arc raised the stakes to the maximum, thrilling shonen fans with a great battle over the future of the entire universe, with many powerhouse characters, new and returning, dominating the fight.

How Bleach May Restore Its Reputation as a Shonen Legend

Bleach never lost all of its luster as a shonen icon, but even so, it fell from grace in the eyes of many fans while One Piece soldiered on and Naruto enjoyed great popularity right up to the end. Over the years, Bleach slowly lost ground to not just the rest of the big three, but new, sleeker series like My Hero Academia, Attack on Titan, and Demon Slayer, with only Bleach‘s most devoted fans keeping Tite Kubo’s work alive. Even the anime version of Bleach faced a rough end, with the anime getting canceled in 2012, so anime-only fans never even saw the ending at all, rushed or not. Then, in the early 2020s, Tite Kubo’s masterpiece got some good news.

It may be too late to change the Bleach manga’s ending, but the anime is a different story. The Bleach anime has resumed production for the first time in a decade, complete with a new soundtrack by composer Shiro Sagisu, cutting-edge HD animation, a stellar voice cast, and even improved pacing, among other features. Now, anime-only fans can watch the TYBW story arc unfold at last, and with the benefit of brisk pacing and stellar production values, too. Best of all, it’s been said that the Bleach anime’s final arc is Tite Kubo’s last and best chance to end the story as he intended, suggesting that the anime will deviate somewhat from the source manga so Mr. Kubo can get some semblance of his intended ending.

It’s not yet clear how that will play out, but new and returning Bleach fans have every reason to look forward to it, and all this can help remind fans why Bleach was an equal to Naruto and One Piece as an essential piece of shonen history.