During Jump Festa 2021 a new promo video revealed that the anime adaptation of Tite Kubo’s Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War Arc is slated to return from October 2022.
The main staff was revealed and is as follows:
- Director & Series composition: Tomohisa Taguchi (Akudama Drive, Kino no Tabi: The Beautiful World – The Animated Series, Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna)
- Character design: Masashi Kudo (Maoyuu Maou Yuusha, Bleach: Memories in the Rain, Kyou no Asuka Show)
- Music: Shiro Sagisu (Bleach, Neon Genesis Evangelion, SSSS.Dynazenon)
- Animation production: Studio Pierrot (Bleach, Tokyo Ghoul, Naruto)
In addition, a new key visual was revealed:
The event also streamed a 15-minute video that recaps the previous Bleach anime:
Bleach is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Tite Kubo. It follows the adventures of the hotheaded teenager Ichigo Kurosaki, who inherits his parents’ destiny after he obtains the powers of a Soul Reaper—a death personification similar to the Grim Reaper—from another Soul Reaper, Rukia Kuchiki. His newfound powers force him to take on the duties of defending humans from evil spirits and guiding departed souls to the afterlife and setting him on journeys to various ghostly realms of existence.
Bleach was serialized in Shueisha’s shonen (teenage males) manga magazine Weekly Shonen Jump from August 2001 to August 2016, with its chapters collected in seventy-four tankobon volumes. The series has spawned a media franchise that includes an anime television series adaptation that was produced by Tokyo-based studio Pierrot from 2004 to 2012, two original video animation (OVA) episodes, four animated feature films, ten stage musicals, and numerous video games, as well as many types of Bleach-related merchandise. A Japanese live-action film adaptation produced by Warner Bros. was released in 2018.
In North America, the manga was licensed for English release by Viz Media in 2004. They have released its seventy-four volumes and published its chapters in their Shonen Jump magazine from November 2007 until the magazine’s final issue in April 2012.
Bleach received the 50th Shogakukan Manga Award for the shōnen category in 2005. Despite significant downturns in both the Japanese and English manga markets, Bleach continued to perform well commercially, and had over 120 million tankobon volumes in circulation worldwide as of 2018, making it the eleventh best-selling manga in history.
Source: Bleach Official Website, Jump Festa 2021
