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Bleach (ブリーチ, Burīchi?, romanized as BLEACH in Japan) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Tite Kubo. Bleach has been continuously serialized in the Japanese manga anthology Weekly Shōnen Jump since August 2001, and in its American counterpart Shonen Jump since November 2007. The series received the Shogakukan Manga Award for the shōnen demographic in 2005, and is among the best-selling manga properties in both Japan and America.
Bleach follows the adventures of Ichigo Kurosaki after he accidentally steals the power of a shinigami, a Japanese death personification similar to the Grim Reaper. Gaining these abilities forces him to take on the duties of defending humans from evil spirits and guiding departed souls to the afterlife. The early parts of the story focus on Ichigo and his friends in a high school setting, while later portions feature journeys to other planes of existence, expand the cast to include numerous powerful beings from the afterlife, and are more action-based.
Since its publication, Bleach has spawned a substantial media franchise. The manga has been adapted into an animated television series, two OVAs, three animated feature films, seven rock musicals, and numerous video games, as well as prompted the issue of many types of Bleach-related merchandise. Compilation volumes of the manga have sold over 50 million copies in Japan and reached the top of manga sales charts in the United States. The anime adaptation has been similarly received, rating as the 7th most popular tv anime in Japan in 2006, and in the top ten anime for America from 2006 to 2008.
Synopsis
The story opens with the sudden appearance of Soul Reaper Rukia Kuchiki in Ichigo Kurosaki's bedroom. She is surprised at his ability to see her, but their resulting conversation is interrupted by the appearance of a "hollow", an evil spirit. After Rukia is severely wounded while trying to protect Ichigo, she attempts to transfer half her powers to Ichigo in order to let him face the hollow on equal footing. Ichigo instead unintentionally absorbs almost all her energy, allowing him to defeat the hollow with ease. The next day Rukia appears in Ichigo's classroom as a seemingly normal human, and informs Ichigo that his absorption of her powers has left her stranded in the human world until she recovers her strength. In the meantime Ichigo shelters Rukia in his home and takes over her job as a Soul Reaper, battling hollows and guiding lost souls to Soul Society.
After a few months of this arrangement, in the sixth volume of the series, Rukia's Soul Reaper superiors interpret her disappearance as desertion, send a detachment to arrest her, and sentence her to death. Ichigo is unable to stop Rukia's capture, but with the help of several of his classmates who also possess spiritual abilities and ex-Soul Reaper Urahara Kisuke, he sets off for the Soul Reaper base, located in the afterlife realm known as Soul Society. Once there, Ichigo and company battle against the elites of the Soul Reaper military, and are ultimately successful in halting Rukia's execution.
It is then revealed that Rukia's execution and Ichigo's rescue attempt were both manipulated by Sōsuke Aizen, a high ranking Soul Reaper previously believed to be murdered, as part of a far-reaching plot to take control of Soul Society. Aizen betrays his fellow Soul Reapers and allies himself with the hollows, becoming the primary antagonist of the series, and Ichigo teams up with his former enemies in Soul Society after learning that the next step in Aizen's plan involves the destruction of his hometown. At this point, Bleach chronicles the war between Aizen and the Soul Society, a plotline which has not yet been resolved. According to Tite Kubo, the ending of the series is not yet planned out or written.
Characters
See also: List of Bleach characters
Bleach contains a massive cast of characters designed by series creator Tite Kubo, which are divided into various factions and fictional races with distinct themes, and described using large amounts of invented jargon specific to the series.[2][3][4] Within the story, characters are thought of primarily in terms of their souls: living humans contain souls within their bodies, while "spirits" are disembodied souls with a form composed of ectoplasm, referred to in the series as "spiritrons" (霊子, reishi?) and treated as a type of matter. All significant characters in the series possess some degree of paranormal and superhuman abilities, and these are explained by their souls generating higher than usual levels of a paranormal energy called reiatsu (霊圧, reiatsu? lit. "spirit pressure" wink . The three predominant character types in Bleach are humans, Soul Reapers, and hollows, and each of these types has certain variants.
The humans of Bleach are much like the residents of modern Japan. A normal human cannot see or sense spirits in any way unless that spirit possesses an artificial human body called a gigai, so humanity remains unaware of the existence of the spirit world. Very rarely a human like Ichigo Kurosaki is born who is able to see, interact, or fight with spirits, and others can gain these abilities by exposure to large amounts of spiritual energy, which happens to a number of Ichigo's friends during the course of the series.[5][6] There are three subdivisions of human in the series: the Quincies, a nearly extinct order of hollow-hunting archers, the artificial souls, a race created by Soul Reaper scientists for utilitarian purposes, and the Bounts, a group of soul-sucking energy vampires which appear only in the anime.
The Soul Reapers (死神, shinigami?, lit. "death god" wink are a military order of psychopomps based in Soul Society and with members assigned throughout the material world. They have a traditional Japanese theme. Soul Reapers escort the souls of the dead to Soul Society through the ritual of soul burial (魂葬, konsō?). Their other major duties are protecting humans from hollows, and maintaining order in Soul Society. Soul Reapers all possess supernatural powers, which manifest through their zanpakutō, living swords that are part of the Soul Reaper's soul, and magic known as kidō. Several factions of ex-Soul Reapers are featured in Bleach's story, most prominent among them the members of Sōsuke Aizen's rebellion and the Visoreds, former Soul Society elites who were exiled after obtaining hollow powers.
The hollows are a race of evil spirits who feed on the souls of humans, both living and dead, and act as enemies to the Soul Reapers. They are designed with a Spanish motif. Hollows are created when the soul of a dead human is neglected by the Soul Reapers until it is overcome by loneliness, at which point it changes form into a monster with a white mask, a hole through the chest representing its heartlessness, a low intelligence level, and a hunger for human souls. While the majority of hollows can be overcome by the average Soul Reaper, there are some which surpass even the most elite Soul Reapers in strength. A small group of hollows exist who have broken their masks, and are known as arrancar. By becoming an arrancar, a hollow regains the ability to reason, obtains a more humanoid form, and can gain access to Soul Reaper abilities such as the zanpakutō. As a group, the arrancar are the primary antagonists of the Bleach series.
Main characters
Ichigo Kurosaki (黒崎 一護, Kurosaki Ichigo?) Voiced by: Masakazu Morita (Japanese), Johnny Yong Bosch (English)
The primary protagonist of Bleach, orange-haired high school junior Ichigo Kurosaki is forced to become a substitute Soul Reaper after unintentionally absorbing most of Rukia's powers. His cynical nature at first makes him ill-disposed towards the duty, but with the passage of time he comes to accept and welcome the strength his Soul Reaper powers give him, as it allows him to protect those close to him.
Rukia Kuchiki (朽木 ルキア, Kuchiki Rukia?) Voiced by: Fumiko Orikasa (Japanese), Michelle Ruff (English)
Rukia Kuchiki is a sarcastic Soul Reaper who is assigned hollow extermination duties in Ichigo's hometown. Though her physical appearance is that of a teenage girl, in reality she is around 150 years old. At the opening of the story, Rukia is forced to transfer her powers to Ichigo and assume a temporary lifestyle as a regular human. She registers at the local high school and takes up residence in Ichigo's closet, while teaching him how to be a substitute Soul Reaper in her place.
Orihime Inoue (井上 織姫, Inoue Orihime?) Voiced by: Yuki Matsuoka (Japanese), Stephanie Sheh (English)
Orihime Inoue is a long-time classmate of Ichigo, closely linked to him by mutual friend Tatsuki Arisawa. She is effectively an orphan, as she and her elder brother Sora ran away from their abusive home at a young age, and her brother later died. Though initially devoid of spiritual powers, she develops spiritual awareness early in the plot and later obtains one of the strongest powers in the Bleach universe, a god-like ability to reject fate.
Yasutora "Chad" Sado (茶渡 泰虎, Sado Yasutora?) Voiced by: Hiroki Yasumoto (Japanese), Jamieson Price (English)
Yasutora Sado, better known as Chad, is one of Ichigo's friends at school. He is a biracial Japanese/Mexican student who towers over his classmates.[7] Despite his imposing appearance he is quite meek, and refuses to fight unless it is for the sake of another. Chad does not have awareness of ghosts at first, but this changes when he witnesses a group of children being attacked by a hollow. He discovers a unique ability that strengthens and armors one of his arms, enabling him to fight hollows. He later develops the ability to shoot energy from his armored arm.
Uryū Ishida (石田 雨竜, Ishida Uryū?) Voiced by: Noriaki Sugiyama (Japanese), Derek Stephen Prince (English)
Though on the surface he is nothing more than the solitary class genius, Uryū Ishida is actually a Quincy, descendant of a line of priest-like hollow-hunting archers who were historical enemies of the Soul Reapers. He bears a deep grudge against all Soul Reapers, including Ichigo, and is an early antagonist in the series. He comes to view Ichigo differently over time, however, eventually becoming a valuable ally and friendly rival.
Setting
A view of Seireitei in Soul Society, the home of the Soul Reapers.
A view of Seireitei in Soul Society, the home of the Soul Reapers.
Hueco Mundo is a sparse, white-sanded desert inhabited by hollows.
Hueco Mundo is a sparse, white-sanded desert inhabited by hollows.
Bleach is set in a fictional universe centered on a fictional area of Western Tokyo called Karakura Town, in which most of the main characters live.[8] It resembles the real world on the surface, and the everyday humans in Bleach are unaware of the ghosts and spiritual forces with which the plot concerns itself. In addition to the primary setting in modern Japan, the Bleach universe contains several planes of existence which broadly correspond to the afterlives of human belief systems, and journeys into these spirit realms make up a major part of the later series plot. Bleach characters move from plane to plane by several means: Soul Reapers can move between worlds using their zanpakutō and magical butterflies called hell butterflies (地獄蝶, jigoku-chō?), human souls cross between the material and spirit worlds through death and reincarnation, living humans can use special portals to move between worlds, and hollows are able to move between planes at will by tearing rifts in space.
The first of these other planes to be introduced in the story is Soul Society (尸魂界（ソウル・ソサエティ）, Sōru Sosaeti?), a sort of heaven. Soul Society resembles feudal Japan, and consists of two major portions: eighty residential districts called the Rukongai (流魂街, Town of Wandering Spirits?).[9], which are inhabited by the souls of the dead, and the walled city Seireitei (瀞霊廷, Court of Pure Souls?), the home and military base of the Soul Reapers. The Rukongai districts are ordinally ranked, with the lower-numbered districts being more peaceful.[10] Soul Society is nominally ruled by a king, who resides in another realm within Soul Society, but in practice is controlled by the Soul Reapers.[11] The dead who reside in the Rukongai are much like normal humans, but age at an extremely slowed rate, such that lifespans of several centuries are commonplace. When a spirit dies in Soul Society, its soul is sent back to the living world and reborn as a new human.[12]
The second major otherworldly setting is Hueco Mundo (虚圏（ウェコムンド）, Ueko Mundo?), a dimension between the human world and Soul Society which is inhabited by the lost souls known as hollows. It is where hollows reside when not hunting humans, and they are undetectable as long as they remain inside. Hueco Mundo is a bleak desert realm of white sand, covered in perpetual night. Hueco Mundo's vegetation is actually formed from crystal; and while the sky has clouds, there is no water to be found anywhere. Few hollows reside in the desert, instead living in the slightly more hospitable Forest of Menos. The desert landscape is dominated by the imposing Las Noches palace, home of Aizen and the arrancar army. Other spirit realms have also featured in the series, such as a hell to which the souls of particularly evil criminals are banished, and the dangerous void dimension that fills the space between planes, but the details of these areas have not been delved into.
Production
Bleach was first conceived from a desire on Tite Kubo's part to draw shinigami in kimono, which formed the basis for the design of the Soul Reapers in the series, and the conception of character Rukia Kuchiki.[13][14] The original story concept was submitted to Weekly Shōnen Jump shortly after the cancellation of Tite Kubo's previous manga Zombie Powder, but was rejected. Akira Toriyama, the mangaka of Dragon Ball, saw the story and wrote a letter of encouragement to Kubo.[14] Bleach was accepted for publication a short time later, in 2001, and was initially intended to be a shorter series, with a maximum serialization length of five years.[14] Early plans for the story did not include the hierarchical structure of Soul Society, but did include some characters and elements which did not come into the plot until the Arrancar arc, such as Ichigo's Soul Reaper heritage.[13]
Tite Kubo has cited influences for elements of Bleach ranging from other manga series to music, foreign language, architecture, and film. He attributes his interest in drawing the supernatural and monsters to Shigeru Mizuki's Ge Ge Ge no Kitaro and Bleach's focus on interesting weaponry and battle scenes to Masami Kurumada's Saint Seiya, both manga Kubo enjoyed as a boy.[13] The action style and storytelling found in Bleach is inspired by cinema, though Kubo has not revealed any specific movie as being an influence for fight scenes. When pressed, he told interviewers that he liked Snatch but did not use it as a model.[15] Kubo has also stated that he wishes to make Bleach an experience that can only be found by reading manga, and dismissed ideas of creating any live-action film adaptations of the series.[14]
Bleach's creative process is focused around character design. When writing plotlines or having difficulties generating new material, Kubo begins by thinking of new characters, often en masse, and rereading previous volumes of Bleach.[13][16] Kubo has said that he likes creating characters that have outward appearances that do not match their true nature, an element that can be found in many Bleach characters, as he is "attracted to people with that seeming contradiction" and finds an "urge to draw people like that when I work."[2] The terminology used in Bleach has a variety of inspirations, with each category of character bearing a different linguistic theme. Many of the names for swords and spells used by Soul Reapers were inspired by ancient Japanese literature. Hollows and arrancar instead use Spanish terms, while the names of powers used by the human-derived Quincy and Bount are taken from German. Kubo became interested in Spanish because, to him, the language sounded "bewitching" and "mellow".[2]
Media
Manga
Main article: List of Bleach chapters
The series is written and illustrated by Tite Kubo and was published in the Japanese-language magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. The individual chapters are collected by Shueisha in series of tankōbon volumes, which also include a poem by the character of the cover.[17] The first volume was released on January 5, 2002[18] while as of October 3, 2008, thirty-five volumes have been released.[19] The distributing company Viz Media has been releasing the Bleach manga volumes in English in the United States. Viz releases the chapters in their Shonen Jump magazine as well as in tankōbon format; the first volume was released on June 1, 2004[20], while the volume twenty-three was released on June 3, 2008.[21]
Anime
Main article: List of Bleach episodes
The anime version of Bleach is produced by Studio Pierrot and directed by Noriyuki Abe. It began broadcasting in Japan on October 5, 2004, on TV Tokyo. Episodes 1-167 were made and broadcast in 4:3, with episodes 168+ made and broadcast in 16:9 wide screen.
On March 15, 2006, Viz Media obtained foreign television, home video, and merchandising rights to the Bleach anime from the TV Tokyo Corporation and Shueisha.[22] Subsequently, Viz Media contracted Studiopolis to create the English dub of the anime,[23] and has licensed its individual Bleach merchandising rights to several different companies.[24] The English version of the Bleach anime premiered on Canada's YTV channel in the Bionix program block on September 8, 2006. Cartoon Network began airing Bleach the following evening as part of its Adult Swim block. The show went on hiatus on October 20, 2007 after airing the first 52 episodes of the series. It was replaced with another Viz series, Death Note, while additional episodes of Bleach were being dubbed. On March 2, 2008, Cartoon Network began airing new episodes of Bleach and is still airing. YTV began showing reruns of the anime after episode 26. On March 2, 2008 at 1:00 a.m. EST, the series returned from hiatus and began the next 52 episodes.[25] In the UK, Bleach premiered on AnimeCentral on September 13, 2007, with new episodes airing daily, but is currently on hiatus after airing the first 52 episodes.
CDs
Eight CD soundtracks, produced by Shirō Sagisu, have been released for the Bleach anime series and movies. Bleach Original Soundtrack 1 was released on May 18, 2005 and contains twenty-five tracks, including the first opening and ending themes in their original television lengths. Bleach Original Soundtrack 2 followed on August 2, 2006 with an additional twenty-three instrumental tracks. On December 16, 2006, Bleach: Memories of Nobody Original Soundtrack was released with twenty-five tracks from the Bleach: Memories of Nobody anime film. A soundtrack was also released for the Bleach: The DiamondDust Rebellion film, with nearly thirty tracks from the movie. Bleach: The Best contains twelve of the opening and ending themes from the series in their full length versions.
The Bleach Beat Collections, an eighteen volume CD set, was gradually released from June 22, 2005 to March 5, 2008. The Beat Collections albums feature 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.
Two "Radio DJCD Bleach 'B' Station" CD season sets, each containing six volumes, have been released in Japan. Five drama CDs have been produced for the series as well, featuring the original voice actors from the series. These drama CDs have only been included as part of the DVD releases.
Films
There are three feature films based on the Bleach series, all directed by Noriyuki Abe, director of the Bleach anime series. The films have been released in December of each year starting in 2006. Each movie features an original plotline, rather than being an adaptation of the manga's story. They also feature original characters designed by Tite Kubo, which is contrary to the normal practice for anime-based films, as the original author usually has little creative involvement.[26]
The first film, Bleach: Memories of Nobody, was released in Japan on December 16, 2006 and had a limited release in American theaters in June 2008. The movie is centered around the activities of a group called the "Dark Ones," who are trying to destroy both Soul Society and the material world. Memories of Nobody was released in North America on Region 1 DVD by Viz Media on October 14, 2008.[27]
The second film, Bleach: The DiamondDust Rebellion, was released to Japanese theaters on December 22, 2007. Its plot focuses on an artifact belonging to Soul Society's King, and 10th Division captain Tōshirō Hitsugaya's efforts to clear his name after it is stolen while under his care.[28]
Bleach: Fade to Black, I Call Your Name (BLEACH Fade to Black 君の名を呼ぶ, Burichi: Fade to Black - Kimi no Na o Yobu?), the third film, is scheduled to be released in Japan on December 13, 2008. This film's screenplay was written by Natsuko Takahashi, who is a screenwriter for the anime series. The official film website gives the tagline of "Sayonara, Rukia". According to the official website, the plot involves Soul Society members being struck with amnesia, causing them to be hostile towards Ichigo and Rukia.[27]
Musical
Bleach has been adapted into a series of rock musicals, jointly produced by Studio Pierrot and Nelke Planning. There have been five musicals produced which covered portions of the Substitute and Soul Society arcs, as well as two additional performances known as "Live Bankai Shows" which did not follow the Bleach plotline. The initial performance run of the Bleach musical was from August 17 to August 28, 2005 at the Space Zero Tokyo center in Shinjuku.[29][30][31]
The musicals are directed by Takuya Hiramitsu, with a script adaptation by Naoshi Okumura and music composed by playwright Shoichi Tama. The songs are completely original and not taken from the anime soundtrack. Key actors in the series include Tatsuya Isaka, who plays Ichigo Kurosaki, Miki Satō, who plays Rukia Kuchiki, and Eiji Moriyama, who plays Renji Abarai.
[edit] Other
A single Bleach artbook, All Colour But The Black, has been released in Japan.[32] Three databooks have also been released, SOULs: Official Character Guide Book, VIBEs: Official Animation Book, and Bleach Official Bootleg, a character guide book which also contained a compilation of short gag comics featuring the Bleach cast.[33][34][35]
Tite Kubo and Makoto Matsubara have co-authored two novelizations of the Bleach series, which were published by Shueisha under their Jump Books label. The first volume, BLEACH-letters from the other side: The Death and The Strawberry was published in 2004, and the second, BLEACH: The Honey Dish Rhapsody, was published in 2006.[36]
 iare done · Tue Oct 21, 2008 @ 03:13am · 0 Comments |
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