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Tite Kubo's Bleach Manga to Enter Final Arc

This year's 10th issue of Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump magazine is announcing on Monday that Tite Kubo's Bleach manga is entering its final story arc. Kubo has been drawing the manga in the magazine since 2001, and Shueisha published the 53rd compiled book volume of the manga in December.

Thanks to its "Shonen Jump Digital Warp" program, Viz Media just released the 53rd volume in electronic book form in North America last month. The Digital Warp program prepared the way for this week's launch of Viz's English-language digital anthology Shonen Jump Alpha, which is running chapters of Bleach and five other titles two weeks after their print debut in Japan's Weekly Shonen Jump. Viz will release the print version of the 38th volume next week.

[Via Manga News]

Update: More background information added. The 10th issue of Weekly Shonen Jump published the layout sketch (pictured above) for the color opening page of the manga's final arc in the next issue. [Via 0takomu]