Revisiting the First Time Bleach Ended

At the height of its popularity, the first Bleach anime was a mega-popular, generation-shaping classic. Which is why its premature ending in 2012 marked the beginning of the end of an era.

It's hard to overstate how dominant Bleach was at the height of its popularity in the mid/late 2000s. Adapted from Tite Kubo's smash-hit manga of the same name, Bleach was a defining show for an entire generation of anime fans. Combining thrilling fights, stylish visuals and music, and an angsty tone that made it perfect for Linkin Park AMVs, it's hardly a wonder how this long-running shonen series attracted so many devoted fans. Enough fans, for example, that alongside the profoundly famous likes of Naruto and One Piece it was a member of the highly exclusive club known as “the big 3”—a nickname for Shonen Jump's trio of massively successful ongoing flagship titles that, at the time, were considered to be among the absolute most prominent ongoing anime/manga titles. Such was Bleach's esteem that in 2006, Viz Media's executive vice president at the time went so far as to call it, “one of the most powerful and successful new series coming out of Japan.”

But by February 2012, things were a bit different. Bleach was still inarguably one of the most well-known anime around—Viz would even say in a brand new press release that Bleach, “has topped the ratings on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim, sold over 1.8 million DVDs and consistently ranked among Hulu's most watched shows.” But despite all of its continued success, its glory days were long gone. The fan-favorite arcs—Soul Society in particular—were a thing of the increasingly-distant past. Meanwhile, its then-current arc—the Lost Agent arc—would go on to be widely considered by Bleach fans to be the worst arc in the entire series. Making things even worse was how saturated with filler the anime had come to be. When the aforementioned press release was posted, 163 of Bleach's 361 episodes were filler: a staggering 45% of the series. To put that into perspective, at the time Naruto Shippūden and One Piece were about 34% and 14% filler, respectively. Furthermore, while this isn't a metric that definitively proves anything, it's still noteworthy that with 32,946 drops (about 25% of the people who had Bleach on anything other than plan-to-watch in their list) Bleach had cemented itself as the most dropped anime on MyAnimeList (a title it still holds as of this editorial's publication.)

But a mega-popular series going through a lull is still a mega-popular series at the end of the day. Even during its lowest points, Bleach's name still carried more weight than most anime ever did at their peaks. Besides, Bleach was a part of the big 3. And things simply seemed to operate differently when it came to the big 3. For example, most of the entire second half of the first Naruto anime was filler, and yet Shippuden still got made. So while it was hardly a secret that Bleach was in a slump, the idea that it could end any time soon was never really a possibility that fans entertained… until February 2012.

Never had there been (or has there been since) a singular month that was as chock-full with bad news specifically for Bleach fans as February 2012. And what better way to kick such a month off than, of course, the landmark announcement that Bleach's manga was about to enter its final arc, making it the first of the big 3—each of whose anime adaptation had now been airing for a minimum of seven years, accumulated well over 300 episodes, and had multiple movies—to put their endings within sight. Needless to say, this news was huge, and sent shockwaves across the manga/anime industry and fan communities alike. But fans took comfort in the fact that even if the manga was entering the final arc, that still meant that Kubo had to write and draw the final arc—a process which would almost certainly give them at least a few more years before Bleach was over, and naturally that means a lot of time left in the anime's lifespan. So for the time being, there was no reason to suspect that Bleach—either the anime or the manga—would be ending in the immediate future, right?

Not allowing Bleach fans even a moment to catch their collective breath, it was reported the next day that a Naruto spinoff, Rock Lee & His Ninja Pals, would be put in Bleach's timeslot. At the time it wasn't specified whether it was sharing the timeslot with Bleach or taking Bleach's place. In times past, Bleach fans probably wouldn't have paid an announcement like this much mind—after all, Bleach had moved time slots a few times prior to this as well. But perhaps feeling uncertain in the face of the previous day's headline, something about this news felt different, and it prompted a surprising amount of discussion and speculation on what this meant for the future of the Bleach anime. While their voices were hardly a monolith, most fans and other onlookers eager to discuss Bleach's now-precarious future seemed to agree that the likeliest scenarios were it moving timeslots, or going on a brief hiatus. After all, especially with the manga's ending now on the horizon, there's no way the Bleach anime could end now, on the eve of its final arc, right?

Despite what its fans were hoping, Bleach losing its timeslot was the final nail in its proverbial coffin. But the general public wouldn't know that until about three weeks (and one announcement of a live-action adaptation film by Warner) later, when it was confirmed that after seven years of airing, Bleach's anime would be ending in five weeks—on its 366th episode. Despite how pivotal and far-reaching this news was, for the most part it wasn't met with the shock, protests, screams, and kicks one might expect. Instead, it was largely regarded as predictable to a certain extent—disappointing, but not exactly a surprise. It was met with a lot of understanding, acceptance, and curiosity about what this meant for Bleach's future, as well as the future of the big 3—the more immediate concern being, of course, how Bleach was going to wrap itself up in only five weeks. Was it going to die the way it lived: full of filler? Was it going to continue as though it weren't ending and then, in the last 30 seconds of the last episode, have an open “ending” where one of the protagonists talks about how their fight continues while everyone's hair blows dramatically in the wind? Was it not truly over, and just on the cusp of getting a yet-unannounced continuation/rebranded series like Shippuden? Would the final arc be animated after the manga was finished à la InuYasha: The Final Act? Or was it going to do something else entirely? None of the big 3 had yet needed to craft an ending, so it truly felt like anything could've happened to Bleach.

But with only five weeks left, fans didn't have much time to speculate about how Bleach would end before it finally came to a close on March 27, 2012—just over a month after the announcement that the anime was ending soon, which itself was slightly less than a month since the announcement that the manga was entering its final arc. Nonetheless, Bleach fans old and new came out of the woodwork to appreciate the influence Kubo's series had on their lives in the aftermath of the final episode's release. While I won't delve into spoiler territory by discussing specifics, reviews for the episode itself tended to be solid—neither particularly good nor bad, but adequately tied up some loose ends. And yet, “bittersweet” is probably the most common word you'll find in old forum threads and blog posts reflecting on the episode, as the fact that it was ending at all—let alone so soon—still felt significant. Even though the manga was still ongoing, for many Bleach fans the end of its anime nonetheless felt like the closing of some cultural chapter, or the end of an era.

Just a few months after Bleach's anime had ended, in June 2012, Naruto creator Masashi Kishimoto announced that Naruto was “rising towards its climax.” And ultimately, the final chapter of Naruto would be released in November 2014, with the final episode of its anime premiering in March 2017. One Piece, on the other hand, is still ongoing. But in 2012 its creator, Eiichiro Oda, made a guesstimation about where One Piece's story progress was in an interview. It had been several years, at that point, since he had tried to pinpoint where One Piece's progress was, and while his guess ended up being (extremely) wrong in the long run, the fact that he even tried to make it illustrates that it was clearly something on his mind (or at least, the minds of fans.) Put more simply, by the end of 2012 it was no longer something their fans could ignore: each of the big 3 would end someday. And while that seems obvious to say, it was still a notion that felt weird to face after so many years of their continued prevalence.

Even 10 years later, dialogues and discussions trying to make sense of Bleach's decline have continued to linger. And a key part of understanding Bleach's overall fall from grace is understanding the heart of how and why its anime ended as abruptly as it did. To this day there's no official statement confirming the details of how or why it happened. While fans generally agree that it was the likely consequence of declining/plateauing sales and popularity (which, in case it wasn't clear, is almost certainly the case) this answer still doesn't tell us much: how long was the decision to end the show considered before it finally happened? Was there a specific quota that wasn't being met? Who first proposed the idea to prematurely end the anime, and how did other people working on the show react to this news? Was there any internal pushback? While fans have the data available to notice trends like Bleach's sales, more definitive information like this has proven to be much more elusive.

The silver lining to everything I've said here, however, is that while the first Bleach anime ended, it's not really over in the strictest sense of the word—not anymore, at least. The final, yet un-animated arc—Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War —premieres October 10.