Bleach is part of the “Big 3” of the anime genre. These are the most popular universes published by the Shueisha company in Weekly Shonen Jump during the 2000s. The other two animes are Naruto and One Piece. However, despite the big success, Tite Kubo, the mangaka behind Bleach, had a rocky start to his career.
What difficulties did he face? Before he achieved immense success with Bleach, Tite Kubo drew one-shots. These are short stories that are completed within a single issue. However, his publisher found these one-shots so terrible that they advised him to look at two other famous mangas (via GameFAQs).
Kubo was often criticized in the early days of his career. Before his second one-shot, he was summoned to the office by Torishima, a well-known editor at the Shueisha company. Torishima earned a good reputation for being the responsible editor in the early days of Dragon Ball.
Torishima and Kubo’s responsible editor sternly stated that Kubo’s manga was not good. Torishima then placed the first volumes of Dragon Ball and Fist of the North Star on the table. They instructed Kubo to go home, read those mangas, and write that kind of manga. They wanted Kubo’s works to be as successful as those two manga hits.
After this story, Bleach became such a massive success that it even led to its own manga:
“That Bastard” – Bleach Author Did His Own Thing
How did Kubo react? The Bleach mangaka thought that Torishima was a “bastard.” He didn’t read those volumes later and defied the publisher’s instructions. At that time, he was already familiar with the two mangas, as they were big successes back then.
Instead, Kubo remained true to his style and went on to develop several more works:
- His biggest success remained Bleach, which was published from 2001 to 2016. This was followed by movies, novels, and a live-action film that you can even watch on Netflix.
- With Bleach: New Breathes From Hell, there was even a one-shot released in 2021 that addresses the events after the finale of Bleach.
- The original anime did not cover all the arcs of the manga. Only since 2022 is there the final story arc, Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War, in series format. The anime is still ongoing.
- Since 2018, Kubo has been working on the successor Burn the Witch. The story takes place in the same universe as Bleach. There is a matching anime available on Crunchyroll.
Thus, the mangaka did not have to follow Dragon Ball or Fist of the North Star to have his works celebrated. Since Kubo is currently still far from retirement age, we can hope that he will continue to provide us with new reading material in the coming years. If it were up to him, he would work on a reboot of Bleach.
What is Bleach about? Ichigo Kurosaki is the protagonist of Bleach and can see ghosts. The Shinigami Rukia is seriously injured in a fight with an evil spirit and transfers her powers to Ichigo. Until she regains her powers, Ichigo must take on the job of a Shinigami.
However, Rukia is charged with a serious crime, having transferred her powers to a human. She is sentenced to death. Therefore, Ichigo and his friends must do everything they can to save Rukia from the sentence.
Although the Bleach mangaka did not strictly adhere to the Dragon Ball template, the two animes share some parallels. There are also four more animes that MeinMMO demon Cortyn can recommend if you are a fan of Dragon Ball or Bleach: 5 anime series like Dragon Ball.
