Bleach Anime Returns With a Slick First Trailer for Thousand Year Blood War

The first trailer for Bleach: Thousand Year Blood War is here.

The first look at the anime series' long-awaited return was shown at this year's Jump Festa event in Japan. The trailer was shown following a lengthy recap video that looked back at the entire original show. As the title suggests, the new season of the Bleach anime will be based on the manga's Thousand Year Blood War arc, which was published after the original Bleach anime ended its broadcast run in 2012. The stylish trailer shows off the new season's updated animation style, and shows many characters from throughout the series, including central protagonist Ichigo, Rukia, Orihime, Soifon, and the brutal Kenpachi. The series will begin airing in Japan in Oct. 2022.

Shortly after the presentation, VIZ Media confirmed that it would release the series outside of Japan.

The Bleach anime premiered in 2004 and ran for 366 episodes. Despite being one of the most popular anime series of its era, the show came to an end four years before Kubo concluded the manga, meaning the last part of Ichigo's story previously went without an animated adaptation. The original anime series was produced by Pierrot, the animation studio that was also behind the Naruto TV series.

Bleach: Thousand Year Blood War was first announced in March 2020 during a presentation meant to commemorate the then-upcoming 20th anniversary of the series. Earlier this year, Kubo published the first new chapter of the Bleach manga since 2016, entitled "No Breaths from Hell." The chapter was originally announced as a one-off release meant to mark the series' anniversary, but fans soon discovered that the story was actually setting up a brand new adventure for Ichigo and the rest of the Soul Reapers. Since the chapter's release, Kubo and Shueisha have not officially announced further manga chapters, but many fans have already come to the conclusion that a sequel series is inevitable.

Bleach originally premiered in 2001 is one of the most popular shonen manga series in history, achieving a circulation of over 120 million copies around the world. The original manga came to an end in 2016, though Kubo returned to its world in 2018 with a spinoff series, Burn the Witch, which is set in England and explores the western branch of Soul Society.

Jump Festa is a yearly event put on by publisher Shueisha to celebrate the Weekly Shonen Jump magazine and all of the anime and manga franchises that it has helped to launch. The year's festival is a hybrid event: in-person activities are being held at the Makurahi Messe convention center in Chiba, Japan, but the event is also being streamed to certain regions through Weekly Shonen Jump's official website and YouTube channel.

Source: Jump Festa, Twitter