Bleach is getting a new chapter to celebrate the series' 20th anniversary, and a newly released illustration from creator Tite Kubo offers a hint as to when the new story takes place.
Released on Twitter, the new illustration shows off an older looking Ichigo, which matches his appearance from the final chapter of the Bleach manga, which took place after a ten year time skip. The illustration seemingly confirms that the 20th anniversary chapter will take place after the events of the original manga and will star Ichigo, so it won't be some kind of prequel or side story. The new Bleach chapter was announced several days ago and will be published in Issue #36/37 of Weekly Shonen Jump. This special release will be the first new, full chapter of Bleach since 2016.
BLEACH20周年のお祭りなので、形にする予定の無かったその後の話をちょっとだけ描きました。お祭り気分で読んでね！！〈帯人〉 pic.twitter.com/qpM18KhkKU
— 久保帯人＆スタッフ (@tite_official) August 1, 2021
Bleach was one of the biggest hits to emerge out of Shonen Jump in the early '00s and tells the story of Ichigo, a young man who is cursed with the ability to see ghosts. After encountering a woman named Rukia, who is a member of a group of supernatural warriors known as Soul Reapers, Ichigo becomes involved in their conflict with the Hollows, a type of a malicious spirit that attacks both the living and the souls of the recently departed. The series was lauded as one of Shonen Jump's "Big Three" anime and manga franchises of the era, alongside Masashi Kishimoto's Naruto and Eiichiro Oda's still on-going One Piece. Following Bleach's conclusion in 2016, Tite Kubo released the spinoff manga series Burn the Witch in 2020, which takes place in the same universe as his earlier work.
The Bleach manga is available in English from VIZ Media. The anime series is available for streaming on Hulu, Netflix and Crunchyroll.
Source: Twitter
