Bleach

## Bleach **Bleach** (ブリーチ) is a 2004 anime television series produced by Studio Pierrot, adapted from Tite Kubo's manga. One of the "Big Three" of 2000s shonen anime alongside *Naruto* and *One Piece*, the original Bleach series ran for 366 episodes and covers the manga's most celebrated arcs — most importantly the Soul Society arc, widely considered one of the greatest extended action sequences in shonen history. The franchise was revived in 2022 with the acclaimed *Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War*, but the original series established the world and characters that made that revival possible. Ichigo Kurosaki is a teenager with the unusual ability to see ghosts. His comfortable-if-strange existence is upended when he encounters Rukia Kuchiki, a Soul Reaper (Shinigami) — a warrior of the afterlife responsible for guiding human souls and fighting corrupted spirits called Hollows. During a Hollow attack that threatens his family, Ichigo absorbs Rukia's powers and defeats the creature. Now, with Rukia temporarily powerless and stranded in the human world, Ichigo must take on her Soul Reaper duties while she recovers. But when Soul Society dispatches execution squads to retrieve Rukia for the unauthorized transfer of powers, Ichigo resolves to invade Soul Society itself to save her — triggering a war across two worlds. The original series at its best is an enormously entertaining blend of gothic visual design, magnetic characters, and spectacular battles.