bleach

Bleach follows the life of Ichigo Kurosaki, a 15-year-old high school student with the ability to see ghosts, and a shinigami (Soul Reaper or, literally, "death god") named Rukia Kuchiki, who runs into him one day while searching for a hollow (an evil spirit). During the ensuing confrontation with the spirit, she is wounded and forced to transfer all of her powers into Ichigo. Thus the adventures of Ichigo and Rukia begin. Together they search for hollows and perform soul burials on wayward souls, cleansing the spirits and sending them to Soul Society.

The early parts of the story focus mainly on the characters and their past, rather than the actual occupation of the shinigami. However, as events unfold, the story begins to delve deeper into the world of these gods of death on the "other side" called Soul Society.

Introduction

Ichigo Kurosaki is a rough-and-tumble teenager who has always had the special ability to see ghosts. The story begins with the sudden appearance of an oddly-dressed stranger in Ichigo's bedroom. This stranger is the shinigami Rukia Kuchiki, who is surprised at his ability to see her. Their resulting conversation is interrupted by the appearance of a hollow, an evil spirit. After Rukia is severely wounded during battle, she decides to transfer half of her powers to Ichigo, hoping to give him the opportunity to face the hollow on an equal footing. For unknown reasons, however, Ichigo absorbs all of Rukia's powers during the attempt, allowing him to defeat the hollow with ease.

The next day, Rukia turns up in Ichigo's classroom as a transfer student. Much to his surprise, she now appears to be a normal human. She theorizes that it was the unusual strength of Ichigo's spirit that caused him to fully absorb her powers, rather than just half, thus leaving her stranded in her gigai — an artificial human body. While she waits to recover her abilities, Ichigo must take over the job of watching over the area, battling hollows and guiding lost souls to the afterlife.

Main characters

Main article: Characters in Bleach

• Ichigo Kurosaki
• Rukia Kuchiki
• Orihime Inoue
• Yasutora "Chad" Sado
• Uryū Ishida

Races

There are two distinct "races" revealed in Bleach: humans and spirits. Most humans cannot see or sense spirits in any way. However, spirits can inhabit artificial human bodies that are visible to ordinary humans. Furthermore, about one in 150,000 humans can see spirits clearly. Some humans have both the power to sense and to fight with spirits. Other humans can gain the ability to do so by spending time around a large source of spirit energy. Spirits have a form composed of reishi (ectoplasm), with an anatomy similar to an ordinary flesh body, including organs and blood. However, this form encompasses all of a spirit's being. In other words, there is no distinction between soul and body. Human and spirit classes are described below.

• Plus: A plus (whole in the official English editions) is the disembodied spirit of a person who has died. A plus has a spiritual body composed of reishi that resembles its material body at the time of death. From the chest hangs the Chain of Fate (因果の鎖, inga no kusari^?). This chain ties the soul to something in the world that keeps it there. If the chain of a spirit is broken, the chain begins to corrode. Normally, pluses are sent to Soul Society by shinigami in a ritual called soul burial (魂葬, konsō^?). However, if the corrosion is completed before a shinigami can perform a soul burial, the plus degrades into a hollow. The plus may alternatively use shinigami powers to prevent this from occurring.

• Shinigami: Shinigami (Soul Reapers in the official English editions) are the psychopomps of Bleach. They are pluses with inner spiritual power, recruited from the ranks of the residents and nobility of Soul Society. Like all pluses, they cannot be detected by normal humans. Shinigami use their soul slayers (zanpakutō) to perform soul burials on pluses. Shinigami also use zanpakutō and demon arts (kidō) to fight their archrivals, the hollows. Some shinigami have acquired hollow powers using illegal methods; they are known as the vizard.

• Hollow: The hollows are the major antagonists of Bleach. They are evil spirits who reside in Hueco Mundo. Like shinigami, hollows are made of spiritual matter, cannot be detected by ordinary humans, and use their internal spiritual power to fight. While most hollows can be overcome by the average shinigami, some can surpass a shinigami captain in strength. All hollows wear white masks, except for a few created under the direction of Sōsuke Aizen. These hollows are called arrancar and have been able to remove most of their masks and tap into the powers of the shinigami. Although they carry zanpakutō, the sword is used to modify the body of the arrancar itself.

• Modified soul: Modified souls were experimental souls authorized and created by shinigami. They were meant to hunt hollows by possessing soul-less human bodies and supercharging a particular aspect of them (for example, strength or speed). The shinigami decided to scrap the project due to the inhumanity of forcing dead bodies to fight, leading to the destruction of all modified souls. Those that were manufactured but yet to possess human bodies were also to be terminated, but some escaped. The only modified soul in the original manga is Kon. However, in the bount arc of the anime, there are three others: the modified souls Ririn, Claude, and Nova live in gigai created by Kisuke Urahara.

• Quincy: The Quincy were a clan of spiritually aware humans who once fought against the hollows, using weapons composed of spiritual energy to slay them. As opposed to shinigami, Quincy absorb and channel energy from their surroundings. When a shinigami slays a hollow, this cleanses the hollow's spirit and washes away its sins, allowing it to enter Soul Society. The Quincy technique to slay hollows simply destroys the spirit entirely. Furthermore, using this method has the propensity to shatter the balance of the universe. When souls are destroyed, the number of souls entering and leaving Soul Society cannot remain equal. This issue prompted the shinigami to conduct a campaign to exterminate the Quincy about 200 years before the main storyline. However, at least two Quincy remain.

• Bount (anime only): The Bounts are, like the Quincy, a group of human beings with special abilities. Unlike the Quincy, who destroy hollows, Bounts consume the souls of human beings to survive. They also differ from the Quincy in that eating souls allows them to live for centuries; theoretically, a Bount could live forever. Although the Bounts have a strict rule to consume only the souls of the dead, the last group of Bounts chose to begin draining living humans of their souls in order to become more powerful. Each Bount uses a "doll" in combat, a type of familiar possessing its own special abilities. Each doll is unique and is a manifestation of the user's power, similar to the zanpakutō. The Bounts were created by Shinigami scientists looking for a way to create infinite life.

Setting

There are several planes of existence in the Bleach universe. These broadly correspond to the life and afterlife of human belief systems. The living humans of Bleach reside in a world resembling the present day; buried souls live in a kind of Heaven called Soul Society; unredeemed spirits reside in a purgatory called Hueco Mundo; evil souls are sent to Hell. Once in Soul Society, a spirit is able to live much longer than humans in the living world, with many aging into the thousands. Once a spirit dies in Soul Society, its soul is sent back to the living world and reborn as a new human. This provides the two worlds with balance.

• Human world: The human world of Bleach is modern Japan, or more specifically, a fictional area of Western Tokyo called Karakura Town.^[1] In this world, Ichigo attends school, fights hollows, and tries to avoid rumors that he is Rukia's boyfriend. Places of note are the high school, the Urahara Shop, the river where Ichigo's mother was killed, the cemetery, and Ichigo and Orihime's homes.

• Soul Society: Soul Society consists of a giant walled city in the center, known as the Seireitei (Court of Pure Souls), and four regions (north, south, east, and west), each with 80 districts, outside of it. The districts outside of the Seireitei are known as the Rukongai (Town of Wandering Spirits) and are the place where non-shinigami and non-nobles live. The district number of the Rukongai also describes its conditions. Each District 1 is peaceful and orderly, while District 80 is filled with criminals and has poor conditions. A king resides in Soul Society, but no details about him have surfaced.

• Hueco Mundo: Hueco Mundo is the area between the human world and Soul Society. Literally meaning "hollow world" (although the Spanish is inaccurate), it is where hollows reside when not in the human world or Soul Society, and where they are nigh undetectable. The entrance to Hueco Mundo is a rip in the fabric of the human world.

• Hell: Hell is the destination of those who committed unforgivably evil acts during their lives in the human world. When a hollow whose mortal soul is too wicked to enter Soul Society has its mask split by a zanpakutō, the gates of Hell (giant doors with a skeleton holding on to each) appear and begin to open, and a giant, laughing spiritual being with a blade will spear the wicked spirit and drag it down into Hell.

Bleach characters move from world to world by several means. Human souls usually cross between planes through birth into the human world or soul burial by shinigami. However, living humans can also use special portals to move between worlds. Shinigami open passages between worlds by means of their zanpakutō. Moths created during soul burial, called hell butterflies, make these routes safe. While hollows are portrayed as able to move between planes at will by opening rifts in space, they usually remain in Hueco Mundo due to the risk of discovery in Soul Society or the human world. Encounters between roaming and displaced characters are a driving plot force in Bleach.

Media information

Main article: Bleach media and materials

See also: List of Bleach episodes, List of Bleach video games, Bleach (musical).

The Bleach animated TV series is broadcast at 7:27 p.m. on Wednesdays on TV Tokyo and affiliated stations throughout Japan. Studio Pierrot does the animation work. The first episode aired on Tuesday, October 5, 2004, replacing F-Zero: Falcon Densetsu in the 6:30 p.m. timeslot. It remained in that timeslot for the first 51 episodes. The next 46 episodes aired at 7:27 p.m. on Tuesdays. As of October 4, 2006 there are a total of 98 episodes and two OVAs. Recent episodes are original to the anime, and are designed to prevent the anime storyline from overtaking that of the manga. The series has no plans to end production.

The Bleach manga is being translated into English by VIZ Media, although several scanlation groups continue to release unofficial English translations. On March 15, 2006, VIZ Media also obtained foreign television, home video, and merchandising rights to the Bleach anime from the TV Tokyo Corporation and Shueisha Inc. These licensing privileges in the Americas, Europe, and Oceania prompted some fansub groups to end their work on the series; others continue their work. Subsequently, VIZ Media contracted Studiopolis to create the English dub of the anime. [1]

The English version of the Bleach anime premiered on Canada's YTV channel in the Bionix program block on September 8, 2006 at 10:30 p.m. EDT. This represented the show's official debut in North America. Cartoon Network's Adult Swim began airing Bleach the following evening at 12:30 a.m. EDT. In addition, Adult Swim has launched a Bleach website that includes the original opening and ending themes with English credits. [2] The English voice acting is directed by Michael Sorich.

Bleach: Memories of Nobody is an animated film scheduled for release in Japan on December 16, 2006. It is set just after the Soul Society arc. Ichigo is in the living world fending off hollows when there is a new crisis that threatens to "collapse the world."

In 2005, Bleach was awarded the prestigious Shogakukan Manga Award in the shōnen category. [3]

In Volume 4, Issue 3 of the American Shonen Jump, there was an interview with the creator of Bleach. In the interview, it was said that Tite Kubo entered into a manga contest, but lost. An editor noticed him, and they worked with each other.

Opening and Endings

Openings

Opening 1: "Asterisk" by Orange Range (eps 1-25)

Opening 2: "D-tecnolife" by UVERworld (eps 26-51)

Opening 3: "Ichirin no Hana" by High and Mighty Color (eps 52-74)

Opening 4: "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight" by Beat Crusaders (eps 75-97)

Opening 5: "Rolling star" by YUI (eps 98-)

Endings

Ending 1: "Life is Like a Boat" by Rie Fu (eps 1-13)

Ending 2: "Thank You!!" by HOME MADE KAZOKU (eps 14-25)

Ending 3: "Houkiboshi (ほうき星; Abandoned Star)" by Younha (eps 26-38)

Ending 4: "Happy People" by Skoop on Somebody (eps 39-51)

Ending 5: "Life" by YUI (eps 52-63)

Ending 6: "My Pace" by SunSet Swish (eps 64-74)

Ending 7: "Hanabi" by Ikimono-gakari (eps 75-86)

Ending 8: "MOVIN!!" by Takacha (eps 87-97)

Ending 9: "Baby It's You" by JUNE (eps 98-)

References

1. ^ Kubo, Tite (2006). Bleach Official Character Book Souls. Tokyo, Japan: Shueisha, 31. ISBN 4088740793

External links

• Official Bleach website (Japanese)
• Official Bleach movie website (Japanese)
• Studio Pierrot Bleach website (Japanese)
• TV Tokyo Bleach website (Japanese)
• Shonen Jump Bleach website
• Adult Swim Bleach website
• YTV Bleach website
• VIZ Media's Official Bleach website

Encyclopedia entries

• AniDB Listing
• Bleach (anime) at Anime News Network's Encyclopedia
• Bleach (manga) at Anime News Network's Encyclopedia
• Bleach OST 1 at MusicBrainz