Bleach

About

Bleach is a Japanese manga and anime series created by Kubo Tite^[1] and originally published in Shōnen Jump^[2] and later in Weekly Shōnen Jump^[3]. Ever since the franchise was originally launched, it garnered a strong online following, spawning a number of fan works.

Premise

The manga follows the adventures of Ichigo Kurosaki, a Japanese teenager who has the ability to see ghosts. He soon accidentally comes across a girl named Rukia Kuchiki, who comes from the Soul Society, a society of Soul Reapers who help guide dead souls away from the world of the living. However after she is wounded in battle, she transfers some of her powers into Ichigo, causing her to later be arrested by the Soul Society. Ichigo, as well as his classmates Orihime Inoue, Yasutora “Chad” Sado and Uryū Ishida, then decide to travel to the Soul Society in order to free Rukia from her sentence.

History

The idea for Bleach was first conceived when creator Kubo Tite decided to draw what a shinigami^[4] would look like in a kimono. The design he came up with would be the basis for the Soul Reapers and the character Rukia Kuchiki. Though the series was initally rejected by Shōnen Jump, after a letter of encouragement from fellow manga artist Akira Toriyama^[5], the series was picked up shortly thereafter. The manga began production in August 2001 and is still ongoing. The popularity of the manga prompted an anime series by the same name to be produced. The anime started airing on October 5, 2004 and ended on March 27, 2012. As well as the manga and anime series, four animated movies based on the series have been produced, and in March 2010 Warner Bros.^[6] confirmed that is was in talks to produce a live action film^[7] based on the franchise. A series of musicals known as Rock Musical Bleach^[23] have been produced starting in August 2005 with the latest premiering in August 2012. A trading card game^[8] based on Bleach was produced from 2007 to 2009, and has since ceased production. Three Light Novels^[9] have been produced based on the series, all of which were co-written by Kubo himself. Along with all these, numerous video games based on the series have been created^[10] with first game, Bleach: Heat the Soul^[11] being released on March 24, 2005, and the latest release being Bleach: Soul Resurrección^[12] on August 2, 2011.

Online Relevance

Bleach has an immense online following in the online anime community, and is often grouped with Naruto and One Piece into the “Big 3” of the Weekly Shōnen Jump series. The series has a significant following on sites like Tumblr^[13], Reddit^[14], Fanpop^[15], 4chan’s /a/ board^[16], My Anime List^[17], and DeviantART^[18]. Aside from these there are also numerous sites dedicated to archiving information based on the series such as the Bleach wiki^[19] and TV Tropes^[20]. There are multiple Facebook pages based around the series, the most popular of which have over 400,000^[21] likes and 350,000^[22] likes respectively.

Fandom

The Bleach series has spawned a significant online fanbase since it’s creation, which has created much fanart and fanfiction. On the Japanese fanart site Pixiv, there are over 39,000 images tagged under “ブリーチ”^[25], as well as over 1,300 videos on the video sharing website Nico Nico Douga^[26]. On DeviantART, there are also over 847,000 images tagged related to the series^[27], as well as over 79,000 stories on Fanfiction.net^[28].

Notable Submemes

Leekspin / Loituma Girl

Leekspin / Loituma Girl is a 2006 YouTube video featuring Bleach character Orihime twirling a leek to the tune of Finnish song Ievan polkka. As of November 2014 the video has over 6 million views.

Kubo Troll

Kubo Troll refers to the criticism of Bleach creator Kubo Tite’s seemingly lazy designs where a panel will appear to be mostly blank with little to no background whatsoever.

Incarnate / The Nick Simmons Plagiarism Scandal

Incarnate / The Nick Simmons Plagiarism Scandal refers to the allegation of plagiarism directed towards Nick Simmons’ (son of KISS member Gene Simmons) comic series Incarnate^[24]. The series is notorious for allegedly copying panels from the Bleach manga.