It’s the mid 2000s, the anime and manga scene is dominated by action-heavy shows and amongst all of them stand the big three at the top of the summit. If you got into anime around this time, you know exactly which Shonen shows I’m talking about: Naruto, One Piece and Bleach. It’s 2020 and the landscape has changed massively since then.

There’s no trinity of series serving as a beachead into the western frontier, with the land of the rising sun having a ton of shows to unleash every season on an audience that can’t wait to gobble them up with their eyeballs. So what happened to the big three? Naruto eventually wrapped up and handed its kunai over to Boruto (Imagine Naruto but somehow even worse), One Piece will outlive us all and Bleach faded away as the likes of My Hero Academia, Black Clover and Haikyuu picked up the baton that it had dropped.

Tito Kube’s manga series may have been a wild tale of teenagers, soul reapers and a corrupt afterlife, but it eventually began to lose steam when it repeated its first major story arc but with a Hollow twist and followed that up with the Bount saga that cost it even more fans. The manga was cancelled, the anime followed suit not long after as fans grew tired of endless filler and what was once the coolest property around became an afterthought.

Bleach still has its fans, believer who are dying to see the final and cataclysmic chapters of the saga given a proper send-off in anime. Good news! Bleach will finally meet its animated end, as a brand new original video animation series will hit screens in 2020. After that, the Thousand Year Blood War story that ended the manga will arrive in 2021:

BLEACH ANIME is coming back for 2021!!!!!!!!! and also burn the witch ova is coming for 2020

we did it🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥#BLEACH #BleachBloodWarAnime pic.twitter.com/gIEidAOrQA — Ichigo_m (@bleach_fan20) March 18, 2020

YES! Love it or loathe it, but Bleach’s impact cannot be denied. Now reaching the 20th anniversary of when it was first published, it’s lovely to see the cult classic property being resurrected for one final blast from the past. Who knows? Maybe this revival could lead to a new generation of Bleach being unleashed.

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