The official Twitter account of Viz Media has confirmed that the Bleach “Thousand Year Blood War” arc will be streamed on Hulu in U.S. and Disney Plus for international fans.
Bleach all previous seasons were removed from Crunchyroll a few days ago, hinting that the series has already found a new home. It is still unclear when the previous episodes of Bleach will be made available on Disney Plus or Hulu. According to mobilesyrup, the first sixteen seasons of Bleach will be coming to Disney+ on October 26.
Leaks about Disney winning the Bleach TYBW arc streaming rights started appearing a month ago, but this is the first time we have received official news from Viz Media.
Bleach Thousand Year Blood War arc will have a total of 4 cours. A cour is basically an anime season of 3 months where usually 12 to 13 anime episodes are broadcasted. The first episode of Bleach TYBW arc will be aired on October 10 and will be available on Hulu and Disney+ at 8:30 AM PT. The upcoming Bleach episodes are confirmed to be simulcasted, meaning the episodes will be released on the same day for international fans as in Japan.
Fans from Asia can watch the series on the Ani-One Asia YouTube channel; however, the series will be available only to premium subscribers (Ani-One Aisa Ultra members). Disney Plus has not confirmed the exact regions for which it has the rights for Bleach. As we all know, multiple websites get the streaming license for anime these days.
Bleach’s final arc quality is expected to be of a movie quality as Rukia’s voice actor, Fumiko Orikasa, revealed that the studio started working on Bleach anime 5 years ago. Bleach’s anime production also caused trouble for other anime studios. According to Noriaki Sugiyama (who voices Uryu Ishida), at one time, almost 80 people were filming on the same day, and other studios complained that voice actors preferred Bleach over their other commitments.
Bleach’s upcoming anime will adapt the final arc of the manga series, which focuses on Quincy and their revenge on the Soul Society. The Quincy were ordinary people who could sense the hollow’s presence, but instead of purifying them like Shinigami, they started killing them, which interrupted the balance of the world. As a punishment, Soul Society exterminated Quincy, except for Ishida’s family.
All the Quincy were expected to be destroyed, but they hid and waited for their chance to get revenge on Soul Society. After the defeat of Aizen, they declared war on the Shinigami Realm.
Bleach anime is based on manga of the same name, written and drawn by Tite Kubo. Tite started publishing the manga in August 2001 in Weekly Shonen Jump magazine and ended the series in August 2016. The manga series has been collected into 74 volumes.
Studio Pierrot picked up the manga for an anime adaptation and aired the anime between 2004 to 2012. The series also four inspired four animated films, multiple video games, and a live-action Japanese film which premiered in 2018