According to a recent leak from Twitter user Sugoi LITE, The Walt Disney Company’s Disney Plus platform has taken over the distribution of the anime Bleach: Sennen Kessen-hen (Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War). Although, the official confirmation from Disney+ is yet to be made. What does this mean for the Bleach anime return? Fans have numerous questions in mind.
Bleach anime series produced by Studio Pierrot is returning in October 2022, and according to a piece of information that came out in May 2022, Crunchyroll and Disney Plus were bidding to acquire the streaming rights of Bleach’s upcoming arc. According to the new leaks, Disney+ was able to outbid Crunchyroll to get the streaming rights of the Bleach TYBW arc. Keep in mind that there is no information released on whether Disney+ has worldwide streaming rights or just for a specific region.
Disney is huge and has all the money in the world. Anime is a rapidly growing entertainment medium, and almost all the streaming services are now investing huge sums of money to get exclusive streaming rights for anime franchises. Bleach franchise already has a huge fan base, and it is a no-brainer that Disney+ will get a lot of new subscribers on their platform if they can get exclusive streaming rights to the Bleach TYBW arc.
On the other hand, this could potentially be bad news for anime fans. Streaming services like Netflix and Disney mostly don’t simulcast the newest anime episodes, which is one of the major complaints you can hear from anime fans. Disney+ has streaming rights to the Summertime Rendering anime series, which wasn’t simulcasted. Things could get much worse for the Bleach TYBW arc if Disney+ decided to release the episode in batches, just like Netflix is doing for JoJo part 6.
2nd thing that anime fans are afraid of is that Disney+ might censor the series, but the good news is that Summertime Rendering is a pretty gore anime, and it wasn’t censored at all on Disney+. Additionally, Tite Kubo has assured that the Bleach TYBW arc won’t be censored, and he is heavily involved in the production of the series.
Let’s talk about some of the positives the Bleach franchise will receive if it gets streamed on Disney Plus. Disney spends a lot of time and money promoting their shows, so you can expect a lot of hype being created by Disney’s social accounts.
Disney already has millions of subscribers and a huge fan following on social media. Bleach series will get a lot of exposure to people who have never heard of the series, so this will attract more people to watch the show.
Acquiring streaming rights to the Bleach series doesn’t mean Disney will have control over the production decisions of the series. Bleach’s production committee is a different department, and Disney is only licensing the anime series. According to YouTuber, JaymesHanson, Disney has acquired the whole catalog of Bleach anime series, which makes sense as a new fan would probably like to watch the series from the beginning instead of directly jumping to the final arc of the series.
Please keep in mind that Disney has not officially confirmed the news. We will keep updating the article once more information gets available. The official announcement will most probably be made during Disney Expo, which will be held in September 2022.
Let us know what you think of Disney Plus getting the rights to Bleach TYBW arc streaming.
Source: Sugoi Lite (Twitter)
