News

Viz Media, Manga Plus Publish Bleach 1-Shot in English

Viz Media's Shonen Jump manga service and Shueisha's MANGA Plus service published the new 76-page chapter of Tite Kubo's Bleach manga in English on Monday.

The one-shot ends seemingly on a cliffhanger, and features the words "New Breathes From Hell" in English and "Gokui Meimei-hen" in Japanese, where the character for "hen" is usually used to denote the title of an arc.

This year's 35th issue of Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump magazine announced the new chapter commemorating the 20th anniversary of the manga's launch. The magazine teased the story of the one shot: "Ichigo was invited to Soul Society for a certain ceremony but!?" The magazine's combined 36th and 37th issue published the chapter on Tuesday.

Kubo launched Bleach in Weekly Shonen Jump in 2001, and ended it in August 2016. Viz Media published the manga in North America digitally in English as Shueisha published new chapters in Japan. Viz Media also published the manga in print.

The manga inspired a television anime adaptation that ran for 366 episodes from 2004 to 2012. Viz Media obtained the television and home video rights to the anime in 2006. The series premiered with an English dub in Cartoon Network's Adult Swim that same year, and eventually aired all the episodes by 2014. The anime franchise also includes four films and two OVAs.

The franchise has also inspired video games, novels, stage plays, and a live-action film that opened in July 2018.

The manga is inspiring a new anime adaptation that will cover the manga's "Thousand Year Blood War" arc. The arc is the final arc of the manga, and covers volumes 55-74.

Weekly Shonen Jump had revealed in September 2020 that Kubo was working on a "Season 2" sequel of his Burn The Witch manga.

Sources: Shonen Jump's Twitter account, MANGA Plus