Tite Kubo’s Bleach began in Weekly Shonen Jump on 7 August 2001 and ended on 23 August 2016 at chapter 706, collected in 74 volumes across fifteen years of serialisation. Its soul reapers guide the dead and cut down the spirits that prey on the living, and they live in a place called the Soul Society.
Ichigo Kurosaki, a high schooler who can see spirits, takes on that work after the soul reaper Rukia Kuchiki hands him her power. Much of what people remember about the series is visual: black robes, white masks, panels that leave a great deal of empty space, and technique names spoken aloud at the moment of release. Every soul reaper’s sword has a name and two stages of release, which turns a fight into the process of working out an opponent’s rules.
Each arc replaces the setting and the enemy faction wholesale, so the Soul Society, Arrancar and Thousand-Year Blood War arcs read almost as separate books. The manga is complete at 74 volumes, and its final arc was animated years after the serial ended.
