Bleach Animator Honors Major Anniversary With Special Art

By Evan Valentine

Bleach is official twenty-one years old and to celebrate, animator Masashi Kudo has a gift for the anime world. With the Shonen series set to return later this year on the small screen via the anime adaptation of the Thousand Year Blood War Arc, the battle between the Quincies and the Soul Society is ready to begin. To the shock of no one, Ichigo Kurosaki will be front and center in this war that is one of the biggest of the series.    

Ichigo has had a long journey within the story of Bleach, first gaining his powers as a result of a Hollow attack, with the soul reaper known as Rukia transferring her powers over to Kurosaki at the start of the series. Of course, with the Thousand Year Blood War Arc, expect not only Ichigo to be front and center once again, but also to undergo some big changes as a result of his fights against the Quincy family. In previous interviews, Tite Kubo and the folks at Studio Pierrot had stated that the fights of this final arc of the original series will see some big additions thrown into the anime series, seemingly adding plenty of original content into the new episodes.

The new art arrived on Twitter with the sketch from Masashi Kudo helping to celebrate Bleach hitting the U.S. drinking age, as Ichigo Kurosaki is set to have a big year in 2022 thanks in part to the Shonen series' return to the world of anime via the Thousand Year Blood War Arc:

Bleach continued in the pages of Weekly Shonen Jump recently thanks in part to a one-chapter special that showed readers the lives of the Soul Society years following the end of the Thousand Year Blood War Arc. While this return to the franchise has yet to be confirmed for an anime adaptation, it has fans hopeful that Tite Kubo might be planning a return to the series in the future and that the story of Ichigo and his friends is far from over.

What do you think of this new take on Ichigo Kurosaki? Do you think that Tite Kubo is preparing to return to his masterpiece that was once considered to be a part of Shonen Jump's "Big Three"? Feel free to let us know in the comments or hit me up directly on Twitter @EVComedy to talk all things comics, anime, and the world of the Soul Society. 

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