Bleach Creator Explains When Ichigo and Orihime Started Dating
Bleach's original series creator has explained how Ichigo Kurosaki and Orihime Inoue ended up with one another as the series came to an end! With Bleach returning to anime for a proper adaptation of the Thousand-Year Blood War arc, it has become the perfect opportunity to look back on the grand finale and examine how Tite Kubo's original manga series came to an end. One of the bigger surprises was that Ichigo and Orihime ended up getting married and having a family life together following a several years time jump, and now the creator has helped to fill in some of those gaps.
There had been hints at Ichigo and Orihime having feelings with one another through Bleach's run before they were eventually brought together in full at the series' final chapters, and as series creator Tite Kubo explained when asked by a fan about when exactly their relationship developed, it was something that had been brewing in the back burner. The focus of the series' wasn't on their romance in particular, but it turns out they started dating in full when they became working adults out of university.
"With regard for these two, they were about to start a dating relationship when Ichigo was a university student, they formally started dating after they both became working adults," Kubo began. "However, given that Bleach is not a romance manga, the romance is drawn purely as a supplementary component. That's why I won't go into too much detail about other characters too, nevertheless, it makes me happy if I can catch the reader's attention through its portrayal."
So Kubo had been dropping hints about their budding romance through the series (which fans can likely point to moments such as Orihime's "Halcyon Days" goodbye to Ichigo early on), but was really unable to show off much of the extra development for their relationship thanks to the fact that the series was action focused. At least he was able to confirm this pairing along with some of the other fan favorite pairs before it all came to an end, and soon we'll see this come through in the anime!
How do you feel about the way Ichigo and Orihime's romance developed over the course of Bleach's run? How do you feel about the two of them starting a family together when it all ended? Let us know all of your thoughts about it in the comments! You can even reach out to me directly about all things animated and other cool stuff @Valdezology on Twitter!