Tite Kubo Gives His Approval to ‘Bleach’s Live-Action Movie

Bleach‘s live-action film has been looking better every time fans have gotten a new look at it, but how does the original series creator Tite Kubo feel about the final movie? He fully approves.

Kubo shared a few of his thoughts on the upcoming movie on Twitter, and he definitely urges fans to see the movie themselves.

Thanks to a translation from Twitter user @ao_satpro, who translated Kubo’s note, Kubo reveals why he wasn’t involved with the film in the first place. It’s because he was busy making the last of his series at the time of development, and he was interested in what director Shinsuke Sato would bring to the film.

Kubo had two requests for the film’s production: that character’s relationship’s wouldn’t change from the manga and not to have too much of a variant between character emotion and action.

With that said, Kubo had nothing but positive things to say about the film, “Although the story has some points of change from the original as it is summarized for the movie, many battles are connected to the stories. A sense of speed and big action reaches a new level as a Japanese movie.”

Kubo even says he wasn’t going to make a statement about the film, but the movie impressed him so much he’s throwing his full support behind it now, “Honestly, I said, ‘I will not write a comment of this movie if I don’t like it.’ Now, I wrote this with happiness. Please go to a theater and see how it is.” With the support of the creator behind it, hype for the movie is going to be more intense than ever.

The Bleach live-action film has released its first full trailer, along with two other new ones released at the same time. The movie will adapt the first arc of the series, the “Substitute Shinigami” arc. Early reactions to the film have been positive overall, with there talk of even being a new trilogy of films adapting more of Bleach‘s material. If this is successful, then a sequel film with the Soul Society is definitely on the horizon

The confirmed cast includes Sota Fukushi as Ichigo Kurosaki and Hana Sugisaki as Rukia Kuchiki, MIYAVI as Byakuya Kuchiki, Ryou Yoshizawa, as Uryuu Ishida, Taichi Saotome as Renji Abarai, Erina Mano as Orihime Inoue, Tomo Koyanagi as Chad Yasutora, Yosuke Egochi as Isshin Kurosaki, Masami Nagasawa as Masaki Kurosaki, and Seiichi Tanabe as Keisuke Urahara.

For those unfamiliar with Tite Kubo‘s Bleach, the series follows the young delinquent Ichigo Kurosaki, who had the ability to see spirits. He soon obtains the power of a Soul Reaper – one meant to usher lost souls to the afterlife – and now has the duty to defend the living world from monstrous dark spirits known as Hollows.

The manga was serialized in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump from 2001 to 2016, and was collected into 74 volumes. It has been adapted into English thanks to VIZ Media, and has sold over 900 million copies in Japan. The series was adapted into an anime by Studio Pierrot from 2004 to 2012, and has four feature-length animations, rock musicals, video games, and a ton of other merchandise. The English language broadcast premiered on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim block in 2006, and you currently find the Japanese and English language versions now streaming on Hulu.