Why Bleach Fans Need to Watch This 2020 Anime Movie
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Over the course of many years, Tite Kubo’s hit manga series Bleach expanded its combat system, cast of characters, worldbuilding, themes, and more. Like the rest of the shonen big three, the series took its time to build up its vast library of lore, but it still had to end at some point. The manga concluded after 74 volumes, and aside from the Hell one-shot manga chapter in the early 2020s, that was the end of Ichigo Kurosaki’s supernatural adventures. Fortunately for devoted fans, Tite Kubo had something else up his sleeve.
Fans were delighted to see Burn the Witch join the Bleach universe as a brand-new adventure, starring a small yet delightful set of characters, a charming new setting, and, of course, a new conflict for the heroines Ninny Spangcole and Noel Niihashi to deal with. This was not a direct sequel to Bleach, but rather, a spinoff movie, making it less like Boruto and more like the tie-in movies of My Hero Academia — short and fun side adventures that let devoted fans explore their favorite universe in a convenient package. Some shonen fans might have missed Burn the Witch, though, so they’re encouraged to go back and give it a try.
As the best panels in the original Bleach manga help show, author Tite Kubo has a distinctive and well-respected artistic style that sets him apart from the cartoonier look of series like One Piece, Naruto, and My Hero Academia. No manga art style can be objectively the best, of course, but it’s still important for each author to have their own well-developed style that fans may love, and Kubo absolutely succeeded. By now, plenty of shonen fans are familiar with the Bleach look, with sharp contrasts of black and white, the way characters’ faces are drawn, the closeups and angles, and other technical work that make the Bleach manga and anime such visual marvels to behold. The manga and anime have plenty of that for fans to savor, but if fans still want more, and in a fresher package, the Burn the Witch mini-series delivers. It’s a new way to appreciate how Tite Kubo conceptualizes and draws characters, items, and monsters.
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