One month into the Fall 2024 anime season, Bleach: Thousand Year Blood War Part 3 is already dominating the charts and website ratings. Each and every episode of the latest season has met the expectations of fans and more.
Even when Bleach: TYBW was first announced in March 2020, it shocked the entire fandom, because of how much people have been longing for the adaptation ever since the original anime ended in 2012. But did you know that Tite Kubo and the anime staff had known about the adaptation years before its announcement and successfully kept it a secret from the world?
Tite Kubo Kept the Bleach: TYBW Anime a Secret for Two Years
New York Comic Con 2024 hosted Masakazu Morita and Noriaki Sugiyama, the voice actors of Ichigo and Uryu from Bleach. In an interview, the duo revealed that they had known about the anime adaptation long before fans.
So actually, we were told two years before the official public announcement. So we were in a position where we weren’t sure when it was going to be publicly announced.
-Masakazu Morita
At the time when the voice actors were informed about the upcoming Bleach: TYBW anime, it was before the planning began and before it was officially greenlit. So it put the voice actors in a position where they had no idea if the series would actually air and were just left with trepid hearts.
According to Morita, he spent the two years before the public announcement reflecting on everything and his past work in the series. When the anime was announced, the voice actor was touched by the amount of fan reactions, which was massive to say the least. The excitement was palpable in not just Japan but all over the world, and Morita was pleasantly surprised by it.
So when I saw that reaction, I felt more responsible for the title, what we’re going to be putting out for the fans. And I need to do my best for that.
-Masakazu Morita
Needless to say, the positive reaction from fans made Morita want to work even harder, as he felt he needed to do justice to all those who were eagerly awaiting the anime.
How the 10-Year Gap Between Bleach and Bleach: TYBW Anime Actually Helped the Voice Actors
The original Bleach anime ended in 2012 and Bleach: TYBW began airing in 2022, with a gap of 10 whole years between the adaptation. However, the gap between the plot can’t be more than a year and a few months. While the characters remained the same, the voice actors have aged considerably, which could have caused a problem, given that Ichigo is still 17.
Masakazu Morita explained that Bleach‘s anime debut occurred in 2004, so it has already been 20 years for the series. Back in 2004, the voice actor was 33 years old, and now he is about to turn 52. Thus, his body has aged physically, though he refuses to use the word ‘aging.’
I’ve emotionally and physically matured over the years, and I take all the good parts about those years and then add that into my performance. So for example, I can actually produce certain voices that I wasn’t able to when I was younger.
-Masakazu Morita
In these two decades, the voice actor has gained more and more experience, all of which he was able to use to voice Ichigo once again. He has been using this to his advantage and adding it to make Ichigo more complex. The most challenging part for Morita is to not forget Ichigo is still a teenager and to maintain that characteristic.
Bleach manga is available to read on Viz Media, and Bleach: Thousand Year Blood War anime is currently streaming on Disney+.
