The Bleach franchise has been a long-standing icon of the Shonen genre. Filled to the brim with bombastic fights, slick aesthetics, and loveable characters, it's no wonder the franchise became as popular as it did. Bleach is one of the most beloved manga series in the world, spawning an anime adaptation, movies, action figures and of course, video games.
Since the Bleach anime abruptly concluded in 2012, the series has been absent from video game consoles. This is despite the continued success of its many mobile games. With the announcement that the anime will return to adapt the manga's final arc, now is the time for that to change.
Since the series disappeared from consoles, mobile games became the only Bleach titles around. This led to an influx of new games. Bleach: Immortal Souls and Bleach: Mobile 3D are prime examples of successful releases, but Bleach: Brave Souls is the most prominent. The game has been going strong since 2016, helping to keep general interest in the series alive.
Brave Souls was also the first video game to adapt characters from the final arc, The Thousand-Year Blood War, and has made a fortune doing so. The sheer success and popularity of Brave Souls should be proof enough that a new home console game would be a hit. Many Brave Souls players picked up the game purely because they missed the series, and wanted to re-connect with it.
In 2020, the announcement fans had been waiting nearly a decade for arrived: Bleach's anime would be returning. The Thousand-Year Blood War will finally be adapted to finish the anime's story in 2021, creating a wealth of new content to mine for a video game. Capitalizing on the hype of the anime's release with a brand new video game would be a clever strategy, and would give fans even more reasons to be excited.
Jump Force recently featured a multitude of Bleach fighters within its roster and continued to release further ones as DLC. If there was no demand to play as Bleach characters in a console game then these simply wouldn't sell, and thus Bandai Namco would just not release any more. But, the company has, illustrating that the demand is there and has been for many years now.
While a new game could work in multiple different genres, it is important to acknowledge that the most requested is a classic anime fighter. Bleach would (and has) excelled in this genre, and the masses of unique characters and impressive attacks would make the game a joy to play. Brave Souls has also demonstrated that players love alternate costumes and re-imaginings of Bleach characters, providing the opportunity for unlockable skins, or microtransactions, which publishers adore.
Another highly requested (but less likely) genre for a new game would be an MMORPG. Fans have long discussed the possibility of a game that allows the player to select a race, create their own character, and inhabit the world of the manga with their friends. This concept would be more expensive to develop than a fighter and would therefore dissuade publishers somewhat, but there is no denying the sheer appeal in this idea.
It was recently announced by developer Klab that Bleach: Brave Souls would be releasing this year on PlayStation 4 (and therefore by extension PlayStation 5), acknowledging the demand for the series to exist on consoles. With the exception of its Jump Force characters, Bleach last appeared on a home console in 2011 with Soul Resurrección. That's a long time to starve a fanbase as large as Bleach's.
The announcement of the anime's return however has changed everything. Once considered a dead franchise, the imminent anime return and the success of both Bleach's mobile games and its novels has catapulted it back into the spotlight and proved naysayers wrong about both the series' popularity and marketability. When The Thousand-Year Blood War begins airing this year, it is entirely likely fans will finally receive the Bleach game of their dreams.
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