Bleach Is Not That Popular By Today’s Standards

I guess One Piece playing the long game was worth it in the end.

There’s a bunch of whiny Bleach fans on social media, as well as some of the cooler fans on Youtube like Jaymes Hanson, who are a little salty that Bleach only got two nominations at this year’s Crunchyroll Awards. For those who don’t remember, it was for Best Action and Best English voice actor. From what I understand, they wanted it in Best Score and Best Character Design because those are what Bleach is most famous for (and honestly, I would have voted for it in character design if it had been nominated because I love Tite Kubo’s style). Some of the more unreasonable fans wanted it in Best Animation (which is fucking laughable since at least half of Cour 2 looked worse than the sixth season of My Hero Academia) and Anime of the Year (which it wouldn’t win because literally all of the nominees are more popular than it). And guess who’s to blame for not nominating them?

Crunchyroll of course. Yes, the company is totally biased for losing Bleach to Disney and will never nominate anime that’s not on their streaming service. Never mind the fact that Heavenly Delusion got nominated like five times despite also being a Disney anime and being nowhere near as popular as Bleach. Never mind the fact that you need to watch 366 episodes of an adaptation that wasn’t very good to understand the new season, and even using a filler guide would make the journey longer than binging the entirety of Frasier. I don’t understand why the Bleach fandom doesn’t get that 366 episodes of a mid anime is a bit too much of an ask for most people. Bleach is still popular because of it’s old huge fandom, but you need new fans to continue staying relevant.

One Piece managed to overcome that with a well-received live action show, the Gear 5 hype, and some other stuff. What do you have by comparison, Bleach? The initial hype when you returned? And then you lost that hype when your second cour ended up getting mediocre production and the fight scenes…well let’s be honest: Bleach was never known for fight choreography so it needs the big animation in order to be visually interesting. And it was sometimes. I thought the middle section of episodes was great, and the final two episodes were dope as well. Everything else was up and down, but I still liked Cour 2. I didn’t even know it got as much backlash as it did until recently.

That said, I understand why Cour 2 lowered the hype for Bleach, because I remember it wasn’t until Rukia’s fight that the show trended majorly on social media again. And I saw the weak animation that was responsible for the episodes prior only getting praise from the hardcore fandom. I thought some of the episodes were boring. Which is why I will never understand people crying that Cour 1 was robbed of the Awards last year and basically admitting that without recency bias, Bleach is nothing.

Ignoring the fact that most people are not going to watch that old show on the off chance that the new one is good (reminder that I just read the manga because fuck that old anime. The animation sucked, it was censored based on broadcast restrictions at the time, and the pacing was awful), why exactly are you insisting that we just ignore the second cour and remember how good the first cour was? If Bleach is so deserving of awards, why was an entire half of what was eligible so lackluster? Why couldn’t it keep the momentum? You expect me to have selective memory when saying Bleach is one of the best anime of the year? Might as well just say “yeah, Demon Slayer Swordsmith Village was mostly mid, but damn that final episode slapped” or “yeah, Oshi no Ko sucked after the first episode, but what a first episode it was”.

If anything, Bleach fandom should be happy it got nominated for two awards given all that was against it. Granted we all know it’s not winning Best Action, but it could win Best English VA. Which admittedly would not be an award for the show itself, but voice actor awards are important too. And if it had been eligible last year, you would have complained even more because it would not have gotten nominated much then either and there’d be a more vocal outcry given how positively it was received. Would you watch Kingdom if I told you the animation gets better after 77 episodes? It’s super highly acclaimed on MAL and IMDB as well. But I bet you aren’t watching it.

Do you remember how many award nominations My Hero Academia got this year? Zero. Fucking zero. Do you see the fandom complaining about that? Maybe like two people, but otherwise no one cares. Even though Season 6 was it’s best season yet. Even though it finished in the Winter season and could theoretically qualify. It got less nominations than Season 5 (which was one, and no it didn’t win that). And honestly, even if it did get nominated, it wouldn’t win. My Hero is still popular, but it’s honestly done now. There’s nothing the show can do at this point to get people interested in it again if they don’t care about it now.

Bleach still has people that care about it at least. That’s a good thing given the high requirements necessary to enjoy it. But those requirements are undeniably shackling the series from ever reaching today’s mainstream audience, and it’ll never break said shackles unless the anime gets remade – which it won’t because that’ll take too many resources and Pierrot is already dealing with enough animating this new Bleach as is. It’s sad, but it’s the truth. And let’s not forget that Bleach was big for it’s time. Today’s big Shonen Jump have far surpassed what it used to be in terms of recognition. Without a growing audience like what One Piece is currently getting, it won’t be a big dog in today’s world. And if Pierrot doesn’t get it’s act together with the upcoming Bleach seasons, it’ll fade into obscurity like it did when it initially ended. Wouldn’t be surprised if the show gets no nominations next year and get the Bleach fandom really mad…which would still be an improvement over what happened to My Hero Academia.

Admittedly, it’ll never fade completely into obscurity. I’m sure some hack lawyer will reference it in another future trial when they want to convince the jury that their client is basically “filler”.

P.S. I did see some of the hate that ANN spouted for the series on their articles. I stopped reading that site long ago and thank god for that.