The anime’s simulcast announcement was made by VIZ Media, the anime’s distributor in the West. Its simulcast announcement was made alongside the Aniplex Online Fest 2022 event which saw the release of a new trailer. The short trailer gives fans a new look into the series. It features the main characters, including Ichigo, Orihime, Uryu, and more. Check it out here:
In a post on the official Bleach anime Twitter account, it was revealed that two more short preview videos will be released ahead of the show’s premiere. Specifically, these two upcoming trailers will be released on October 1 and October 8, 2022. Thousand-Year Blood War is a TV anime adaptation of the Bleach manga’s final arc, and it will have a 4-cour run, meaning there will be around 48 to 52 episodes in total. The arc covers Volumes 55 to 74 of the manga and serves as the show’s conclusion. Studio Pierrot returns to animate the show. Also returning is the original voice cast from the anime joined by new cast members who performed characters in the Bleach: Brave Souls game. Bleach is a manga series by Tite Kubo that ran in Weekly Shonen Jump from August 2001 to August 2016. At the time, the series was considered one of the big three shonen manga alongside One Piece and Naruto. As of 2022, the series has over 130 million copies in circulation, making it one of the bestselling manga of all time. While the manga is incredibly popular, the anime series adaptation did not cover the whole story as it ended before the final arc.
Thousand-Year Blood War will premiere in Japan via TV Tokyo on October 10, 2022, at 24:00 JST (technically October 11 at midnight). VIZ Media also confirmed via Twitter that the series will get an English simulcast on October 10, 2022, most likely in US Eastern and Pacific time. This simulcast announcement is great news for series fans, especially given that some fans feared that the series won’t get released at all outside Japan. Though currently, there’s no word yet on which platform the Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War simulcast will release. An announcement of its release platform is expected to be made when the series premieres in North America at New York Comic-Con on October 8, 2022.
