How can you watch the ongoing Bleach: Thousand Year Blood War (TYBW) anime without watching the entire original Bleach series?
Bleach: Thousand Year Blood War continues to dominate the 2022 Fall anime broadcasting slate, with scores of 9.1/10 and 9.5/10 seen across MyAnimeList and IMDB respectively.
Whilst Bleach fans will be over the proverbial moon with the success of the TYBW anime adaptation, the new broadcast has also shown to be an excellent medium for new fans to fall in love with this classic series.
However, with such a lengthy and detailed backstory, it can be quite difficult for new fans to understand what exactly is going on in TYBW if they haven’t kept up with the original series. So, how can you watch the ongoing Bleach TYBW anime without watching the original series?
Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War | Official Jump Festa Trailer | VIZ
Can you watch Bleach TYBW without watching the original?
Yes, you can watch the Bleach: Thousand Year Blood War anime without having watched the original Bleach series, although you will have to make some concessions when it comes to understanding the storyline and numerous characters.
To be plain, there are five options available to anime fans who want to watch the Bleach TYBW series:
- Go straight in with TYBW and look up Bleach content alongside
- Watch Bleach recap and summary videos of the main series before watching TYBW
- Watch the Bleach anime series without the filler episodes before watching TYBW
- Watch the entire Bleach anime series from the start before watching TYBW
- Read the original manga series up until the TYBW arc
Undoubtedly the easiest way to enjoy Bleach: TYBW is to watch the anime series and simultaneously look up characters, previous episodes, and locations. Whilst this may be a rather stop-start method to enjoying TYBW, it can be done thanks to the incredibly detailed Fandom pages which are available to read for free online.
Want to know who a character is or why they are where they are? Simply look into the topic on the Fandom page and nine times out of ten, that information will be readily available.
Similarly, it can be exceedingly useful to spend around 30 minutes watching summary and recap videos on YouTube before watching Bleach: Thousand Year Blood War.
Arguably the best recap videos available online include content from SomeMoeGaming, Flame of Rebirth, and even the resurging Watch Mojo. A longer explanation video is also available with Poxal.
If you would like to watch some of the original Bleach series but only as little as possible in order to understand TYBW, it’s a good idea to skip over all of the filler content – see next section for a breakdown of which episodes to leave out.
Finally, we come to the two most committed methods to understanding TYBW; watching the entire Bleach anime series from the start or reading the original manga series. The Bleach anime series is available to stream via Disney Plus.
The easiest and cheapest way to read the original Bleach manga is through Viz Media and Manga Plus, where access to the entire library of published content for just $1.99 a month.
Bleach anime filler guide explained
A popular Twitter thread revealed that Bleach features around 44% filler content in its anime series, i.e., content that does not develop the main story.
If you want to skip all complete-filler episodes, you should move past the following episodes:
- Episode 33, (season 2)
- Episode 50, (season 3)
- Episodes 64-108, (season 4 – season 5)
- Episodes 128-131 (season 6)
- Episodes 132-137, (season 7)
- Episodes 147-149, (season 7)
- Episodes 168-189, (season 9)
- Episodes 204-205, (season 10)
- Episodes 213-214, (season 12)
- Episodes 227-229 (season 12)
- Episodes 230-265, (season 13)
- Episode 287, (season 14)
- Episodes 298-299, (season 14)
- Episodes 303-305, (season 14)
- Episode 316 (season 14)
- Episodes 317-341, (season 15)
- Episode 355 (season 16)
Bleach: Thousand Year Blood War is airing new episodes on Hulu in the United States and on Disney Plus for international fans.
By Tom Llewellyn – [email protected]
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Tom Llewellyn
@https://twitter.com/Tom__Llewellyn
Tom Llewellyn is the Head of World Content, Anime, and Comics at HITC Entertainment and also helps oversee all things deemed ‘nerd culture’ at Forever Geek. After gaining a BSc degree in Animal Behaviour, Tom continued his education with a Master’s degree in Science Communication (MSc) and post-graduate research; with his own independent project being published in the Journal of Zoological and Botanical Gardens in 2021. Since joining GRV Media in early 2020, Tom has amassed over 48 million views on his content and has conducted interviews with various actors and filmmakers from the wonderful world of anime.
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