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Bleach Manga Enters 'Climax' In 2 Chapters

I don't understand the hatred for the Fullbring arc; it was far and away the most interesting thing to happen to the manga in years (at least up until the rating tanked and he wedged a who's-who of the series most popular Shinigami in to prop them up). It wasn't perfect, but Kubo has spent years wishing he was Hirohiko Araki, and Fullbring was the closest he ever got to achieving that.

The former two that you mentioned are the definition of mediocre, and the latter slightly has been breaking through recently.


World Trigger is mediocre. And yeah, that's my point, what the hell is a 'heavy hitter' then? I would say Gintama and Bleach are on the same level - but by today's standards, looking at how pathetic the lineup has become, stuff like Gintama and Haikyuu would be considered close to being their top manga.

Right, numbers don't lie. Everyone knows that Bleach was on the decline. But given it's legacy and what the series was in the past, WSJ should have given Kubo maybe a 6-month heads up so he could plan the ending. It's like submitting your 2 week resignation letter.

Instead, they gave him 4 weeks to wrap everything up, no prior warning it seems. The sudden news and sudden change in pacing is proof enough. That just seems disrespectful, and I feel bad for the man.

Naruto's recent success? All I remember is fans moaning for the last two years of its life for Kishimoto to end it already. As a whole, sure the series sold. But you can't deny the fact that Naruto's steady decline in quality after the Pain arc paralleled Bleach's decline since the Arrancar arc.

Somewhere wrote:

Ambimunch wrote: WSJ lost its heavy hitters. It lost Naruto and Bleach. It will soon lose Toriko and Gintama. And all it will have left are small unknown series and OP. It is a very poor business decision to be completely reliant on one series - because if that's gone, so is WSJ. And you never know what might happen to Oda, he's a human like all of us, a car accident or health issue could claim anyone's life at any second, and to have your entire company depend on one person is an idiotic strategy. It takes a terrible grasp of the current WSJ landscape to insinuate that Toriko would be remotely near a significant loss.

Same tier as Nisekoi - but the other ones are, by toady's standards. Other than OP, what else is a "significant series" by your standards then? Because all I see with WSJ is mediocrity on all fronts aside from OP.

Somewhere wrote:

If My Hero Academia and Shokugeki no Souma aren't 'heavy hitters', then Bleach isn't one this year either. And if Haikyuu!! isn't a 'heavy hitter', then Bleach hasn't been one since 2010.

The former two that you mentioned are the definition of mediocre, and the latter slightly has been breaking through recently.

Somewhere wrote:

Setting aside that I actually do like Gintama a fair amount, it's a mid-tier star within WSJ nowadays. Floats somewhere in the middle for the magazine readership, with steady vol sales that actually haven't declined too much. Vol sales that are currently in World Trigger's area. Oh yea, that's another 'small unknown series'. Gintama is another series that's not a 'heavy hitter' nowadays by that standard.

World Trigger is mediocre. And yeah, that's my point, what the hell is a 'heavy hitter' then? I would say Gintama and Bleach are on the same level - but by today's standards, looking at how pathetic the lineup has become, stuff like Gintama and Haikyuu would be considered close to being their top manga.

Somewhere wrote:

To be clear, the tone with which I wrote the preceding is less 'pump up some of the so-called small unknown series' and more 'point out that actually, you just insulted some of the series you listed'

Oh yeah, how so? All I see is mediocrity in their lineup.

For the sake of the argument, lets go along and pretend like Bleach is the bottom of the barrel, in which case I wanna ask you what else they have that you would consider an honorous series? All I see is OP, the other big 2 are gone, and the middle ground stuff like Gintama is fading away. What, Haikyuu? Good luck to them being stuck with OP and Haikyuu, it's the same as saying they're only stuck with OP because the latter won't carry them without the former.

Somewhere wrote:

The actual real, big loss that WSJ has yet to recover from is Naruto. And as much as I absolutely hated its last few years, it is insulting to Naruto's demonstrated recent success to put it in the same breath as present day Bleach.

Naruto's recent success? All I remember is fans moaning for the last two years of its life for Kishimoto to end it already. As a whole, sure the series sold. But you can't deny the fact that Naruto's steady decline in quality after the Pain arc paralleled Bleach's decline since the Arrancar arc.

Face it, bleach may have sold well, it was never in the same league as Naruto or One Piece. Or if it was, the sales had become so bad it made the average number of copies by volume drop significantly.

In your opinion you mean because according to the Japanese buying public all these series have been much better then Bleach, Gintama, and Toriko. My Hero Academia is the only one below them and it is about to skyrocket due to the anime. The Japanese public has decided that these series are better then the declining Bleach so you may want to clarify mediocrity because that is purely your opinion.

Except the series has been declining over the last 5 years and Kubo couldn't stop it.

They gave him plenty of time to wrap it up but he kept adding more useless stuff instead of wrapping up the story

Hmm, yes, you go from evaluating on performance (saying that this is bad business), then switching over to your opinion of the various series.

I see that you can't put forward an argument on how they're doing on a general audience reception level, so you instead fall back to handwaving it alllll away with 'I don't like all the rest of this stuff, clearly WSJ is dooooomed'

Why yes, Ambimunch, what you think of the WSJ lineup exactly matches how Japan feels about them, be it either sending in the survey cards for the magazine or when deciding on what to buy each week. In fact, Ambimunch, it might even be more than a match, it might even be direct causation! As you think, is as how WSJ's fortunes go! You're sending signals, right now, across the globe, to the minds of the readers in Japan.

only relying on OP is a bad idea.

They also gave him rope of 4+ years for this final arc. This arc would be 206 chapters out of 700, or ~30% of the series.
And if you divide the series into this arc and everything beforehand, it's 206 compared to the 494 chapters beforehand. That is, it can be considered that back when this arc started up, he basically got the equivalent of 41% additional time, compared to what he had already produced to that point.

Regardless of when those above at Shueisha gave the final order, Kubo is the one who painted (or wrote?) himself into the corner over these past 4 years.

Beatdigga wrote:

Don't even get me started on The Last.. I could rant for hours...but that would be off-topic. The best we can hope for is no pairings.

I could too, not only because Naruto and Sakura actually had mutual development, but mainly because of that friggin genjutsu pool-ex-machina scene...

you're saying that One Piece, the best-selling Jump manga of all time, can't possibly carry the magazine on its own? Seriously, Nobuhiro Watsuki & Rurouni Kenshin had a much larger weight to carry than Eiichiro Oda & One Piece presently has. I'd say calm down & don't go thinking that Weekly Shonen Jump is going to die out in the next few years, because it most certainly isn't.

Lord Geo wrote:

you're saying that One Piece, the best-selling Jump manga of all time, can't possibly carry the magazine on its own? Seriously, Nobuhiro Watsuki & Rurouni Kenshin had a much larger weight to carry than Eiichiro Oda & One Piece presently has. I'd say calm down & don't go thinking that Weekly Shonen Jump is going to die out in the next few years, because it most certainly isn't.

No, I said it's the only thing that seems to be carrying SJ, and that they shouldn't only rely on it. As such, it's a good idea to keep other series as well and not boot everything else. Clear?

I don't understand the hatred for the Fullbring arc; it was far and away the most interesting thing to happen to the manga in years (at least up until the rating tanked and he wedged a who's-who of the series most popular Shinigami in to prop them up). It wasn't perfect, but Kubo has spent years wishing he was Hirohiko Araki, and Fullbring was the closest he ever got to achieving that.

No, I said it's the only thing that seems to be carrying SJ, and that they shouldn't only rely on it. As such, it's a good idea to keep other series as well and not boot everything else. Clear?

Will One Piece send off Bleach into the afterlife like it did Naruto??? I wanna see Luffy talking to Ichigo.