Fumiko Orikasa, who voices Rukia Kuchiki in Bleach anime, revealed at the stage of Bleach: Thousand Year Blood War anime’s advanced screening on Sep 11, 2022, that this instalment of the anime was greenlit five years ago.

This means that the plans for an anime adaptation was already in place since 2017, three years before TYBW arc’s adaptation was officially announced during it’s 20th anniversary project.

Fans were excited to hear the news, thinking that all these years’ worth of production will be visible in the quality of animation.

Those 5 years of production paid off really well in the end pic.twitter.com/lQe1PRLfBf

— Theforcecanyousenseit (@Forcecanusensit) September 12, 2022

However, it needs to be noted that greenlit doesn’t necessarily mean that Studio had been working on the production process since then. It only means that plan to make an anime adaptation was approved. It is highly possible that the production began in earnest over a year ago, since the adaptation was announced.

Bleach: Thousand Year Blood War anime will start airing in Japan on Oct 10, 2022.

Tomohisa Taguchi will be replacing Noriyuki Abe as director of the series at Studio Pierrot. He will also be scripting the series along with Masaki Hiramatsu.

Additional staff includes:

• Chief Animation Directors: Michio Hasegawa Sei Komatsubara, Kumiko Takayanagi
• Action Effects Animation Directors: Satoshi Sakai, Yoshihiro Kanno, Yong Hoon Chong
• Art Director: Yoshio Tanioka
• Art Design: Toshiki Amada
• Color Design: Saori Goda
• Editing: Akinori Mishima
• Director of Photography: Kazuhiro Yamada
• CG Directors: Toshihiro Sasaki, Kazushi Goto
• Sound Director: Yukio Nagasaki
• Sound Production: Zack Promotion
• Character Designer: Masashi Kudo
• Music Composition: Shiro Sagisu

The main cast of the series is returning to reprise their role in the movie. The new cast members who were announced at the advanced screening include:

• Wataru Hatano: Hidetomo Kajōmaru
• KENN: Berenice Gabrielli
• Takahiro Fujiwara: Jerome Guizbatt
• Wataru Komada: Asguiaro Ebern
• Daiki Hamano: Luders Friegen

Tatsuya Kitani will perform the opening theme song, “Scar,” while the ending theme song, “Saihate,” will be performed by SennaRin. Hiroyuki Sawano produced the ending theme.

Bleach is a Japanese anime television series based on Tite Kubo’s original manga series of the same name. It was produced by Studio Pierrot and directed by Noriyuki Abe. The series aired on TV Tokyo from October 2004 to March 2012, spanning 366 episodes. The anime adaptation includes original storylines not found in the manga with repeated appearances and stories containing these original characters.

Viz Media obtained foreign television and home video distribution rights to the Bleach anime in March 2006. Bleach was broadcast in the United States on Adult Swim from September 2006 to November 2014.

Bleach follows the adventures of the hotheaded teenager Ichigo Kurosaki, who inherits his parents’ destiny after he obtains the powers of a Soul Reaper—a death personification similar to the Grim Reaper—from another Soul Reaper, Rukia Kuchiki. His newfound powers force him to take on the duties of defending humans from evil spirits and guiding departed souls to the afterlife and set him on journeys to various ghostly realms of existence.

Source: Twitter