Tite Kubo takes his time in crafting a mesmerizing series, trying his best to include each and every element. Bleach takes elements from throughout the place to elevate both the manga and the anime. There are two divisions when it comes to faithful adaptations. The beauty of an adaptation lies in the loyalty to its source material. The more it stays on point, the more it chooses to honor what it is copying.
This faithfulness often determines the response of an audience, and at times, even the people involved in the making of the projects. Henry Cavill is namely one of the biggest appreciators of loyalty to the source material. That is not to say that some originality cannot be used to elevate the projects too.
Tite Kubo had No Fear of Originality
During an interview for the Weekly Shonen Jump (via Reddit), Tite Kubo and Morita Masakazu, the voice actor for Ichigo Kurosaki, sat down with Taguchi Tomohisa, the director of Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War. When it came to writing the arc, Kubo confirmed that a lot of what he wanted to add was purposefully kept to himself.
Some original scenes have been added to the story. If the team comes to me and asks, ‘Is there anything you want to add ot this scene?’ I’ll tell them, ‘These are some of the things I didn’t/couldn’t include in the manga.’
While he took a leap of faith and made the arc much darker, there were still some scenes and simple additions that he chose not to include in the final draft. Bleach as an anime has always been faithful to the manga and its creator, however, it is not afraid to take certain risks as well.
Involvement matters and inclusion matters when making changes to someone’s magnum opus, so when its finality came into the picture, so did some decisions. As a result, liberty was taken to add various anime original scenes that only helped in elevating the arc rather than ruining it.
Anime Original Scenes Breathed Life into Dormant Ideas
No one wanted to hold back when it came to Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War and that included the director Taguchi Tomohisa. Everyone had willingly gathered about, wanting to brainstorm new ideas and create storyboards to bring even more life to the series.
There were a lot of ‘I see!’ light bulb moments. The most recent one was for the scene where Urahara explained the concepts about souls to Isshin and Ryuken. We brought a whiteboard into the meeting room with everyone crammed in there to show Kubo what we’ve done so far and ask him, ‘Is this correct?’
Tite Kubo even went on to state that all the things he couldn’t add in the manga, he tried to include in the anime. The constant communication helped in making sure nothing went awry. Moreover, it kept a close eye on just what all was being added.
One Piece on the other hand is an anime that stays loyal to the manga, barely ever taking a different road. There are not as many anime-original scenes as fans would like, with the experience of watching the series being more so seeing their favorite panels getting animated.
Bleach is available to watch on Hulu.
