It takes some authors decades to realize how to end their stories, while others know the ending from the very beginning; Tite Kubo falls in one of those categories. Endings and beginnings are two of the most complicated parts of a story, parts that if failed, would cause chaos or even failure of the projects that many put their hopes and dreams in.
Bleach stands as one of the big three of the shonen genre and for good reason. The story progression had been one that many fans came to resonate with and the action imbued into the series was one that gave great competition as well as inspiration to other mangakas.
While some people know how to end their projects long before the time comes, others don’t. Tite Kubo wasn’t sure either.
Tite Kubo Hadn’t Planned Bleach’s Ending
Mangakas like Hajime Isayama and Eiichiro Oda were sure of how their series was to end no matter the obstacles that came before them. Attack on Titan’s controversial ending may have changed because of backlash but it still made it on paper nonetheless. Luffy may be years away from finding the One Piece, but that doesn’t mean Oda isn’t aware of what it actually is.
“I still haven’t decided how the series will end. As for how far ahead I write, that all depends. Occasionally, when I get ideas for scenes, I try and link them by imagining the most interesting route. I don’t know where scenes will go, because the ideas don’t arrive in order.”
Bleach’s manga came to a definitive end over half a decade ago in 2016. Marking the end of an era, its conclusion was received in a bittersweet manner which some fans loved and others didn’t. Speaking with Shonen Jump all the way back in 2008, Tite Kubo admitted that he had no idea how the story was going to end.
Out of desperate demand, Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War got a well-deserved adaptation, one that is still ongoing. However, in the manga, the story has long since ended.
Tite Kubo Went with the Flow
Some mangakas, like Tite Kubo, aren’t much aware of where the story is leading and simply go with the flow. There is nothing wrong with that, of course. Going step by step also has its own advantages. Scenes can pop up in one’s mind at any point in time. Some become excerpts for another time while others can be added then and there.
“Things tend to be all over the place. I might think of a scene that belongs much, much later in the story, and to get there I might have to draw a lot of other things first. If there’s a scene I definitely want to draw, it doesn’t change, but how I get there might.”
In such a way, a map gets drawn like a jigsaw puzzle. Instead of a clear ending, Kubo had checkpoints in the form of scenes he wanted to draw no matter what. Roads to a destination can always change. The ending of Bleach had a lot of murmurs going around it.
The ending was unfortunately a chain of loopholes, unanswered questions and unresolved issues never to be looked back at. However, the journey to that ending is what made it memorable either way.
Bleach is available to watch on Crunchyroll and Hulu.
