Recently there’s been an awful lot of talk about animes getting the live-action treatment, with Fullmetal Alchemist dropping on Netflix this month alongside the news of a Sword Art Online series in the works.
And now Bleach is going the same way, flinging Ichigo Kurosaki, Rukia Kuchiki, and a whole host of Hollows into the ‘real world’.
Announced last year to some initial hype before fading into the background, Warner Bros. Japan have just released the first official trailer for the anime’s big screen adaption – and it looks amazing.
Hitting screens later this year in the summer, the trailer teases one of the anime’s most famous scenes: the night that Ichigo and Soul Reaper Rukia meet.
This new short shows Ichigo living his day-to-day life as a moody high school student, however, his life changes forever when he is introduced to the supernatural world of Soul Reapers.
The student is seen running slap band into a terrifying Hollow before Rukia can step in, and the action gets heart-pounding when Ichigo winds up taking the girl’s powers to become a Soul Reaper himself – stabbing her with a sword to transfer her powers to him.
For those not familiar with Bleach (we’re only judging you slightly) both the anime and the manga which inspired it focuses on Ichigo Kurosaki, who has the ability to see spirits as well as fearsome creatures from the netherworld.
More: Netflix
Ichigo soon obtains the power of a Soul Reaper – one meant to usher lost souls to the afterlife, the Soul Society – and is tasked by Rukia (whose powers he takes) with defending the living world from monstrous dark spirits known as Hollows.
The manga was serialized in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump from 2001 to 2016, and was collected into 74 volumes. It has been adapted into English thanks to VIZ Media. The series was adapted into an anime by Studio Pierrot from 2004 to 2012, and has four feature-length animations, as well as video games, and a whole load of other merchandise.
The English language broadcast premiered on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim block in 2006, and you currently find the English language version now streaming on Netflix in the UK and Hulu in the US.
MORE: Everything’s changing in Attack On Titan when series three drops this summer
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