Bleach

Bleach

ブリーチ
2004 -2012 Studio Pierrot TV Tokyo 366 episodes Completed
Action Adventure Supernatural
Details & Synopsis
Ichigo Kurosaki is a 15-year-old high school student who can see ghosts. That is his normal until he meets Rukia Kuchiki, a Soul Reaper, and ends up absorbing her powers to save his family from a monstrous soul-devouring Hollow.

Bleach is the definition of 2000s drip. Alongside Naruto and One Piece, it formed the legendary "Big Three" of shonen anime. The Soul Society arc remains one of the greatest, most flawlessly paced rescue arcs in anime history. The soundtrack by Shiro Sagisu is iconic. The sheer style and swagger of Tite Kubo's character designs set a standard that an entire generation of artists tried to copy.

Yes, there are massive filler arcs (we all remember the Bounts). Skip them if you have to. But when Bleach's canon material hits, with those slow-burn Bankai reveals, it hits harder than almost anything else from its era. 366 episodes of pure, unfiltered spiritual warfare.
Alt Title ブリーチ
Studio Studio Pierrot
Network TV Tokyo
Aired 2004 - 2012
Episodes 366
Genre Action, Adventure, Supernatural
Status Completed
← All lore

Fansub & Scanlation History

Sourced, then structured. How we preserve anime history

2004–2008: The TV Tokyo BitTorrent Explosion

Bleach's First Month Was Already a Four-Way Race

Lunar · Keep & ANBU · IY4Ever · Naisho & TW

The early AnimeSuki page makes the launch sequence unusually clear. Lunar Anime has episode 1 on October 6, 2004, Keep & ANBU on October 7, IY4Ever on October 8, and Naisho & Toriyama's World on October 22. By 2005 the field expands again with Chihiro, Conclave and Bleach-Society. Bleach did not inherit one definitive fansub line. The competition existed from the first week and kept changing as the show grew.
[Lunar]

Lunar Anime [Lunar] & Early Bleach Quality Standard

TV Tokyo Captures · Custom Bankai Typesetting

When Bleach premiered on TV Tokyo in October 2004, Lunar Anime [Lunar] set the gold standard for weekly fansubs. Lunar created stylized Aegisub fonts for Soul Slayer releases (Shikai/Bankai calls) and provided extensive cultural notes explaining Soul Society terminology, Seireitei architecture, and Shinigami ranking systems.
[Lunar]

Dattebayo [DB] Speed-Subs & Licensing Stance

BitTorrent Distribution · Unstoppable Weekly Pacing
Dattebayo [DB] revolutionized Bleach distribution by dropping subtitled episodes within hours of Japanese broadcast. When Viz Media licensed the anime in 2006, Dattebayo famously refused to cease distribution, continuing their speed-sub releases through the Soul Society and Bount arcs until 2009.
[DB]

Before the Weekly Race: Bleach's Early Manga Scanlations

Early 2000s · Toriyama's World · Collected-volume translations

Bleach's early English scanlation history looked different from the weekly raw-scan race that later became familiar to manga readers.

Toriyama's World was among the groups translating Tite Kubo's manga in the early 2000s. Rather than rushing to translate the newest Weekly Shonen Jump chapter before its Japanese newsstand release, the group generally worked from collected manga volumes, known as tankobon.

In December 2003, Toriyama's World dropped Bleach following reports that Viz had obtained the English-language rights. That licensing episode is documented separately in Toriyama's World's December 2003 history.

SnoopyCool and MangaScreener were influential pioneers of English scanlation, but their importance to the wider scene should not be mistaken for evidence that either produced Bleach translations.
Why it matters
Bleach passed through two different eras of fan translation: the earlier, slower world of volume-based scanlations and the later competition to publish English chapters as quickly as possible. Treating them as one continuous weekly speedscan operation erases that transition.

Source Inside Scanlation

[TW]

Bleach-Society: Another Contender in 2005

May 2005 · AnimeSuki release records

Bleach-Society was one of the independent English fansub groups competing for Bleach viewers during the series' first broadcast year.

Contemporary AnimeSuki records document its episode 31 release on May 12, 2005, followed by episode 32 on May 18. AnimeHistory's existing release ledger also records coverage through episode 59, including corrected versions.

Bleach-Society had its own release identity and distribution presence. It was not simply another name for Lunar, Dattebayo or Hell-Fansubs.
Why it matters
The early Bleach scene contained several competing subtitle projects. Bleach-Society's surviving release records show how viewers could choose between independent versions of the same television episodes.

Source Wayback Machine

[Bleach-Society]

Hell-Fansubs: The Stalled Bleach Release Trail

2005–2006 · 20 documented episodes · AniDB

Hell-Fansubs was another independent English fansub group active during Bleach's early digital distribution era.

AniDB identifies the group as #2293 and preserves twenty distinct Bleach episodes: 39–48, 55–57, 64 and 67–72. Its episode-level catalogue contains 27 file records, including alternate versions.

The group operated through its own website, hell-fansubs.com, and the #hell-fansubs IRC channel on Rizon. Its wider catalogue documents activity continuing into 2009.
The Breakdown
AniDB classifies the Bleach project as stalled. Episode 72 is the highest episode number recorded, not evidence that the group completed episodes 1–72. Only twenty distinct episodes are documented in the recovered release record.
Why it matters
Hell-Fansubs gives us another piece of the competitive Bleach fansub scene. Its release history stands independently from Bleach-Society, Lunar and Dattebayo. Similar coverage of the same anime does not mean the groups collaborated.

Source AniDB

[Hell-Fansubs]

The Bount Arc Filler Wall & Group Burnout (2005-2006)

Studio Pierrot Pacing · 45-Episode Filler Interruption

At the absolute peak of Bleach's popularity in 2005, the anime caught up to Tite Kubo's manga, forcing Studio Pierrot to air the 45-episode Bount Arc. This massive pacing wall led to widespread fatigue in the fansub community, causing groups like Lunar Anime to pivot focus while Dattebayo pushed through, maintaining weekly speed-subs despite fan backlash.
[DB]

The Weekly Scanlation Race, Late 2000s

SleepyFans: The Group Everyone Raced To Beat

Weekly Speedscans · Closed January 2011

SleepyFans emerged around mid-2008 under the username gumjim. According to Inside Scanlation's contemporary history of speedscanning, SleepyFans was effectively a one-person operation, drawing on freelance translations posted to MangaHelpers and raw scans obtained from other sources.

The group worked on Naruto, Bleach and Bakuman. Its greatest advantage was speed: chapters sometimes appeared within hours of the Japanese magazine scans becoming available.

That pace came with trade-offs. Readers and rival scanlators criticized its editing and translation quality, but SleepyFans became a recognizable part of the weekly Bleach reading routine. Community discussions even used its releases as a reference point for spoiler policies.

The group was also involved in a documented July 2008 dispute with Binktopia concerning access to raw scans. On January 21, 2011, SleepyFans announced it could no longer continue its weekly releases.
Why it matters
SleepyFans captures a particular moment in scanlation history: one determined operator, external translators and raw providers, and enormous demand for English chapters almost immediately after Japanese publication. The race to release first sometimes mattered more to readers than the quality of the translation.
[SleepyFans]

Toriyama's World Called It "Unconfirmed" and Turned Out Right

December 19, 2003

Toriyama's World, already documented on this site's Naruto page for dropping that series in 2002, also worked Bleach, and dropped it the same way. Their December 19, 2003 announcement hedged hard: "It's seems that Bleach might be added to viz's licensed line up soon! (MAYBE! UNCONFIRMED! WHO KNOWS FOR SURE? I DON'T!!)" A few days later, fans on the AnimeOnDVD forum found evidence Viz had actually contacted the group beforehand, confirming the license was real. Toriyama's World dropped Bleach immediately after.
[TW]

MangaShare/Binktopia vs. BleachExile, April 2008

A separate, Bleach-specific dispute from the SleepyFans raw-leak conflict already documented on Naruto's page: in April 2008, MangaShare and Binktopia publicly accused BleachExile, one of the largest Bleach fan sites at the time, of stripping their credit pages when hosting Binktopia's scanlations. The dispute ended with no resolution reached, and MangaShare/Binktopia began watermarking random pages of their releases going forward.
[Binktopia]

Binktopia: Fast, But Not Afraid to Rewrite the Script

MangaShare Affiliate · Editorial Liberties

Binktopia began in January 2006 as a small online forum created by Binky. Later that year, Binky joined forces with thatbabo and translator Mankai to turn the community into a scanlation group covering Weekly Shonen Jump titles including Bleach and Naruto.

Initially, its releases spread through forums rather than a large download site. Binktopia sought a middle ground between polished but slower scanlations and the fastest, roughest weekly releases.

On December 26, 2007, Binktopia merged with MangaShare. The Binktopia name remained attached to the scanlation team, while MangaShare provided distribution, direct downloads and an online reader. The merger brought additional staff and resources rather than simply replacing one group with another.
Why it matters
Binktopia illustrates how scanlation communities evolved from small enthusiast forums into organized weekly distribution networks. Its early history survives in a July 2009 interview with staff member Binky, giving us a firsthand account of how the operation developed.
[Binktopia]

The Manga Ran Licensed Long Before It Ran in English

Viz Licenses the Manga in 2004, Three Years Before a Single English Chapter Runs

2004 License Announcement · November 2007 Magazine Debut

Viz Media picked up English rights to the Bleach manga in 2004, two years ahead of the broadcast deal that would eventually put the anime on Adult Swim. The manga itself did not start running in Viz's own Shonen Jump magazine until November 2007, a three-year gap between owning the license and actually publishing English chapters on any kind of schedule. That gap is exactly the kind of window where scanlation demand does not evaporate just because a company technically holds the rights. It just goes underground for a few more years.

MangaStream Held the Line Until Shueisha Said Stop

February 2012 · Naruto, One Piece, Bleach, Hunter x Hunter All Dropped Same Week

MangaStream ran as one of the biggest scanlation aggregators of the early 2010s, and Bleach was one of seven Shueisha-owned Weekly Shonen Jump titles it kept hosting well past the point Viz technically held every license. That ended in February 2012, when legal pressure from Shueisha and Viz forced the site to pull all seven titles, Bleach, Naruto, One Piece, Hunter x Hunter, Katekyo Hitman Reborn, Claymore, and D.Gray-man, in a single announcement, then redirect its remaining effort toward titles Viz did not license at all. Same pattern that shows up across this site's other fansub-scanlation pages. A release keeps running well past the license until the license actually gets enforced, then it stops.
[MangaStream]

MangaStream Goes Dark for Good, December 2019

Shueisha DMCA Subpoena · Full Site Shutdown

The February 2012 pullback was not the end of MangaStream's story with Shueisha. The site kept scanlating titles Viz did not license for another seven years, until Shueisha filed a DMCA subpoena in a US federal court in early 2019 seeking to identify the site's operators. By December 2019, MangaStream's website and Twitter account had both vanished without an official statement, and sister site Jaimini's Box announced it was ending its own Weekly Shonen Jump scanlation work in the same breath, calling it the end of an era in scanlation and pointing readers toward Shueisha's own Manga Plus platform instead.
[MangaStream]