The

manga Manga ( Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is ...

Bleach Bleach is the generic name for any chemical product that is used industrially or domestically to remove color (whitening) from a fabric or fiber or to clean or to remove stains in a process called bleaching. It often refers specifically, to ...

'' is written and illustrated by

Tite Kubo , known professionally as , is a Japanese manga artist and character designer. He is best known for his manga series '' Bleach'' (2001–2016), which had over 130 million copies in circulation as of 2022. Biography Kubo was born on June 26, 197 ...

. The plot starts with

Ichigo Kurosaki is a fictional character in the ''Bleach'' manga series and its adaptations created by Tite Kubo. He is the main protagonist of the series, who receives Soul Reaper powers after meeting Rukia Kuchiki, a Soul Reaper assigned to patrol around th ...

, a teenager who accidentally steals the powers of the Soul Reaper

Rukia Kuchiki is a fictional character in the anime and manga series ''Bleach'' created by Tite Kubo. In the series, she is a Soul Reaper, (死神, Shinigami, literally 'Death God'), in charge of slaying evil spirits called Hollows. At the beginning, after a ...

and subsequently assumes her duties while she convalesces. Since that event, Ichigo has to fight Hollows, evil spirits of past humans that feed on unwary people. The manga was first published in

Shueisha (lit. "Gathering of Intellect Publishing Co., Ltd.") is a Japanese company headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. The company was established in 1925 as the entertainment-related publishing division of Japanese publisher Shogakukan. The fol ...

's ''

Weekly Shōnen Jump is a weekly ''shōnen'' manga anthology published in Japan by Shueisha under the '' Jump'' line of magazines. The manga series within the magazine consist of many action scenes and a fair amount of comedy. The chapters of the series that ru ...

'' from August 7, 2001, to August 22, 2016. The 686 individual chapters were collected by Shueisha in a series of 74 ''

tankōbon is the Japanese term for a book that is not part of an anthology or corpus. In modern Japanese, the term is most often used in reference to individual volumes of a manga series: most series first appear as individual chapters in a weekly or ...

'' volumes between January 5, 2002, and November 4, 2016. Most chapter names are written in English and have ''

katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived f ...

'' above them to indicate how they are read in Japanese, similar to the usage of ''

furigana is a Japanese reading aid consisting of smaller kana or syllabic characters printed either above or next to kanji (logographic characters) or other characters to indicate their pronunciation. It is one type of ruby text. Furigana is also kn ...

ruby character Ruby characters or rubi characters () are small, annotative glosses that are usually placed above or to the right of logographic characters of languages in the East Asian cultural sphere, such as Chinese ''hanzi'', Japanese ''kanji'', and Ko ...

s with advanced ''

kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subsequ ...

'' characters. The total count of published ''Bleach'' chapters and the number on the highest-numbered chapter do not match. This is because, in addition to the positive numbered chapters, some chapters are published with a negative or fractional chapter number. These "negative" chapters are

side stories A sequel is a work of literature, film, theatre, television, music or video game that continues the story of, or expands upon, some earlier work. In the common context of a narrative work of fiction, a sequel portrays events set in the same ...

that involve events that precede the main plot of the series. North American licensee

Viz Media VIZ Media LLC is an American manga publisher, anime distributor and entertainment company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 1986 as VIZ LLC. In 2005, VIZ LLC and ShoPro Entertainment merged to form the current VIZ M ...

serialized the individual chapters in '' Shonen Jump'' from its November 2007 to April 2012 issues. The series moved to the digital anthology ''

Weekly Shonen Jump Alpha ''Weekly Shonen Jump'' was a online magazine, digital ''shōnen manga, shōnen'' manga anthology published in North America by Viz Media, and the successor to their monthly print media, print anthology ''Shonen Jump (magazine), Shonen Jump''. ...

'' in January 2012 and Viz Media published it digitally as Shueisha released new chapters in Japan. The first volume on English was released on April 19, 2004, and the last volume–the 74th–was released on October 2, 2018. The company released a hardcover "collector's edition" of the first volume with a dust jacket on August 5, 2008, followed by a box set on September 2, 2008, containing the first 21 volumes, a poster, and a booklet about the series. A second box set was released on July 7, 2015, containing volumes 22–48, the ''Bleach'' pilot and a poster. A re-release of the series under the label of "3-in-1 Edition" started on June 7, 2011; as of March 5, 2019, all twenty five volumes have been released. Viz Media released

digital Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits. Technology and computing Hardware *Digital electronics, electronic circuits which operate using digital signals ** Digital camera, which captures and stores digital ...

forms of the first 16 volumes in English on June 17, 2011. As of October 2, 2018, all 74 digital volumes have been published. On September 21, 2012, Shueisha released 45 digital volumes in Japanese e-book stores. As of November 4, 2016, all 74 digital volumes have been released.

Volume list

Volumes 1–21

Volumes 22–48

Volumes 49–74

3-in-1 Edition

Notes

References

External links

Official ''Bleach'' website

Official Shonen Jump ''Bleach'' website
{{DISPLAYTITLE:List of ''Bleach'' volumes *