Rei had been building anticipation for Bleach for over a year.
He would not say directly that it would be more interesting than his previous works, as that would offend the fans of those series. But in public appearances, he had consistently hinted to the media and fans that his confidence in Bleach was in no way lower than what he had felt for any previous project.
How many people truly believed this was another matter. Even if a legendary master of animation claimed he could produce a work surpassing Spirited Away, or a celebrated filmmaker announced he had created something that surpassed Your Name in every aspect, a significant portion of fans would still be sceptical.
Most people treated such statements as promotional positioning. A smaller number of devoted fans chose to take Rei's words at face value first.
Regardless, once the clock reached 7 PM on April 6th, Ion TV's viewership ratings began climbing sharply, exactly as the industry had anticipated.
And it was no longer the gradual accumulation pattern of earlier new works, where viewership would creep up slowly from five or six percent as the fanbase gathered. By the time Bleach began broadcasting, Ion TV's viewership was already approaching seven percent.
A group of anti-fans had appeared online predicting the series would fail badly after airing, but almost nobody paid attention to them. Japan's ACGN fans had learned by now that with Shirogane's works, they simply had to watch for themselves.
The only question was whether any given work suited a particular viewer's taste. The risk of it being genuinely bad was not a factor. His works consistently represented the top tier of whatever genre they occupied.
After 8 PM.
For the first time in Ion TV's history, a work's premiere viewership rating broke seven percent.
Strictly speaking, Bleach is considered a relatively slow-starting entry among the Big Three long-running shonen manga series.
The opening plot was not complicated. A fifteen-year-old boy, Kurosaki Ichigo, impulsive but warm-hearted and compassionate. In his daily life he enjoyed confronting street thugs who preyed on others and casually helping lonely wandering spirits pass on.
Then one night, a young woman in a black and white traditional outfit, Kuchiki Rukia, appeared in his room uninvited.
She was a Shinigami from the Soul Society.
For the Japanese audience, the concept of the Soul Society mapped naturally onto existing ideas about the afterlife and the spirit world. Shinigami entering the living world to capture and eliminate evil spirits referred to in their world as Hollows was an immediately comprehensible premise. The staff of the underworld capturing unruly evil spirits was a framework the audience absorbed without resistance.
In the first episode's plot built on this foundation, Rukia encountered Ichigo, who possessed the rare ability to perceive spirits. During this encounter, a Hollow invaded and began attacking ordinary people.
Rukia made a critical error and found herself in a desperate situation, and was forced to transfer her Shinigami power into Ichigo's body to grant him temporary Shinigami abilities. With these borrowed powers, he defended the civilians under attack and pulled Rukia back from the edge of defeat.
The outcome was easy to anticipate: the boy, now carrying Shinigami power, cut through the Hollow in front of him as though the thing offered no resistance at all.
Strictly speaking, the first episode of Bleach could not be called particularly exceptional.
A protagonist with the ability to perceive spirits was a premise that appeared frequently across many anime series. In terms of setting alone, it was nothing new.
But the lack of exceptional quality in the first episode was relative to anime at the same level of ambition. Exactly as Hunter x Hunter had opened with a plain and straightforward beginning, Bleach was the kind of series that became more compelling the further it progressed. The slow start was simply the nature of the work.
At the beginning of the broadcast, this plainness became the primary ammunition for media outlets and anti-fans looking for grounds to criticise.
After the first episode finished, the vast majority of viewers were left wanting more. The anti-fans made themselves heard regardless.
"Pretty average."
"The animation quality is undeniably good, but the plot is cliché. Is this the Bleach that Shirogane-sensei promoted for a full year? With this kind of premise, can it even sustain a long run? No one will still be watching in three months."
"I thought this would be something genuinely interesting. Isn't this just a standard ghost-catching premise? The title sounds impressive but the core content is this?"
"Give it a rest. Anti-fans have been saying this for how many years now? When Hunter x Hunter, Attack on Titan, and Demon Slayer all started, a crowd came out to mock them too. Shirogane-sensei's standing in the global animation industry gets higher every year while the anti-fan crowd becomes less and less relevant."
"You really think posting a few threads can set the direction for public opinion on Bleach? If the plot has nothing worth watching after half a year, come back and show off then."
"Honestly though, the first episode can't be called bad. It's actually quite energetic, especially the sequence at the end where Ichigo erupts. I just feel like something is missing."
"Of course you feel like something is missing. You've been groomed by Hunter x Hunter, Attack on Titan, and Demon Slayer. Your threshold for excellent anime has been raised so much that simple high-energy premises don't generate the same response anymore."
"Exactly. My younger brother is in fifth grade this year. He hasn't watched much anime. He watched the Bleach premiere with me tonight. I was fine, but he was practically dancing the entire time, eyes shining. So I know there's nothing wrong with the first episode. The problem is only with us. We need the world-building to expand and the characterisation to deepen before we can feel genuinely invested."
"It's the same as when we were first following Hunter x Hunter. When did that series actually start getting good? Does everyone remember?"
"The Hunter Exam."
"I got completely hooked during the Yorknew City Arc when the Phantom Troupe appeared."
"I fell for it in the Trick Tower arc. The moment where Gon smashed through the wall so the whole group could pass within the time limit. I felt a joy from watching anime that I hadn't felt in years."
"I liked Hunter x Hunter from the first episode. Same with Bleach. I thought the first episode was very good. I don't understand why anyone calls the premise cliché."
"Exactly. The setting isn't the point at all. The point is what the series does with it."
The first episode of Bleach generated heated discussion across the internet that night, but this did not affect the broadcast results in any meaningful way.
An average viewership rating of 7.52 percent for the premiere.
The following morning, in front of major bookstores across Japan, fans formed long queues to purchase Dream Comic Journal. In first, second, and third-tier cities alike, commercial streets focused on anime and manga merchandise had promotional posters of Kurosaki Ichigo in his black Shihakusho posted across every available surface.
At comic conventions, cosplayers hired by Shirogane Animation in Bleach costumes were building momentum for the series everywhere.
What this reflected in market terms was unanimous recognition from both media and anime critics.
Were they serious?
Some people could not stand Shirogane's continued success. They were envious of him, so they picked apart Bleach in every way available. But after so many years, how could anyone serious in Japan's animation industry not know what they were doing?
If they said a single negative word about Shirogane's new work at this stage, they were simply setting themselves up to be comprehensively embarrassed by Shirogane fans a few months later when Bleach's reputation began to rise and the plot found its footing.
On Saturday, Miyu lay slumped across her desk, looking at the partially completed manga manuscript in front of her with an expression of total defeat.
"Why did it turn out like this?"
"Don't be down. Although the Bleach manga took the number one spot in Dream Comic's voting rankings on its very first day of serialisation, that wasn't Bleach's own strength. It's just that the fans of Hunter x Hunter, Attack on Titan, Demon Slayer, and Hikaru no Go saw how pitiful I was and gave some friendly support. This week's number one on Dream Comic should still be your Reincarnation."
Rei sat down next to his wife and put his arm around her shoulder.
"Stop comforting me. No matter what, your Bleach has only been serialised for one chapter, and its total votes already exceed Reincarnation by nearly a million. I really can't find any excuse for myself. It's simply being crushed." Miyu glanced at him and spoke in a flat tone.
"How about this. You still have twelve pages of manuscript left. How about I help you draw three? As an apology." Rei cleared his throat.
Although Miyu had assistants and the storyboards were long finished, an assistant's drawing ability was naturally a significant step below hers. The foundational skills accumulated over a dozen years as a professional mangaka were not something any assistant could easily approach. For her own manga, except for repetitive sections and less important pages, Miyu handled the majority herself.
But Rei's help was different. Although she did not want to admit it, Miyu knew that Rei's drawing ability was, if she was being honest, somewhat stronger than hers, and his stylistic versatility meant that manga fans could not tell at all that he was imitating her hand.
"No. Just let me be quiet for a bit. I'll think it through overnight and my mood will settle by tomorrow." Miyu glanced at him once more, then turned to face the wall and looked up at the ceiling.
"How about I help you draw five pages?" Rei raised the offer.
"Eight pages." Miyu was silent for some time before speaking.
"Six pages. That's my limit. I'm still working to finish the seventh chapter of the Bleach manga."
"Deal." Miyu turned around, her face already brightening into a smile.
Even knowing she had been performing the whole time, Rei breathed a small sigh of relief.
What was all this about? In the past when his works outpaced her manga in votes, he had never needed to negotiate. Now he was genuinely coaxing her.
"By the way, I really feel like Bleach is pretty ordinary. Why are the results this good?" Miyu immediately became cheerful the moment her workload was halved, and her words were not diplomatic.
She was not being deliberately unkind. She genuinely had not felt many particularly compelling moments in the first episode of the Bleach anime.
Rei himself was aware of this.
In his previous life, he had also needed to watch the first dozen or so episodes of Bleach multiple times before he could get through them. If it had not been as famous as the other entries in the Big Three, and if he had not been certain in his own mind that the work had serious potential, he genuinely might not have pushed through to the better material.
It was not that the early plot was bad. But as a long-running anime, Bleach lacked a clearly visible main throughline that the audience could identify at a glance.
In Hunter x Hunter, it was Gon searching for his father.
In Attack on Titan, it was Eren pursuing freedom and the destruction of his enemies.
In One Piece, the hero was moving toward becoming the King of Pirates.
In Naruto, the protagonist declared in the first episode that he would become Hokage.
But Bleach. The premise was less focused. The male protagonist unexpectedly became a Substitute Shinigami and then settled into an episodic pattern where a Hollow appeared and had to be defeated, and other people at his school also turned out to have the ability to perceive spirits.
Ichigo got to know them, befriended them, and they worked together to fight Hollows in a recurring format.
This was fresh for two or three episodes. But after a dozen episodes had aired, in a standard short-form anime the series would have concluded its run by then, and Bleach was still operating in this mode.
In his previous life, Rei had often watched three episodes, felt his attention drift, left it for several days, then returned for a few more. He had repeated this cycle several times before finally arriving at the first arc that gave the protagonist a genuinely clear and urgent goal.
Entering the Soul Society to rescue Rukia.
From that point, the series stayed consistently energetic all the way through Ichigo charging into Hueco Mundo to rescue Orihime, and eventually defeating the villain that many anime fans from Rei's previous life had considered the most effortlessly composed antagonist in anime history, the composed Sosuke Aizen.
Only when a protagonist had a clear goal did the audience have the motivation to follow.
And on this point: "You're right. The early stages of Bleach are indeed a bit of a slow start," Rei said with a smile.
"Another slow start." Miyu rolled her eyes at him.
She had probably already worked out the general development trajectory. During the slow period Rei had described, Bleach would receive continuous scepticism from various corners of the anime world, and then from a certain chapter onward, the series would begin an explosion in popularity that was difficult to replicate.
Hunter x Hunter had begun its explosion with the Hunter Exam arc after a dozen chapters.
Demon Slayer had its moment in episode nineteen, Hinokami, which sent the series into a completely different level of reception overnight.
Attack on Titan, when it reached around the seventh or eighth chapter and the male protagonist was eaten, had caused considerable controversy in the industry, with many people at the time genuinely believing it would fail badly.
And now Bleach.
"Since you know the early plot is a slow start, why didn't you make it compelling from the beginning? Every time you do this reversal pattern. As a fan of your works, I genuinely don't know what to say."
"Well, that's because my talent has limits. I also want these works to become exceptional from the very first chapter, but I cannot manage it. They always have to run for a dozen chapters before they find their footing." Rei laughed.
"Knowing where the problem is isn't the same as skill. Being able to solve it is skill. So I can only wait until I grow into my complete form in the future."
Miyu looked at him without speaking.
Rei had clear self-awareness when adapting these works for Japan. He would reduce particularly slow sections where it made sense, but he would never arbitrarily alter plots that involved important character development.
Over the following weeks, subsequent episodes of the Bleach anime aired one after another. Members of the protagonist's expanding circle, including Yasutora Sado and Orihime Inoue, made their appearances in sequence.
The audience instinctively noticed that the main narrative thread was still vague. Ichigo was consistently placed in a reactive position, dealing with Hollows that appeared without connection to a larger story, and there was no accumulating sense of direction after each victory. But the episode-to-episode pacing remained tight enough to keep the audience from growing too restless.
As time passed, the ACGN fans of Japan's animation world also began gradually to recognise a familiar pattern in the structure.
Something they all knew well.
The protagonist first assembles a core group of companions, and then at a certain point, the group embarks on an adventure together, the world-building begins to open up, and a full ensemble arc begins.
This was exactly how Hunter x Hunter had worked. The Hunter quartet, Kurapika, Leorio, Gon, and Killua, took ten episodes to all appear and come together as a group, then their individual characters were developed further through the Hunter Exam arc.
Demon Slayer had taken roughly fifteen episodes, and then the Natagumo Mountain Arc had made the series into something legendary.
So what about Bleach?