The Bleach anime has returned with the Thousand-Year Blood War arc, complete with a new story and modern animation. Dedicated Bleach fans may feel nostalgic and watch not just the new episodes, but also the older ones, to see how far this shonen series has come. Bleach‘s first handful of episodes were a lot of fun, but they were also pretty bizarre at times.
Author Tite Kubo really exercised his whimsical imagination in Bleach‘s early arcs, such as the Substitute Soul Reaper arc and the iconic Soul Society story arc. When fans revisit these old episodes, they’ll pick up on countless odd and fascinating details that make those old episodes unique, the perfect details for any challenging anime trivia game.
10 Orihime Inoue Lives Entirely Alone
Ichigo’s good friend Orihime Inoue had terrible parents, so her much older brother Sora fled from home and brought the young Orihime with him. Years later, Sora died, leaving Orihime all alone. The earliest Bleach episodes make this clear, with Orihime living solo in her spacious home.
The anime didn’t explain how a 15-year-old girl could afford to live alone, but fluff details suggest that one of Orihime’s aunts paid the bills. Living alone also taught Orihime to be highly responsible with chores and going to school on time without anyone telling her to go.
9 Karin Kurosaki Keeps Hitting Her Father
The first Bleach season had some slice-of-life elements with the Kurosaki family, clearly showing the amusing dynamics between the four Kurosakis. The twin sisters Yuzu and Karin are often in the background, but Karin the tsundere sometimes takes center stage—violently.
Karin finds Isshin’s dad antics tiresome, and she sometimes punched or kicked him in a comedic fashion. It’s an early example of the “violent tsundere” concept, and while Isshin rolled with the punches, modern anime fans might not like Karin that much and her excessive ways.
8 Uryu Ishida Is Passionate About Sewing
Ichigo’s classmate Uryu Ishida was secretive about his Quincy powers, but he wasn’t afraid to show off his advanced sewing skills. For comedy’s sake, the first Bleach season often showed Uryu being quietly but fiercely passionate about sewing and tailoring, which impressed his classmates.
Near the Soul Society arc’s end, Uryu showed off his tailoring skills one more time. He had sewn up new clothes for his friends with unique patterns, including a colorful sundress for his new friend Rukia Kuchiki. Later, more serious Bleach arcs dropped this entirely, and Uryu hasn’t touched a sewing kit since.
7 Human Souls Could Enter Animals
The early episodes of Bleach fleshed out the series’ supernatural combat system, including what happens to people’s souls when their mortal bodies die. A variety of things may happen, such as tormented souls becoming Hollows, but an early episode showed an alternative: entering an animal’s body.
An innocent young boy named Yuichi Shibata died, and inexplicably, his soul ended up in a caged bird that Ichigo and Chad later met. They thought talking birds were real, but then they learned the truth about Yuichi, and they fought hard to defeat Yuichi’s Hollow enemy, Shrieker, and help Yuichi reach the afterlife.
6 Ururu Almost Beat Up Ichigo During Training
After Ichigo lost badly to Captain Byakuya Kuchiki, he underwent rigorous training with Kisuke Urahara to get a new, better zanpakuto to rescue Rukia. That meant training not just with Kisuke himself, but also Jinta and Ururu, who had peculiar method for reforging Ichigo into a true warrior.
The tiny, innocent Ururu Tsumigiya put on two boxing gloves and ferociously attacked Ichigo, and a shocked Ichigo ran for his life before Ururu could beat him senseless. The entire sequence was a comedic one, complete with fireworks going off in the background for added flair.
5 Jidanbo Explained Table Manners To Ichigo
Early in Bleach‘s second season, Ichigo and his friends arrived in the Soul Society, and they needed to fight their way into the Seireitei to continue their rescue operation. That meant fighting one of the gate guardians, a massive fellow named Jidanbo, who wielded two axes.
Jidanbo, purely for comedy’s sake, explained three basic rules to Ichigo. Two of them involved table manners, which had nothing to do with the current situation, and only the third concerned Ichigo’s mission. Such whimsical silliness helped add extra flavor to Bleach‘s earlier episodes, something that was lost later on.
4 Orihime Inoue Ate An Entire Bread Loaf
In recent Bleach episodes, Orihime Inoue brought an entire tray of assorted bread for her friends to eat, which was a callback to a quirky detail from the anime’s early days. Back then, Orihime ate all kinds of things she scrounged up, including entire bread loaves.
It’s actually a minor internet meme to see Orihime casually eating an entire bread loaf as though it were a giant power bar. There’s a dark undertone to this, though, suggesting that Orihime is either too poor for better meals or never has time to prepare better lunches before rushing off to school.
3 Hollows Had Silly, Often Nonsensical Names
In Bleach‘s early days, Ichigo and his friends faced not the elite Espadas, but ordinary Hollows that roamed Karakura Town. The Espadas had cool names like Grimmjow and Coyote Starrk, while the early episodes featured villainous Hollows with names like Fishbone D, Acidwire, and Shrieker.
These whimsical names added some fun flair to otherwise terrifying monsters, and it’s not always clear what inspired those names. Shrieker’s name made sense given his sonic ability, at least, and it was soon horribly clear how Grand Fisher got his name, too.
2 Spiritual Beings Could Sense One Another With Colored Ribbons
Bleach‘s supernatural combat system involves a lot of moving parts, some of which were introduced early on and then abandoned. This includes the concept of spirit ribbons, or reiraku, that high-level Soul Reapers and Quincy can use to track down other beings. Soul Reaper ribbons are red, and all others are white.
Uryu Ishida, as a talented Quincy, used this to realize that Ichigo is a Soul Reaper, and Ichigo also used the ribbons to find Yuichi’s soul. It was a cool little detail that the Bleach anime dropped before long, so it’s funny to rewatch old episodes where the characters act like spirit ribbons are so important.
1 Everyone Loved Don Kanonji
After the grim Ichigo vs Grand Fisher episode, the Bleach anime gave fans a break with a comedic episode centering around the minor character Don Kanonji. Don was a TV sensation who acted like an amateur Ghostbuster all over Japan, and it seemed Ichigo was the sole Bleach character who didn’t like him.
Ichigo couldn’t stand it when his classmates would cross their arms in a certain pose and laugh like Don Kanonji, and even Rukia and Chad joined in the fun. Eventually, Ichigo met Don for real and helped him take on a minor Hollow that Don couldn’t destroy on his own.
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