The following contains spoilers for Episode 9 of Bleach: Thousand Year Blood War, “The Drop,” now streaming on Hulu in the U.S. and on Disney+ internationally.
Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War is a modernized, highly polished continuation of the venerable Bleach anime. This Fall 2022 Bleach series is also aware of its own shonen roots, with the story arc both embracing and reinventing familiar shonen anime tropes in fascinating ways. Bleach often shows its age, but it still has new ideas to offer.
An example is Episode 9’s events, when protagonist Ichigo Kurosaki and his ally Renji Abarai make their way through squad 0’s realm for training, only to be offered a huge meal. At a glance, this is yet another “big shonen eater” gag, but in Bleach, Ichigo’s and Renji’s ravenous appetite has in-universe implications and even ties into his Soul Society spiritualism and science work.
The Culinary Training of Captain Kirio Hikifune’s Soul Palace
Ichigo’s current quest may feel familiar to longtime Bleach fans, with Ichigo undergoing peculiar but strenuous training to reforge his broken zanpakuto and prepare himself for much tougher battles ahead. Instead of training with Kisuke Urahara in Karakura Town, Ichigo and Renji visit the Soul King’s realm first to heal in Tenjiro’s hot spring baths, then to eat a massive meal at Kirio Hikifune’s palace. Ichigo and Renji can hardly believe this is training, and they feel uneasy as they eat endless plates of Kirio’s excellent cooking. Then Renji correctly realizes that this is just to energize and prepare him and Ichigo for the combat training at Oetsu Nimaiya’s palace, and that all this comes together to form a single whole. Nothing here is a wasted effort.
Kirio applauds Renji for realizing that, then explains how her seemingly ordinary cooking ties into Soul Society spiritualism. What Ichigo and Renji eat in Episode 9 isn’t just good food for a typical “big eater” scene like with Luffy or Goku. Kirio’s food has special spirit energy in it, following the same principles as Gikon technology for substitute souls. Longtime Bleach fans know that Gikon pills allow Soul Reapers to place artificial souls into their gigai, such as the wily Kon and his even goofier counterpart Chappy.
Captain Kirio Hikifune isn’t just a chef — she is a master scientist who helped Soul Reapers learn how to move souls between bodies and allow certain bodies to accept foreign spirit energy. This easily puts Kirio on par with Kisuke, if not ahead of him, and it proves that even Bleach’s goofiest characters shouldn’t be underestimated. Squad 0 adds much-needed levity to the story, but they are also the Soul King’s elite guards for a reason. Now Ichigo and Renji can benefit from that too, shonen-style.
How Kirio Reflects Bleach’s Age & Adaptability
Modern anime viewers might debate whether the new Bleach anime is a true evolution of this 20+ year old franchise or whether it’s just a sparkly coat of paint on a rusty, obsolete machine. By Episode 9 of the Thousand-Year Blood War anime, fans have enough material to decide that for themselves. This franchise laid the foundation for modern mega-hits like Demon Slayer and Jujutsu Kaisen, and the question is whether Bleach can keep pace with its younger, leaner successors. Many elements of Bleach may lead audiences to either say yes or no, such as Bleach’s massive scale and its mediocre dialogue that lacks modern polish.
Kirio Hikifune feels like a blend of old and new, tying into the general trend that Bleach has one foot in the shonen past and one foot in its present. Bleach cannot fully escape being an older, semi-obsolete series, especially since this new anime is a reboot only in terms of pacing and animation, not the story itself. Therefore, Bleach must compromise and lean into its admittedly old-fashioned material while making little tweaks to at least try and feel modern, and it seems to work.
The new Bleach anime has modern visuals and brings back many familiar shonen tropes, only to give them extra meaning and relevance, such as the “big eater” sequence in Episode 9. Bleach really did have token “big eater” scenes purely for comic relief years ago, but here, it actually means something. This new Bleach anime also promises to include yet more “training before the next big battle” sequences, but if the anime is smart, it will make these scenes brief and unpredictable, as opposed to tedious training arcs in Bleach’s past such as Ichigo training to unlock bankai or to learn the final Getsuga Tensho. This is how Bleach can feel old-school in a lean, mean way that’s more palatable to modern viewers, and that goes for big meals, too.
