Every Bleach Filler Episode You Can Skip, According To YouTube
"Bleach" was once part of what fandom called the Big 3 anime; for a brief and shining moment in the mid-aughts, "Bleach," "Naruto," and "One Piece" ruled both "Shonen Jump" in Japan and Hot Topics across America. "Bleach" followed the adventures of slightly psychic high school student Ichigo Kurosaki after he accidentally absorbed the powers of a Soul Reaper named Rukia. Ichigo then has to defend Rukia, Earth, and the spirit realm (also known as the Soul Society) from various threats and enemies.
"Bleach" started as a manga in "Shonen Jump," which was adapted into an anime. The "Bleach" anime ran from 2004 to 2012, ending on the adaptation of chapter 479 of the manga. The final arc of the manga has never been adapted but was set to arrive sometime in 2021. In the meantime, the original 366 episodes of the anime are available on Crunchyroll and Hulu.
But 366 episodes is a lot of content to ingest. What if you want to get completely up to speed for the upcoming series? "Bleach" was famous for its latter era of filler arcs — plotlines and episodes that had no connection to the original manga. Filler arcs can be fun on their own, but if you are looking for a direct translation of the manga, there are plenty of "Bleach" filler episodes to skip.
There were 164 filler episodes of Bleach
YouTuber Hensama broke down every arc of the "Bleach" anime, and which chapters of the manga they covered. He found that 164 episodes of the show's 366 total were filler — completely divorced from the manga and its ongoing storyline.
If you only care about what happened in the manga, here are the episodes to skip: 33, 50, 64-109, 128-137, 147-149, 168-189, 204-205, 213-214, 228-229, 230-266, 287, 298-299, 303-305, 311-341, and 355.
Some of these are one-off filler episodes, which, according to Hensama, "range from a recap, to a film festival, to a holiday special, to a side story about Ichigo and a magic lamp." Episode 228 is a beach episode, a classic episode type as identified by TV Tropes, and who could be mad about that? Some of these episodes, however, are entire filler arcs. The New Captain Shusuke Amagai arc has nothing to do with the manga and distracts from the ongoing Arrancar storyline. Right at the end of the Arrancar arc comes a spate of filler episodes dedicated to a possible conspiracy in the Soul Society.
"Bleach" ran into the problem of many anime that run while its parent manga is still in publication: the anime occasionally outpaced the manga. This happened with "Dragon Ball," "Sailor Moon," and although it definitely isn't an anime series, "Game of Thrones."