The Fall 2022 Anime Season – What I’m Watching

It’s been a fun fall season of anime for me, what with the return of Bleach and My Hero Academia, and also with Heaven Official’s Blessing as my first experience with Chinese boy’s love stories.

But first... an update on the Bleach/Disney+/Hulu situation.

I successfully updated my Disney+ subscription to include Hulu (and ESPN, though who cares) in time to begin watching Bleach: The Thousand-Year Blood War, but it was a bit of a mess, starting with the subscription page itself.

How to add Hulu to an existing Disney+ subscription looked easy at first. I clicked on a button to “Add Hulu,” which took me to another page where things began to get difficult. After reading the instructions a few times, I hit a button that I thought would subscribe me but which instead took me to yet another page.

I eventually had to give in and do live chat. The operator suggested that I go to the Hulu site itself (not Disney+), so I did that.

I began to suspect that signing up at the Hulu site might confuse matters with my already-existing Disney+ subscription, so after looking at the Hulu site, I returned to Disney+ and tried to pull the trigger on a promising-looking “Add Hulu for $6.99” link.

However, just as I was about to get the Disney+ bundle (Disney+, Hulu, ESPN), I noted the fine print: at this price you would get Hulu with ads. The price was $13.99 and an annual subscription - which presumably would be discounted - didn’t appear to be available.

... Which left me with my only real choice – the Disney+ bundle including Hulu with no ads at $19.99/month, with no option for an annual subscription at a discounted rate. The fine print continued on, stating that if I had an annual Disney+ subscription that this monthly amount would be pro-rated against what I’d already paid for the month.

After I upgraded, to my surprise, I immediately received a Disney+ email documenting not only my new upgraded subscription but also the fact that the monthly charge had been pro-rated, complete with the calculation and total amount they’d just charged me right there in the email.

My annual subscription to Disney+ expires on the twentieth of this month. I guess I’ll have to wait and see what happens. Complicating all of this further is the fact that Disney+ is about to introduce an ad-sponsored tier. This should mean that they will receive a lot of advertising revenue - eventually. But they could definitely raise prices for subscriptions in the meantime, because the ad business will take a while to ramp up and show fruit. In other words, the situation remains in flux and no one really knows what the subscription tiers will look like in the near future.

On to the fall 2022 anime season, starting with Bleach.

To say the Thousand-Year Blood War arc is dark would be an understatement. There’s been a huge number of shinigami deaths already and just today, in episode 4, carnage in Soul Society itself.

After Soul Society massacred the Quincys hundreds of years ago, the Quincys are back to return the favor. They have developed the ability to steal bankai from everyone: everyone except for Ichigo, that is. Ichigo is now on his way to rescue Soul Society but much damage has already been done. Four Gotei 13 captains have already had their bankai stolen: Soi Fon, Komamura, Hitsugaya, and even Byakuya Kuchiki.

Aside from touches of humor with Ichigo and little Nel, this arc has been completely grim. It makes sense given the subject material, but still. Ichigo and his friends are now 17 year-olds, but there’s no hint of school-type humor or lightness here.

The action scenes are great. I have a feeling that fights and battle scenes will be the highlight of this arc. There’s also the general intrigue between the shinigami and the Quincys that I’m looking forward to learning more about.

Also very enjoyable this fall season is My Hero Academia, now in its sixth season.

The student heroes, along with the licensed heroes led by Endeavor, battle Shigaraki’s Paranormal Liberation Front at their mountain villa headquarters and at Jaku City Hospital, where Dr. Garaki is tending to Shigaraki’s healing.

Shigaraki awakens and unleashes his Decay quirk, causing the near-destruction of Jaku City. And we’re only on episode 5. The sixth season of My Hero Academia is looking like a real barn-burner and every bit worth the wait.

Finally, a few words about Heaven Official’s Blessing.

The story is about Xie Lian, a prince who ascends to god status. Despite his best efforts, his human kingdom fails and he begins a kind of shuttling back and forth between the heavenly realm, where he is ridiculed for failing, and the mortal realm, where his once-followers have abandoned him.

Despite this, Xie Lian is a good-natured soul who cares about human beings, and he continues to do his best on each mission that heaven gives him. While journeying on earth he keeps coming across a mysterious figure, a handsome man who appears to him in the beginning as a ghost.

Later, this same man appears as a wanderer riding in the same hay cart as Xie Lian. Robed in red, he seems friendly and unassuming, but is observed to have supernatural powers. Xie Lian learns that this being is Hua Cheng, an ancient and powerful ghost king.

So far, Heaven Official’s Blessing has been a pleasant diversion and an interesting introduction to Chinese animation. The animation style resembles Japanese anime, particularly in the character designs. I’ve especially enjoyed the background art of mountainous terrains, small villages, and Chinese dress both opulent and simple.

There’s been little to no hint of physical attraction between the two men as of yet. It may simply be that it’s a slow-burning relationship story, or perhaps what I’ve heard about Chinese stories is true; that they are more conservative in terms of showing sexual content. I would also guess that “boy’s love” or yaoi as such is not viewed as favorably in China as it is in Japan, so maybe the creators need to be more cautious.

I actually have the first light novel so I could check the story myself, but I would prefer to just keep watching the anime (can I call it ‘anime’ if it comes from China?). Like the fall anime season itself, Heaven Official’s Blessing has been a return to the kind of entertainment and storytelling I like best. I don’t mind if it takes a while to get to where it’s going. ;-)

Crunchyroll Loses the Bidding War Over Bleach – The State of Anime Streaming in the U.S.

Eight days remain before Bleach returns. And we don’t know where it will be streaming in the U.S.

On Sept. 30 - last week Friday - all Bleach episodes were taken off of Crunchyroll with no warning. Fans who had been binge-watching the 366 episodes to prepare for the new season were caught off-guard.

At this point, barely more than a week before the new season, nobody knows where Bleach will be streaming in the U.S. or even when.

The rumor is that Disney won the bidding war for Bleach, but there’s been no announcement.

Viz is saying nothing... until October 8. That’s when they’ll announce at New York Comic Con who has the license to stream Bleach, a mere two days before the season begins streaming in Japan.

Here’s why this whole situation is unprecedented:

(1) Crunchyroll is the premier anime streaming site outside of Japan. They were the first to license Bleach for the U.S. - and later international - audience.

(2) Bleach is one of the “Big Three” shonen anime, along with Naruto and One Piece. It’s nearly unthinkable that Crunchyroll has lost the right to stream Bleach, given its position as the primary anime streaming site in the U.S.

(3) While the details behind the delay are unknown, the delay itself means that marketing the new season has to be pushed back until the last moment, thus dampening the momentum that was gained when the new season was announced.

The following video from DBZimran entitled “Crunchyroll Removes Bleach - Disney Buys Bleach - Viz Terrible Marketing Rant” succinctly states the fans’ view of this issue.



Jaymes Hanson, another You Tube vlogger, also has a good video on the whole mess, “Crunchyroll Cancels Bleach?”



As you just heard in these videos, international fans have really gotten the shaft with Crunchyroll’s sudden removal of Bleach. I only hope that whoever got the license will make the same international streaming deals that Crunchyroll did.

So the fans that were binge-watching Bleach episodes to get caught up before the new season have been left high and dry. Many of them are turning to pirating those episodes.

I’m not one to judge them. I did the same before most anime series were licensed in the U.S. In my humble opinion, now that Bleach and other anime series have been licensed for years, if you’re a working adult like me then you should consider adding another streaming subscription if needed because supporting the industry is important. I know, though, that there are broke teens and young adults who are just going to pirate these episodes regardless and I can see their point. If Crunchyroll had given even a week’s warning it would have made a difference, because anime fans on a mission can literally speedrun a series like you wouldn’t believe (lol).

Now, on to what little hard facts there are and also the rumors. Fact: Disney+ will be streaming the new Bleach season in Canada and other countries. Rumor: Disney+ will stream the new season in the U.S. on either Disney+ or Hulu (full disclosure in case anyone from the S.E.C. is reading this post: I own a laughably small number of shares of Disney stock).

There’s been no official announcement as to U.S. streaming. I stick to Crunchyroll pretty much for all of my anime streaming, but from what I’ve read, Hulu already streams the Bleach catalog, all 16 seasons of it. So it would make sense, as it appears that Disney won the bidding war, that the new season will be streamed on Hulu.

I have Disney+ but not Hulu. In the U.S., Disney offers a three-for-one streaming package: Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN all in one subscription. I assume that as an existing Disney+ subscriber that I could just upgrade my sub to the three-for-one if they put Bleach on Hulu.

If we stop our inquiry here, however, we would miss the larger point. If it’s true that Disney got the Bleach license, what does this mean for the anime industry outside of Japan?

My first question is: Why did Disney make this deal? If they grabbed a major title like Bleach, then that has to mean that they intend to enter the anime streaming market, and in a big way. They wouldn’t bother to get Bleach and then stop.

If so, what does this mean for Crunchyroll? Also, Anime News Network recently reported that HBO Max and Netflix are reducing their animation titles. Funimation is still (still) being merged into Crunchyroll, and Crunchyroll just lost Bleach.

There’s a lot of disruption in this industry all of a sudden. If Disney really is making a play for anime, we should ask whether the company is willing to invest money not only into licensing titles, but also into the market structure that supports anime, by which I mean our community - the anime community.

Anime is more than a genre of entertainment. We are a community. Anime fandom is its own ecosphere and it’s a complex one. Disney would be wrong to think that they would be able to buy a lot of anime titles, slap them up on Hulu, and automatically win everybody’s support. For all their issues over the years, Crunchyroll knows us. They know the fandom. The fact that they lost the Bleach license is a big deal, a very big deal.

If Disney did win the bidding war for Bleach, then it’s a shot across the bow for the industry. It’s anyone’s guess what happens after this.