Why Dragon Ball Fans Believe Toriyama Saved Bleach (Are They Right?)

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While huge franchises like Dragon Ball may make it look easy, manga is a difficult industry to succeed in, and many an aspiring mangaka calls it quits before getting their big break; even the biggest names in the industry, like Bleach's Tite Kubo, had moments of doubt and hopelessness. Many fans believe that Bleach may never have seen the light of day if it weren't for Dragon Ball's Akira Toriyama coming through in a dark moment, but how true is this supposed origin story?

Bleach began serialization in 2001 as Tite Kubo's second manga in Shonen Jump. His first, Zombiepowder, was unceremoniously canceled after 27 chapters, leaving Kubo discouraged. Tite Kubo has also said that he was quite stressed for personal reasons during Zombiepowder's run, and — combined with the shock of a weekly writing schedule and overwhelming editorial feedback — all these issues together had him in a difficult place by the series' cancellation in 2000.

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The story goes that Kubo put together a first pitch of Bleach for Shonen Jump, but the magazine's editors passed on it. The harsh rejection left Kubo questioning whether he belonged in the manga industry, despite it having been his dream since grade school. A 2008 interview with the Los Angeles Times (via the Wayback Machine) repeats this, claiming that Akira Toriyama saw the pitch for Bleach and wrote a letter to Kubo, encouraging him to stick with it. When Bleach was pitched again, Shonen Jump agreed to serialize it, and the rest is manga history. The tale is similarly recounted on the Bleach fan wiki, and even outlets like Crunchyroll have repeated it. In some versions, the reason given for Bleach's rejection is being «too similar