BLEACH Asks Fans to Pick Kubo’s Best Ever Artwork for New 25th Anniversary Fan Vote
BLEACH is putting the responsibility of choosing Tite Kubo’s best artwork directly into the hands of fans for its 25th anniversary, with a new worldwide-style popularity poll asking readers to choose their favorite illustrations from across the manga’s history.
BLEACH ART SELECTION is the franchise’s first fan vote dedicated specifically to Kubo’s illustrations, shifting the focus away from characters and battles to the artwork that helped define the series throughout its original 15-year run and beyond.
Around 100 illustrations have been selected for the poll, drawing from the artwork collected inside the upcoming BLEACH Artbook JET 2026 I and BLEACH Artbook JET 2026 II.
Image by Charlotte DavisFans can cast one vote per day throughout the voting period, which began on August 10 and continues until August 30, giving each illustration multiple opportunities to climb the rankings before voting closes.
The final results will narrow that selection down to 25 winning illustrations, with the complete ranking scheduled to be revealed on October 2 as part of BLEACH’s ongoing 25th anniversary celebrations.
Those 25 pieces will then be brought together for a special promotional video, turning the results into a fan-selected showcase of Kubo’s artwork rather than leaving the project as a straightforward online ranking.
The vote arrives 25 years after BLEACH began serialization in Weekly Shonen Jump in 2001, where the story introduced Ichigo Kurosaki as a teenager who gains the powers of a Soul Reaper before becoming caught up in conflicts spanning the human world, Soul Society, and several supernatural factions.
The manga eventually concluded in 2016 after 74 volumes, but Kubo has continued producing new BLEACH illustrations and material in the years since, giving the anniversary poll artwork from both the original serialization and the franchise’s more recent revival to draw from.
BLEACH ART SELECTION is closely tied to another of the anniversary’s biggest releases, as Shueisha is bringing back Kubo’s huge JET illustration collection for the first time in almost eight years.
BLEACH Artbook JET 2026 I and BLEACH Artbook JET 2026 II revive the artwork collected for the original 2018 BLEACH Illustrations JET while expanding the archive with pieces Kubo has created since that edition was published.
The original JET was released in December 2018 as a deluxe made-to-order collection containing more than 700 illustrations, and its limited production eventually made complete copies increasingly difficult to find through regular retailers.
Rather than simply reprinting those books, the 2026 editions add more recent work connected to BLEACH alongside illustrations from Kubo’s BURN THE WITCH series.
Among the newer BLEACH material is artwork connected to BLEACH: No Breaths From Hell, known in Japan as Gokui Meimei-hen, the special manga chapter published after the conclusion of the original series.
Shueisha is retaining the same types of ink and paper used for the original JET collection, allowing the new editions to preserve much of the presentation associated with the 2018 release despite splitting the material into two individually sold books.
Neither volume contains illustrations created specifically for the 2026 editions, however, as the additional pages instead collect artwork Kubo produced during the years following the original JET release.
The BURN THE WITCH bonus comic included with the 2018 version is also absent from the new editions, making these expanded books a different package rather than a complete recreation of everything originally supplied with JET.
BLEACH Artbook JET 2026 I contains 304 pages, while BLEACH Artbook JET 2026 II runs for 216 pages, resulting in more than 500 pages of Kubo artwork across the two-volume collection.
BLEACH Artbook JET 2026 I is priced at ¥4,400 (approx. $28 USD / £20 GBP), while BLEACH Artbook JET 2026 II costs ¥3,740 (approx. $23 USD / £17 GBP), with both Japanese-language volumes currently available to pre-order through select international retailers.
Both JET 2026 volumes will officially release in Japan on October 2, 2026, the same day that the final results of BLEACH ART SELECTION are scheduled to be announced.
Kubo’s artwork is also heading back into physical exhibition spaces through BLEACH EX. II, a newly announced follow-up to the original BLEACH EX. exhibition that opened in December 2021 before traveling to several locations across Japan.
BLEACH EX. II is currently scheduled for summer 2027 and will once again center around original artwork from the series, although its first venue, exact opening date, ticket information, and complete exhibition contents have yet to be revealed.
The anniversary projects extend beyond Kubo’s illustrations, with novelist Ryohgo Narita returning for DON’T BLEACH MY FIST II, a sequel to the unusual school-life spin-off that reimagines familiar BLEACH characters in an alternate high school setting.
The concept began life as an April Fools’ project before being expanded into a genuine novel, with the first DON’T BLEACH MY FIST released in Japan on June 4, 2026.
That story casts Ichigo as a new student at Gotei High and places him against powerful students from Stern Cross Academy, turning familiar characters and factions from the main series into parts of a deliberately different school-life scenario.
DON’T BLEACH MY FIST II will move the story forward through Ichigo’s meeting with Jo Hyouzaki, which leads into several incidents that appear to be connected by someone manipulating events from behind the scenes.
Shueisha has confirmed the sequel is in development but has not yet announced when DON’T BLEACH MY FIST II will be released.
BLEACH’s 25th anniversary also arrives while the anime is completing its long-awaited adaptation of the manga’s final storyline, with BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War moving through its fourth and concluding cour, The Calamity.
Bandai Namco is expanding the post-war side of the franchise through BLEACH Mirrors High as well, an upcoming mobile game built around an original story set after the events of the Thousand-Year Blood War.
Mirrors High places players in the role of their own Soul Reaper, with the ability to customize a Zanpakuto and fight alongside established characters including Ichigo, Rukia and Renji as another new chapter of the BLEACH universe unfolds.
Between BLEACH ART SELECTION, the expanded JET books, a second original-art exhibition, Narita’s returning school spin-off and new anime and game projects, the manga’s 25th anniversary is developing into a celebration of both Kubo’s original work and everything that has grown around it since BLEACH first appeared in 2001.
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