During Anime Expo 2024, Bandai Namco shocked fans by announcing a brand new 3D fighting game, Bleach Rebirth of Souls. Much like Bandai Namco’s other hotly-anticipated anime fighter, Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero, it’s been well over a decade since we’ve last seen a Bleach game, and expectations for it are understandably at an all-time high.
Piggybacking off Bleach Rebirth of Soul’s newly released gameplay trailer, which saw a recreation of Ichigo Kurosaki’s battle against Byakuya Kuchiki, IGN spoke with producer Katsuaki Tsuzuki about how the game will differentiate itself from other titles in the series and what players can expect out of its swordplay-centric combat once it releases on PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Steam.
Anime arena fighters have a track record of having a short shelf life in players’ minds, in part because their gameplay tends to lack depth beyond the bread-and-butter strategies that are sussed out within the honeymoon period of their release. Tsuzuki says Rebirth of Souls will distinguish itself from the pack by incorporating the anime’s intricate power systems into the DNA of its gameplay, resulting in an enthralling ebb and flow of mechanically-rich battles.
“While developing the game as a fighting action game, we delved into details from Bleach like reishi, konpaku, spiritual power, and spiritual pressure. After looking into that, we were surprised by how the worldview had been created in detail and how well those features aligned with our game concept and the fighting action genre,” Tsuzuki said.
“For example, konpaku, which represents the concept of the soul in Bleach, is constructed with reishi. Drawing inspiration from that concept, we set reishi as a health gauge in the game, and players can break the konpaku to decrease reishi,” he added.” We introduced systems that allow players to experience reversals such as breaking konpaku with a single strike or enhancing power through transformations to facilitate breaks.”
In action game layman’s terms, Rebirth of Soul’s combat is like a pastiche Sekiro’s stagger swordplay, Tekken 7 reversals, and Smash Bros. Ultimate’s stock health bar system, wherein players win battles by destroying an opponent’s 9 stocks or konpaku. Although Tsuzuki referred to established action games like the Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm games, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R, Tekken 7, and Dragon Ball FighterZ when making Rebirth of Souls, Rebirth of Souls feel authentically Bleach to fans new and old.
“I know that Bleach is loved by fans worldwide, so I have been eager for the opportunity to work with this IP,” Tsuzuki says. “We know that there is strong enthusiasm from Bleach fans, and I wanted to develop a new Bleach game for modern high-spec platforms, especially since it is also around the timing of the 20th anniversary of Bleach.”
A balanced shonen fighting game
Arguably the most difficult challenge in making Rebirth of Souls was integrating major tenets of the anime’s unique power systems. While Rebirth of Souls’ naming conventions may prove intimidating to prospective players on first blush, Tsuzuki stressed that players won’t be required to have an overfamiliarity with Bleach’s encyclopedic power structure to enjoy the game and eke out a victory. Rebirth of Souls will also come with a comprehensive in-game play guide, tutorials, and a user-friendly battle UI to make it easy to understand, akin to standard action games to ensure first-time players aren’t lost in the sauce of Bleach’s unique flavor of shonen anime power schemes.
In contrast to Sparking! Zero, whose producer hinted that the game would reflect the anime ensemble’s power scaling with unbalanced battles, Rebirth of Souls characters were designed to have an equal win rate with another.
“Our game concept revolves around the reversal experience and each character is really unique, especially their zanpakuto [the weapons wielded by Bleach’s Shinigami], which offers multifaceted abilities,” Tsuzuki said. “Each character retains distinct features: some characters excel in speed, while others focus on heavy power, and some are good at attacking from distance.
“Additionally, each character can enhance their abilities through Awakening. In that regard, some characters are easy to handle, even for casual gamers, while others cater more [to] core action gamers,” Tsuzuki added. “However, every character has the chance to reverse the situation, ensuring that all have an equal chance to win.”
Historically, Bleach has been noticeably out of the gaming zeitgeist in comparison to its fellow “big three” shonen contemporaries, Naruto and One Piece. As mentioned earlier, it’s been 13 years since Bleach characters have graced a video game—that is if you don’t count their appearance in 2019’s anime Oscars-esque arena fighter, Jump Force. The last fully-fledged Bleach game was Bleach: Soul Resurrección for the PlayStation 3. Bleach: Soul Resurreccion received middling reviews from critics including our own, where we said the game had a simple yet enjoyable Dynasty Warriors-esque combat system that players wouldn’t be missing out on if they passed it up.
As far as the “big three” are concerned time hasn’t slowed down their output of games with recently released titles like Naruto x Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections and One Piece: Odyssey — a classic turn-based action RPG that Tsuzuki produced. When approaching Bleach Rebirth of Souls, Tsuzuki said the upcoming anime action game will be an exception to the trend of anime action games by having a combat system that is as complex as its beautifully rendered 3D models.
“Each of the previous Bleach games published by the other companies have different features and all of them capture the charm of Bleach. The development team played these games before starting the development of Bleach Rebirth of Souls and really enjoyed them. We learned the core features of Bleach like bankai, and integrated them into the necessary components of an action game,” Tsuzuki said. “Thanks to the capabilities of new-generation platforms, we tried to create a Bleach game that delivers cutting-edge visual expression in battle.”
Although Bleach has one of the largest casts of characters in shonen anime with more personalities and power sets being introduced in Bleach: Thousand Year Blood War, — the anime’s sequel series which adapts the manga’s final arc — Rebirth of Souls will only feature characters from the anime’s first two story arcs, Soul Reaper and Arrancar arc.
“This is the first Bleach game that Bandai as a company is introducing and it’s been a while since the last game was introduced so we thought that it would be great to introduce these characters from the original [arc] to the Arrancar time period and introduce the history of these characters, how they met, and how battles have taken place,” Tsuzuki said.
Fans can look forward to more updates like Rebirth of Souls playable character roster in the future as the game inches closer to its yet-to-be-announced release date.
Isaiah Colbert is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow them on Twitter @ShinEyeZehUhh
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