Manga fans are used to weird titles, from full sentences like That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime to nonsensical English phrases like Darling in the Franxx and simple transliterations of Japanese words like Inuyasha, but it turns out Bleach is one title that has a bit more going on than it appears on the surface.

Bleach began serialization in 2001, and was the second series created by Tite Kubo, after the short-lived Zombiepowder was dropped in 2000. The concept for the series was quite a bit different than what it ended up as, but the seed for what fans know as Bleach started with a sketch of a shinigami/death god (Soul Reapers, as they’d come to be known) wearing a black kimono. One of the trademarks of Kubo’s writing style has come to be designing and creating new characters as a means of dealing with writer’s block, so it’s only fitting that the entire series would start off that way as well. Indeed, one of the manga’s first panels is Rukia in that outfit.

In an interview with Liveabout, Kubo revealed the origins of the manga series. As the idea for Bleach grew more solid, Kubo contemplated what kind of weapons these Soul Reapers might use, and surprisingly his first idea wasn’t swords–it was guns. With gun-wielding shinigami in mind, Kubo came up with the title Snipe, as in “sniper.” Guns didn’t feel quite right, however, especially in conjunction with a more traditional outfit like a kimono, and so Kubo ended up changing their main weapon to swords, known as Zanpakuto. Of course, that meant he needed a new title again, and his next choice was Black. The color black often has associations with death in Western cultures, and the Soul Reaper’s outfits at this point were black to reflect that, so it seemed fitting. While there’s no shortage of series with simple titles like that (Darker than Black, Black Clover, Black Butler), just Black came across as too generic. Kubo then considered White, as that color has similar associations with death in Japan and other Chinese-influenced cultures, but that had the same problem.

White worked well for contrast, and the idea of white-clad opponents stuck around (such as Uryu’s Quincy clothes or those of the Espada), but the title needed to be more distinct, and in searching for words with an association with the color white, Kubo wound up with the English word bleach. While bleach is just a chemical, it has such a strong association with not only white but the brightest, most pure white that people can’t help but think of the color when they hear it. It got the idea across that he wanted readers to have in mind while being distinctive.

Unlike a lot of manga titles, Bleach doesn’t refer to an object or character within the series–it’s a general concept of death and the afterlife that the entire story is founded upon. It’s a bit oblique, perhaps, but it’s a remarkably clever choice nonetheless.

Source: LiveAbout