One thing that all Bleach fans can agree on is that The Bount Invasion Arc (colloquially known as “The Bount Arc”) is the long-running anime’s weakest filler arc. Given Bleach’s filler arcs were a mixed bag which left a lot to be desired, this says quite a lot. The arc is so infamous, even general anime fans who aren’t too familiar with Bleach have likely heard that The Bount Arc is one of the worst anime filler arcs ever made.
Now that it’s been more than 20 years since Bleach first aired, grateful fans who are currently enjoying and loving Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War can’t help but look back at missteps like The Bount Arc and appreciate just how far their favorite anime has come. Although the arc’s infamy and negative reception aren’t unjustified, it’s about time Bleach fans admit that The Bount Arc wasn’t all that bad.
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The Bount Arc Introduced Vampires to Bleach
The Filler Arc Expanded the Anime’s World
One thing The Bount Arc doesn’t get enough credit for was the introduction of the titular “Bounts,” who were essentially Bleach’s answer to vampires. In fact, the anime outright confirmed the Bounts were the basis for the vampiric myth in the World of the Living. Of all the anime-only characters and concepts that Bleach’s filler arcs introduced, the Bount were the most underrated and interesting as they expanded the anime’s world. Bleach has a fascination with the mythical, occult, and supernatural. The Soul Reapers are basically Japanese folklore’s answer to the Grim Reaper. Meanwhile, Hollows are a mix of Japanese yokai, Western demons, and Spanish culture.
Despite the exciting international implications of Bleach’s supernatural world, this was as far as the story went in its earliest stages. It wasn’t until the spin-off, Burn the Witch, and Thousand-Year Blood War when Bleach’s take on the supernatural tapped into its globalized potential. Burn the Witch revealed that historical witches were the British counterpart of the Soul Reapers, so much so they answered to Soul Society West Branch. To top it all off, the witches’ primary foes were mythical dragons. Meanwhile, the Quincies were the closest beings Bleach had to Biblical angels and German culture. It’s for this reason Emperor Yhwach had many unmistakable similarities to both the Bible’s God and Jesus Christ.
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Even if Hueco Mundo was a different world with its own culture, Bleach as a whole still felt small since it was only limited to three places and races. What’s more, two of these realms — Soul Society and the World of the Living — were basically just Japan from different time periods. The Bount Arc fixed this unintentional myopia so early into the anime, not only by introducing a new take on classical vampires, but by making Bleach’s world feel as big as it should. The Bounts’ mere presence meant that Bleach also had its own versions of other real-life myths from different corners of the world. There was more to Bleach’s world than just Soul Reapers, Hollows and Hollows who were genetically engineered to look like Soul Reapers. It would be years before this implication paid off both in Bleach’s internal timeline and in real life, but it was well worth the wait.
The Bount Arc Avoided the Typical Formula of Bleach’s Other Filler Arcs
The Filler Arc Did a Lot More Than Rip-off Sosuke Aizen’s Twist
A big problem with Bleach’s filler arcs was that they all tried and failed to repeat the success of the Soul Society Arc. Every filler villain was basically a copy of Aizen. They were predominantly corrupt or wayward Soul Reapers who hid in plain sight. They all had a reasonable grudge against Soul Society, but they were too blinded by their hate and narcissism to channel their anger in a less destructive way. Cases in point: Captain Shusuke Amagai, Koga Kuchiki and Inaba Kagezora (or Oko Yushima). Given how popular and influential both the arc and Aizen are even today, it’s understandable why Bleach’s fillers wanted to recapture their impact. Unfortunately, they only wound up with diminishing returns. Surprisingly, The Bount Arc avoided this trend altogether, even if it was the first major anime arc to come right after Aizen’s moment of glory.
This was because the weirdest and most underappreciated thing about The Bount Arc was that it essentially foreshadowed both the Arrancar Arc and Thousand-Year Blood War. Specifically, the Bounts may very well be a prototype for the Espada and the Wandenreich. Similar to the Arrancar and Quincies, the Bounts were the vengeful victims of Soul Society’s past genocides and original sins. Like the Espada and their Ressucrrecion, every Bount had a unique ability (i.e. their Dolls) that was basically a villainous version of the Soul Reapers’ Zanpakuto. This shouldn’t be surprising since, like the Arrancar, the Bount were the dangerous byproduct of Soul Reapers’ unethical experiments. Just like the Quincies, the Bount were unjustly oppressed by the Soul Reapers, who considered them a threat to their preferred natural order.
Within the anime’s canon, the Bount were some of the first Bleach villains to justifiably challenge Soul Society’s moral high ground. Rather than fighting against Soul Society’s dehumanizing bureaucracy and corrupt politicians the way almost every other filler villain did, Jin Kariya and the few surviving Bounts wanted to avenge their race’s genocide. The one villain in The Bount Arc who did fight Soul Society’s hypocrisies — namely Maki Ichinose, a former member of Squad 11 who refused to acknowledge Zaraki Kenapchi as the new captain — was just the Bounts’ gullible pawn.
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The Soul Society scientist Ran Tao and Jin’s former lover, Yoshino Soma, also added more nuance to the story with their conflicted morals and goals. Furthermore, the Bounts’ invasion of Soul Society was really Jin’s roundabout way of killing himself. Beneath his righteous vengeance, Jin was just fed up with being an immortal vampire who only felt misery throughout his eons-long life. These gave The Bount Arc more complexity and pathos than its fellow Bleach filler arcs.
Where the likes of The New Captain Shusuke Amagai Arc and The Gotei 13 Invading Army Arc just repeated what came before, the Bount Arc tried something new. The arc also commendably didn’t resort to easy fanservice the way the fan-favorite Zanpakuto: The Alternate Tale Arc and other filler arcs from different anime did. The arc isn’t perfect, especially with how it handles Ichigo’s power scales or the Bounts’ concerns. According to the arc, the Bounts should’ve just accepted their extinction.
The Bounts were such a placeholder for cool fights and extra time for the manga to catch up that the arc’s only lasting impact were the new Mod Souls, not even the arc’s titular race. But even so, The Bount Arc all but set the groundwork for who would become some of Bleach’s most iconic villains and storylines. Whether this was the cast and crew’s intention or not remains unknown, but it’s hard to deny once the parallels are seen.
The Bount Arc Doesn’t Get the Credit It Deserves
The Filler Arc Is Flawed, but Not Totally Irredeemable
While The Bount Arc is one of the weakest and most unpopular storylines in the Bleach anime, you can’t deny it was fated for failure. The arc was notably Bleach’s first major filler storyline. Worse, it came right after the canon Soul Society Arc and especially Aizen’s unforgettable villainous turn. To say that expectations for Bleach Season 4 and the first anime-only storyline were astronomically high and unrealistic would be underselling its uphill battle. It didn’t help that The Bount Arc’s animation was really lackluster, even by early Bleach’s standards.
To be fair, the arc aired in 2006. The animation quality at the turn of the millennium was fairly rudimentary when compared to what modern viewers are used to. That being said, The Bount Arc’s designs and direction were still bland and generic when compared to everything else that Bleach was capable of, even during the early 2000s. Typically, filler arcs with equally subppar writing — like the Zanpakuto’s rebellion or the attack of the Gotei 13’s doppelgängers — made up for their faults with exciting fights and character designs. The same, unfortunately, can’t be said for The Bount Arc.
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None of this is to say The Bount Arc is an underrated gem, or that fans were wrong for deeming it their least favorite Bleach storyline. However, the arc was nowhere near as terrible as some of Bleach’s biggest fans may claim. The worst thing The Bount Arc did was never rise above mediocrity and its purpose as a placeholder. On top of that, the arc delayed the highly-anticipated Arrancar Arc for an entire year.
It may be for petty reasons, but it’s understandable why nostalgic, older Bleach fans still can’t forgive the Bounts for deflating the immense hype the Soul Society Arc left them with. But with the benefit of nearly two decades’ worth of hindsight, and understanding the need for filler arcs in older anime like Bleach, The Bount Arc deserves a second chance. It won’t blow anyone’s mind away, but it’ll definitely be an interesting retrospective tease for what Bleach had in store.
- Release Date
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2004 – 2022
- Network
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TV Tokyo, TV Osaka, TV Aichi, TVh, TVQ, TSC, BS TV Tokyo
- Showrunner
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Tite Kubo
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Masakazu Morita
Ichigo Kurosaki (voice)
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Fumiko Orikasa
Rukia Kuchiki
