Re: Weekly Shonen Jump [2011] - Discussion and TOC Talk - Part 2
Too vague to pull something definite from it. Liker Bomber said it could be easily interpreted as Bleach moving from it's current day and timeslot. Anything else would be highly unlikely. The Bleach anime is a cash cow. They're on top of the manga, but that only means they need to put in several seasons worth of fillers to increase the gap significantly. I would be really surprised if they ended the anime prematurely.
I wouldn't say so much that the franchise is a 'cash cow'. It is drawing in a profit, true, but outside of the movie releases Bleach DVDs don't pull that many numbers. Which for most Jump anime doesn't seem to matter. To them what does matter is ratings and manga sales. Not surprisingly, Bleach has been in a decline -not surprisingly because it's a friggin' 10 year old series. One piece is really the only manga that MORE people read the longer it goes on. Most of the time a series hits a plateau of loyal readers and people begin to drop off as it continues. The Bleach ratings have been passable to allow the series to chug along, and the manga sales have been good too. I seriously doubt they'd let it drop off at this point, but if they were it wouldn't be too extreme to believe it's because there just isn't a demand to keep the series sustained via fillers until there's more material to adapt from the source. With Medaka and Kuroko both getting animated, Naruto and One piece more than primed to keep on going, Hunter X Hunter's ratings being as excellent as they are not to mention having more than enough material to run a few years, and Sket's (and Gintama's?) nebulous fate, it may just be a collective decision for Bleach to end until it has enough material from this final (har) arc to continue it's anime.
Of course I'm already anticipating the announcement from ANN or something that reads 'Bleach taking over XXX's spot on XXXday starting in April', cause dude it's probably gonna happen like that.
