Start of the new arc. No longer a shinigami, but still a street fighter. Summary: It's been 17 months after the big battle with Aizen and Ichigo leads a normal teenage life. The only evidence of Ichigo's stint as shinigami is the shinigami representative badge that he forgot to return. Karin has gotten better at seeing ghosts; Ishida has taken over Ichigo's job of exterminating hollows (since Afro-san is unreliable); and Rukia has not returned even once. Ichigo doesn't really mind (or pretends not to mind) though and carries on his daily activities as a high school senior. One day Ichigo is walking home with Keigo and Mizuiro when a guy runs past them clutching a bag with another guy on his tail wanting the bag back. Ichigo catches the thief who confronts Ichigo with a knife, but Ichigo easily beats up the thief and returns the bag to its owner. The owner offers to treat Ichigo to ramen as thanks, but Ichigo declines are walks away. After Ichigo turns away, the owner proceeds to examine the contents of his bag and he also has a shinigami representative badge. Furthermore, the man also knows who Ichigo is. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ And thus a new arc of Bleach begins. After about 100 chapters of continuous battles that became more and more ridiculous coupled with more and more transformations, I'm expecting Bleach to stay low key for a while and slowly work the story back up (until Ichigo gets his shinigami powers back). It'll change of pace for sure, and hopefully it'll help the series return to the point where it actually had some decent storytelling. So now we have this new character who also appear to be representative shinigami but is (probably) labeled as a "lost agent". He'll probably cause some sort of ruckus that will lead to Soul Society characters appearing in Karakura Town again or something along those lines. Despite various rumors about Bleach having a new protagonist, it looks like Ichigo is still the focus... at least for now. I wonder how many chapters until Rukia shows up again. Feel free to start making guesses in the comments. From the feed of A Product of Wasted Time
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