Bleach: We Do Knot Always Love You

Bleach Light Novels #4

by Tite Kubo (Illustrator), Makoto Matsubara

Genres: Manga, Light Novel, Fiction, Fantasy, Japan

250 pages, Unknown Binding

About the author

Noriaki Kubo, known professionally as Tite Kubo ( 久保帯人), is a Japanese manga artist and character designer. His manga series Bleach (2001–2016) had over 130 million copies in circulation as of 2022.

Reviews

[Sana⁷ · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I want you to be happy." [Byakuya to Rukia]

I cannot really say much about the writing style since I read the unofficial translation (kudos to those people who dedicated so much time and effort into this project!), and I cannot say how much accurate the translation is to the original work. What I can say though is that it was a delightful read. It's a great addition to the already existing story and a wholesome and beautiful book itself.

"We are getting married!" [Rukia and Renji]

Three years passed after the Thousands Year Blood War arc ended. The core of BLEACH: We Do Knot Always Love You is Rukia and Renji's wedding and preparations for the ceremony, but we also get the opportunity to see what our favorite BLEACH characters are up to now. When I started my reading, I was madly confused, because I thought that we will start with the wedding preparations right away or that, you know, we will get a Rukia or Renji POV. Despite the story being centered around the wedding, the focus is not put on either Rukia nor Renji. We jump from one POV to another in such a short of time that you could get a whiplash.

To be honest, this book could be easily overlooked by the readers or just put aside and not much would have changed for them. It not packed with action. It's not packed with any twists and turns and any big revelations. It's a small book with the little informations, and for me it was enough. As a huge BLEACH fan, I am always thirsty to find out more about the world and the characters, no matter how small the info might be, so this book was like a box full of treasure to me.

What's Kira's condition after the war? What happened with Komamura? Will we meet any other wolfmen clan members aside for him and his grandpa? And what does Omaeda family has to do with anything? What is the relation between Yoruichi and Rose? Who are the biggest bookworms of Gotei 13? What is Lisa doing back in Seireitei? What's Ukitake's legacy? How many cabinets does Matsumoto have? Did she stop teasing Toshiro about his height? How are the alive Fullbringers doing? How are things between Uryuu and his father? How many people have gathered on Rukia and Renji's wedding ceremony? How did the ceremony look like? Did Byakuya accompany Rukia to the altar? And did Ichigo confess with Orihime?

You might find answers to these questions and a lot more in BLEACH: We Do Knot Always Love You! ☺️


P.S. I would give this book a five star rating without a second thought if the Ichigo finding out about Rukia and Renji's wedding plans scene was included there. If I have to be honest, the fact that basically everyone found out about the wedding before Ichigo did, upset me deeply. I think that's unfair, considering how big of a friendship Ichigo had with both Rukia and Renji (the Ichigo - Rukia relationship is the heart of the original story, c'mon!) and how it was Ichigo who brought these two together 🥲

[Em Porter · Rating 3 out of 5]

This light novel leaves much to be desired in terms of writing. It does fill in some details in regards to the reconstruction of soul society, and there are some cute bits, especially in regards to Komamura and Tetsuzaemon, as well as Nanao and Risa.

SPOILERS sort of

Most of the novel centers around the wedding of Rukia and Renji, but the romantic development happens during the 3 year time jump between this novel and the manga. Apparently, the majority of the characters see it coming, since they are unsurprised at the official announcement, so their relationship has been going on for awhile. Sadly, the friendship between Rukia and Ichigo is pretty much ignored, but the friendship between her and Orihime that we see a bit of post-Rukia-incarceration really shows itself, which I found nice. I always wanted to see more of their interactions because their friendship didn't get much screen time in the manga, so I was happy to see more of it in this novel. It is revealed toward the end of this novel that Ichigo has had feelings for Orihime for some time, as Renji encourages him to confess them. And if Renji noticed, you know his feelings have to be pretty strong and obvious. It's nice to see their support and friendship as well. Again the development of these feelings happen during the time skip, and seems more of a patch up to explain the ending of the manga, than a strong development that we see happening. There are a lot of people out there who mistranslated/read some things so don't believe everything you read about what happens, there's a lot of embellishments and personal headcannons treated as what actually happens (eg anything to do with Rukia fainting, Orihime making Rukia's veil alone, Byakuya reacting dully to the engagement, etc)

Various nice feels things
- Komamura clan gets more acceptance
- Nemu-chan is mentioned
- Byakuya tries to secretly dote on Rukia and everyone knows
- Bureaucracy in Soul Society for marriage registration forms
- Hinamori toughens up a bit
- Friendships that didn't get much time in the manga are explored a bit and are supportive
- Orihime works at a bakery (it was one of her dreams to own a bakery/cake shop)
- Hitsugaya and his Grandma!!!
- Hirako thinks of Hinamori as his daughter
- Riruka and Orihime friendship
- just so much wholesome

Overall nice for plotholes that were unresolved in the manga, nice interactions between various characters, and overall cute, though lacking a bit in writing. Beware of mistranslations, embellishments in reviews, and assumptions based on cultural differences.

[Ana López · Rating 5 out of 5]

Novela ligera conmovedora, donde se trató de explicar los huecos que el señor Tite dejó en el manga; sin embargo, pienso que esos huecos debieron ser un poco más explícitos con ciertos personajes porqué en lo personal, hay personajes bastante complejos y admirables...de verdad, a veces agradezco que la mayoría de los personajes estén con vida.

[Natascha Eschweiler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Soft Byakuya made up like 0.06% of this novel but that alone was everything I needed.

[Nada Al-rowaie · Rating 4 out of 5]

WHOLESOME SLICE OF LIFE CONTENT!!!! I COULD NOT STOP SMILING T~T

[Tsai. · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted to fill the void after finishing the series, what a disappointment.

[Gabe · Rating 5 out of 5]

*ugly crying intensifies*

[LaviniaAlexandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

Outside of tickling my nostalgia and care for those characters, there is not much here... Too much interest and time spent over irrelevant things and, outside of the getting married premise, there is little to nothing happening.

Also, I do feel I would have preferred some light being shed upon the development of Rukia and Renji's relationship... I did enjoy the little steps of Ichigo and Orihime's. It was cute. Not enough, but cute.

[M · Rating 2 out of 5]

Le livre est un aperçu de la situation à la Soul Society quelques années après la fin de la guerre sanglante de mille ans. Je suis légèrement déçue car certains personnages sont moins exploités que d'autres.

[roberta · Rating 5 out of 5]

O FINAL CARALH@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺 e o renji fez tudo pela nação ichihime!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was very cute! A must read for anyone wanting more Bleach after finishing the manga.

[Hiba Taii · Rating 5 out of 5]

Renruki my beloveds🩷🩷
The only couple ever!!!
I love everything Byakuya does in this novel, it seems like he has never been happier.

[Fafa · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent way of telling the after events of Bleach TYBW.

[Alyssa · Rating 5 out of 5]

there wasn't a single second where I wasn't smiling from ear to ear and now my cheeks hurt

[Brian McCullar · Rating 3 out of 5]

As I mentioned in my review of the Can't Fear Your Own World trilogy of light novels, Bleach is my #1 favorite anime and manga series of all time and I'm admittedly a bit of a fan boy, but despite that I want to do my best to keep my review fair and unbiased.

This is one of many novels that sadly didn't get released in English but I was lucky to find a pretty solid fan translated PDF online, so I spent the last few days reading it and I have to say, despite being pretty short, this was a very enjoyable read for me.

I need to make this absolutely clear, this is NOT an action story. There's absolutely 0 fighting in this novel at all. Additionally, there are a lot of Bleach characters mentioned by name, including major, minor and brand new characters, so if you're not a diehard fan, you may want to keep the Wiki open just to put some names to faces, otherwise you may have a hard time. I personally didn't but, I wanted to give the advice all the same.

The novel takes place 3 years after the Thousand-Year Blood War and the Soul Society is finally returning to a sense of normalcy, which is when Renji and Rukia decide to announce that they're getting married, which provides a much needed boost in morale, as weddings between two high ranking members of the Gotei 13 are quite rare.

Throughout the novel itself, we see the reactions of many fan favorite characters of learning the news, which put a smile on my face to read, however, I felt the earliest sections of this book's most tender moments were actually unrelated to the wedding at all. The first of which was a conversation between Nanao and Lisa as they discuss plans for the next tea ceremony, and how Nanao wants to introduce black tea in addition to the standard (and more common among the Japanese) green tea, wanting to do so in remembrance of Sasakibe who died during the war, but was known for his love of western culture. This moment was very sweet and put a smile on my face to see a less popular character getting some love.

The other moments that I found great were those of Iba and two werewolf children who were brought to him by Komamura, who despite being forever trapped in his pure wolf form, is still shown to look after his former lieutenant, and even sweeter still was learning that Komamura was still able to communicate to Iba through these young werewolf children (who are being trained by Iba to serve in his squad), offering advice. Many fans feel Komamura deserved better than the fate he received in the Thousand-Year Blood War, so any moments like this are very welcomed.

There's a number of other touching scenes in the novel, ranging from Ichigo, Karin, Yuzu, Sado, Orihime and Isshin all sewing and embroidering a wedding veil for Rukia to wear at her wedding (the embroidering cleverly using strawberry flowers), learning Isshin felt great sadness at the loss of his nephew Kaien Shiba and of course the wedding itself, which while sweet I felt was a bit underdone considering it was meant to be the focus of the novel.

But the greatest moments in the entire novel, are undoubtedly at the end, when Shunsui promotes Rukia to Captaincy, providing her with a Captain's Shihakushō, originally tailored for Kaien by Ukitake, but retailored to fit Rukia before Ukitake's own death in during the war, with Shunsui revealing it was essentially a dying wish from Ukitake that Rukia replace him. And the other great moment being when Renji pushes Ichigo to finally propose to Orihime, which he begins to do right as the novel ends.

All in all, this was a fun read and while I would love to rank it higher, but between not quite having enough narrative significance and the wedding itself being largely undeveloped, I find it hard to warrant giving it a higher score, so for now, I say it was a solid 3.5 out of 5 stars, worth it for diehard Bleach fans, probably not anyone else! :)

See my other Bleach reviews below!

Letters From the Other Side: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Can't Fear Your Own World: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Ninit · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sweet and fluffy novella focusing on Rukia and Renji's wedding prep, with some additional slice-of-life stories about Soul Society denizens post-TYBW arc. Definitely worth to read for soft Byakuya content.

[Sarthak Nayak]

good