In the fourth episode of “Rebirth of Souls Research Team,” it was announced that the main story of BLEACH: Rebirth of Souls will have “over 130 episodes.” But what does that look like for players?

So far, we’ve only seen three full episodes of Rebirth of Souls’ story: the first and last stages of the Substitute Soul Reaper arc, as well as one of the middle of the game’s 8-episode adaptation. Ichigo’s Japanese voice actor, Masakazu Morita completed each chapter as follows:

• Chapter 1 (Fishbone D) in a little over 15 minutes
• An unknown chapter (Shrieker) in 5 minutes
• The final chapter (Renji) in roughly 15 minutes (subtracting the time from his first loss)

Using the average of the three stages’ times (11.8 minutes) still feels a bit like overshooting, so we’ll use 10 minutes as a baseline. With “over 130 episodes,” this puts the story’s length at over 21 hours. But how does this compare to other anime fighters?

Although the Naruto Storm series is known for its in-depth stories, my playthroughs of the two longest games, Storm 2 and Storm 3, were between 11 and 12 hours each and both had a smaller stage/episode count than Rebirth of Souls. The current reigning champion of anime fighter story modes is actually Spike/Spike Chunsoft and the Tenkaichi series:

• Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO’s 207-stage story took me 21 hours and 6 minutes to fully complete, a few defeats included.
• I don’t have a fully recorded playthrough of the entire Tenkaichi trilogy (yet), but Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi and Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 both beat Rebirth of Souls’ stage count at 148 and 199, respectively. Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3 is more in line with the average anime game, sitting at around 5 hours.

The length of BLEACH: Rebirth of Souls’ Main Story will easily get it into many “longest” lists. The game is covering one of the longest stretches of story in anime anime game 423 chapters, only surpassed by One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 and 4 both covering 500+), has the fourth most episodes/stages in an anime fighter (behind Sparking! ZERO, Tenkaichi 2, and Tenkaichi 1), and may narrowly edge out Sparking! ZERO for longest story in anime fighter if more stages are as long as the first and last chapter of the Substitute Soul Reaper arc.

Either way, fans have a lot to play through when BLEACH: Rebirth of Souls launches for PlayStation, Xbox Series, and PC (via Steam) on March 21, 2025 (March 14 for Deluxe and Ultimate Edition owners).