Bleach Storms to the Top of the Fall Anime Rankings

Anime Corner's third weekly poll of the fall 2026 season has a runaway winner. Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War, subtitled The Calamity, debuted at number one in the fall anime rankings with 20.15 percent of the vote, according to Anime Corner's published results. The showing gave the long-running series the highest vote share of any show so far this season, and it ended a two-week stay at the top for Even the Student Council Has Its Holes!

Seven thousand sixty-seven voters took part in the week three poll, according to Kbizoom's report on the results. The gap between Bleach and the runner-up measured 10.92 percentage points, a margin that left little doubt about which show fans wanted to see at the top of the fall anime rankings this week.

The race behind Bleach stays tight

Firefly Wedding took second place with 9.23 percent of the vote. The Apothecary Diaries, now in its third season, followed in third with 8.82 percent, while Steel Ball Run, the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure adaptation, landed fourth with 8.19 percent. The three shows sit within 1.04 percentage points of one another, so the order behind Bleach could change with a single strong week in the fall anime rankings.

Even the Student Council Has Its Holes! slipped to fifth with 5.62 percent after leading the fall anime rankings for the first two weeks. FX Fighter Kurumi-chan held sixth, Black Clover's second season took seventh, Ranma's third season climbed from tenth to eighth, The Ramparts of Ice's second season placed ninth, and Blue Box's second season rounded out the top ten.

Further down the list, two shows made large jumps. A Certain Dark Side's Item rose from twenty-eighth to twelfth, and Romelia War Chronicle climbed from thirty-seventh to twenty-second, according to Anime Corner's full week three table. Anime Corner encourages readers to check out any show that interests them regardless of its position, and to vote for their favorites in the weekly polls.

Just outside the top ten, Dragon Ball Super: Beerus placed eleventh with 1.84 percent of the vote, according to Anime Corner's table. The showing keeps the Dragon Ball franchise in the conversation even as newer shows take the top spots, and it underlines how crowded the fall field is: seventy-three shows appeared on the week three ballot, so cracking the top ten at all is a result worth noting.

The week three result also shows how the season is settling. The first two weeks belonged to a comedy, and the third week swung hard toward a finale-year epic. That swing is visible in the numbers: the top four shows now split into a runaway leader and a tight pack, with the gap between fourth and fifth place measuring 2.57 percentage points. A single strong week from any of the chasing shows could still reorder the fall anime rankings, but catching Bleach would take a much larger swing.

A finale-year surge for a twenty-two-year series

The timing helps explain the size of the Bleach vote. The anime has reached its conclusion after a twenty-two-year run, and its final two episodes arrived after an unexpected production hiatus, Kbizoom reported. The penultimate episode ended the long war against Yhwach across three worlds, and the final episode introduced the next generation of the Kurosaki and Kuchiki families after a time skip.

Studio Pierrot produces the series, and the original Bleach anime ran from 2004 to 2012 before Thousand-Year Blood War picked up the story. That long history means many of the voters in the fall anime rankings grew up with Ichigo Kurosaki's story, and the final arc gave them a reason to turn out in force. Earlier coverage followed the final episodes as they began airing, and the guide to the fall season flagged the crowded field Bleach had to beat.

Anime Corner's fall polls run from October 2 through December 25, according to the site's poll history page, and week three is the third published result of the season. That long runway means the order at the top of the fall anime rankings still has room to move. The next poll will show whether Bleach can hold first place or whether one of the three shows bunched behind it closes the gap. Full week three results are published in Anime Corner's fall anime rankings for week three, with Kbizoom's report on the Bleach result carrying the same top ten.