The beloved Genryusai Shingekuni Yamamoto from Bleach was crowned anime’s most badass old man.
A popular Facebook page named “Anime Tournament” recently concluded an eight-bracket contest that sought to crown someone with the title of anime’s “most badass old man.” The iconic Bleach character and Captain-Commander of the Gotei 13, Yamamoto, was the clear victor in the user-voted contest. He won the competition with 2.9k votes in the final bracket, with the second-place competitor grabbing 1.5k votes. The character is an incredibly popular and powerful Bankai user who plays a massive role in the action-packed series.
Yamamoto Had Tough Competition
The competition featured some incredibly popular characters from influential anime titles. For example, the second-place silver medal went to One Piece’s Whitebeard, the powerful pirate often labeled the “Strongest Man in the World.” Below him in third place was Isaac Netero from Yoshihiro Togashi’s Hunter x Hunter. This character is the Chairman of the Hunter Committee and one of HxH’s most dangerous figures.
Many more notable names were in the tournament brackets, including the inspirational quote giver Uncle Iroh from Avatar: The Last Airbender, who came in fourth. Other characters who threw their hats in the ring included Jiraiya from Naruto, Hakurou from Tensura, Bang from One Punch Man, Heihachi from Tekken and more. Yamamoto managed to outlast the characters of August from Fairy Tale, Zeus from Record of Ragnarok and Rayleigh from One Piece in each of his brackets before sweeping the competition.
This tournament finished a trilogy that aimed to cement which anime characters were the most badass overall. Guts from Kentaro Miura’s Berserk won the coveted title of most badass male, while another Bleach character, Retsu Unohana, won the most badass female character. The page has now begun a new competition to crown the best 90s anime, with popular titles like Dragon Ball Z, Trigun, Neon Genesis Evangelion and more included.
About Tite Kubo’s Bleach
Bleach, written by Tite Kubo, was a popular manga serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump. It was adapted into an anime by Studio Pierrot in 2004 and ran until 2012 when it was surprisingly put on a hiatus that would last ten years. The series recently returned in 2022 with a sequel project known as Bleach: Thousand Year Blood-War, which adapts the manga’s final arc. This series has been received with overwhelming positivity by fans and critics.
