Ranked #362

Bleach

I have watched bleach before it became popular and I thought I should give my two sense.

Story: Bleach's story is pretty straight forward, know the enemy beat up the enemy fight alot of people along the way. It does it pretty well but the one thing that I don't like is this animes fillers. They are terrible, I can no longer watch them. Bleach is a action anime and good story, nothing more. But for some reason the makers think they need to try and make it funny with the small filler story's. That is just wrong. Its like having a series setting and then throw a clown in the mix WTF! Anyways, that is not all that was wrong with the story. At some point and time they decide to make a huge filler arc and make it all action and your like YAY no stupid puns no dumb characters, but soon you realize and say to yourself "man this sucks pure action is pointless without a story" and like many Arnold Schwarzenegger movies you are wondering why you are watching this. (insert name) was good but this is crap. Well let me tell you most action flicks actualy have pretty good back story's and do carry them on through the show. And that is my problem with Bleach's story.

Animation: Excellent characters, amazing backgrounds, just great animation.

Sound: Pretty decent but not what I would say good, its music is very electronic and gets very repeated to much.

Character's: Well despite a rather predictable main character who once again is the only one who can beat everyone, there are a lot of great secondary main characters. They have a lot more depth than Ichigo and are a lot cooler.

Enjoyment: Even though all the negatives I have stated it is still very Enjoyable. When the real fights are done and over you will be wowed.

Overall: Its a good anime, a lot of people like it and I think the reason is because the action is some of the best and even though Ichigo is kinda flat every other character seems to be more well though out. read more

Story-The first two and a half seasons were really entertaining, although painfully unoriginal. I hate to downrank the show so much as it was one of the main things that got me back into watching anime, but the storyline past ep 62ish is a complete and utter disaster. I'm not even sure how I stomached the full year of Bounto filler, and have recently dropped the series as there is yet again an entire arc of total nonsense that has nothing to do with the plot whatsoever. Also the main story itself is plagued with repetition, the antagonists are nearly identical in personality (grimmjow=kenpachi, ulquiorra=byakuya) as the soul society arc and the situations are all exactly the same. My suggestion, watch this show to episode 65 and stop, you aren't missing anything past that. I would give the show 8/10 if it was only 65 episodes long.

Art-Once again, started off excellent. I thought the first couple seasons had great animation, and the combat scenes were pretty well done. This area sadly however, seems to deteriorate along with the storyline, not quite as badly but compare the fights in seasons 1-3 to the ones after and the show just isn't showing us anything new.

Sound-The music is ok, and it fits well. Repetitive sure, but it's a shounen with 180+ episodes how could the music not be repetitive. The sound quality overall isn't bad, my only complaint would be the op/end themes especially in season 3 and up.

Character-The characters, like the story aren't very fresh, but they're well developed and pretty likable. The main downfall in my opinion is the overdevelopment of the enormous cast of worthless sidecharacters. It gets really bogged down with this at times, there is even an entire season dedicated to doing this (5th season).

Enjoyment-First 3 seasons 9/10, rest 1/10. Starts out very addictive and fun to watch but trails on to "why am I watching this." read more

I began watching Bleach because of it's popularity. I assumed that if something were this popular it just has to be good. Well, I couldn't have been more wrong.

Story: The worst aspect of Bleach is it's story. It follows the typical shounen template verbatim. "A young boy gains powers which he uses to fight evil and save a damsel in distress." It can't get more original than that right?[/sarcasm]. When it went to the Arrancar arc I wasn't surprised that the exact same thing happened, but instead of Ichigo saving Rukia it's Inoue now. The mangaka, Tite Kubo, must not be very creative as the story tends to repeat itself. I found myself laughing outloud at how the plot moved along; you can almost anticipate what's about to happen next. There's no suspense found in Bleach aside from the typical "Oh no, how's he going to get out of this one!?" which happens more often than not, and they usually get out of it by learning some new technique at the last minute or finally decide to defeat their opponent. The pacing of the story is literally painful as it take several episodes to finish a single fight or make a point that could have been made in a quarter of the time.

Art: One of the few things I enjoyed about Bleach was the character designs. The costume and character designs are somewhat interesting. It's too bad such good designs are wasted on such boring characters. The manga has pages full of white space, almost as if the mangaka rushed to finish the chapter. Tho it doesn't help that it's a weekly manga so there's not much time to do actual quality work. I look at eariler episodes and the current episodes and I honestly can't see much of a difference; the quality of the animation has if anything gotten worse.

And there is way too much QUALITY, such as...

Sound: The OP/ED can be pretty catchy. I actually found myself singing them to myself sometimes. The seiyuu fit the characters well, although I cringe at some of their voices, especially when they're trying to be funny. None of the seiyuu particularly stand out. The background music can be nice, although it becomes repetitive somtimes as it is used over and over.

Character: The characters in Bleach can be found in every other shounen anime/manga. They follow the most basic of character archetypes. The main character, Ichigo, has one of the most boring personalities I've seen in anime. The only reasoning behind his actions is to protect his friends. Character development is no where to be seen aside from a character learning a new technique so they can do even more fighting.
As a whole Bleach takes itself way too seriously. It's almost laughable at how serious the characters take themselves.
The stuffed animals which are solely for comical relief become obnoxious very quickly and hold no part in the story; if anything they just hold back the story from moving along, although it's not like the story was going anywhere in the first place. Other characters which are supposed to be "cute" or "funny" make the series even less tolerable than it is. You're in the middle of a fight and suddenly a crybaby starts screaming "Itsuko!" I honestly don't see the humor in the mentally handicapped (i.e. the entire cast) and Bleach seems to find humor by depicting them as helpless and pathetic. Speaking of helpless and pathetic, Inoue Orihime: can she do anything for herself?


Enjoyment: Bleach can certainly be fun to watch at times for action-fans; it's capable of having some exciting fighting scenes. However it gets old fast. There's some comedy between all the action but it all feels forced.

Overall: If you're the kind of person who doesn't expect much from their anime and only watch it for mindless action, then Bleach is just for you. But if you want originality and a deep plot that actually makes you think then you shouldn't bother with this.
Watching Bleach makes me feel too old to be watching anime. It's obvious that this is aimed at young boys around 12 years old who don't want to think and just want action and unfunny and forced humor though.


I honestly don't see why Bleach is so popular; it's just DBZ with swords.



I tried not to be too harsh; I just posted my honest personal opinion on this series. If you have a problem or disagree with anything I have said please comment on my page or send me a message. :)

Oh, and before you ask "How did you last 136 eps if you hate it so much? I only watched 117-136. There. read more

Oh, Bleach. What a terrible story.

I remember 2004, I was one of those stupid little kids who "wanted to move to Japan to pursue an anime / manga career" and felt the "Japanese culture is kawaii ^___^".

So I'm on my computer, and I thought since I was loving Naruto that I would find another anime to watch. Well on a certain anime website, there was talks about 'Bleach', a popular manga story in Japan which has finally begun an anime on TV. Most people only decided to watch Bleach because Dattebayo started subbing it, but I got it right from the begining when LunarAnime was subbing it.

Even when I was 14, I watched the first episode and didn't see what was so amazing about it, but I felt it had a 'cool' concept. Spikey haired stereotypical main character with a huge sword! What's not to love about that in anime when you're just a young teenager?

Around episode 16 - 17 (I was having trouble watching this damn anime weekly because I was just bored out of my mind), the story begun to change and we headed into a new story arc. We learned new things and about where Rukia came from, etc. etc. And I felt the story was finally going to get good. Wrong.

I was still bored. It felt like the story was going around in circles, over and over. Although the arc did have its fair share of enjoyable moments with some of the battles, it just didn't feel 'epic'.

It's near the end of the arc, and Ichigo has finally got a new power up. It was bound to happen, since this IS a Shounen anime. And after 40 episodes of running around, they finally suceeded at what could have probably taken 10 episodes to do.

AND THEN WE HAVE AROUND 50 EPISODES OF FILLER. FUN.

And so, the current arc comes around and.. What is this? THIS IS JUST LIKE THE OTHER ARC! Only it involves masks and more energy beams.

I dropped it after 132 episodes. I should have dropped it sooner, but I felt the show did have potential, but in the end it didn't reach it. The conclusion I have come to is that Kubo Tite (the creator and artist of Bleach) can draw very well, but when it comes to story telling, he fails miserabley. I wouldn't be surprised if he just made up the story as he goes along on the spot.

And people won't admit that this is a poor series. They will continue watching it and kid themselves into thinking it's good along with Naruto (let's not get started on Naruto).

My tip: give this anime / manga a miss and just watch something which is actually enjoyable. If it has to be Shounen, watch Hunter x Hunter or One Piece. I may have been brutal over this series, but it's just very overrated.
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When I started watching Bleach, I couldn't get enough of it. Not only is it fun to watch but th storyline was fast moving and character exploration was something that I definitely looked forward to. I must admit, like Naruto, it has slowed down a lot and is just dragging for the sake of being on the air, but I still watch it every week.

The protagonist of the story is Ichigo Kurosaki - who through some circumstance becomes a shinigami on earth. He is joined in the defense of earth from Aizen with his friends who have awoken their power through his influence. The trials and tribulations of friendship, honor, trust and loyalty is the underlying theme of the anime - very similar to Naruto.

Simply put, it is a story of good versus evil and standing up for what you believe in. read more

This animé would easily be a 10 if the plot were condensed into between 1/2 and 2/3 of the episodes. The Bounto arc wasn't even present in the manga and is not generally worth watching/doesn't affect character development either. (I think that's around episode 70-100 or so)

This animé is not bad to watch many episodes of back-to-back because you don't notice the stretched out pacing of it as much, watching weekly is almost tortuous, especially when there are random 2-3 week breaks once in a while. I'd almost recommend for anyone wanting to keep up-to-date, but who hates slow paced stuff to just watch groups of 2 months worth of episodes at a time, or something like that.

Yeah, it's your typical fight animé and it can drag on, but you'll never get anything as bad as the Frieza Saga IMO. ;) read more

Ah good ol' Bleach, I started watching this when Naruto hit it's big filler phase and I fell in love with it. I suppose seeing as how this is a review I'll start out with what I love about the series. The characters are great with such a diverse range of people in the series, from the Captains of Gotei 13 to all of Ichigo's friends in his hometown; the series defienty has plenty of enjoyabe characters.

The story itself, I think is great; I love animes that have to do with fighting supernatural being such as demons or ghosts or in this case Hollows. The series starts off a tad bit slow untill the first real arc begins in Soul Society, and from there I was hooked. The fight scenes are suberb and I love they shinigami weapons, called Zanpakutos and how they each have their own abilities and personalities. There is of course powered up forms reminiscent of plent of other shounen anime, but I actually like chaacters being able to turn into stronger forms. Ever since Dragonball Z's super saiyans; in the case of Bleach they release their swords, and then can go into Bankai form with some of the characters having even stronge forms.

My only real gripe with this series is the fact that rarely anyone dies at all. Characters get stabbed, sliced, and put into near-death states but they always get healed or something, even villians. The villians are the only ones who seem able to actually die eventually, while all the good guys can get stabbed and whatever repeatedly and still fight like nothing happened. While this little gripe of mine does not deter from my overall enjoyment of the series, it can be a little annoying at times. They really need to allow some of the good guys to be killed, not main characters per-say, but atleast some of the secondary good guys every once in awhile just so we see they're not all invincible. All in all, I would easily reccommend this anime to any fans of action, or shounen in general because it is truly great. read more

-First this is my first review so don´t be too harsh on me.

About Bleach:

Story: (6-fair) The story isn´t bad, it isn´t perfect, but what really ruins the story is this two facts: first, the story has a damn slow progress, so you can see episodes where you simply watch half of a fight that isn´t even one of the most important.Second is the fact that bleach has a lot of fillers ( i have nothing againts fillers, when they are good ones), and most of them are terrible and sometimes boring. But i can´t give less than a 6, after all, the idea of the soul society and captains is quite good.

Art: (6-fair) Art in bleach is not bad, but in my opinion could be better.. battles should be better, also caracther design is nothing special. Still, again, i can´t give less than a 6 because there are some good ideias that makes the art not bad at all.

Sound (6-fair) Sound is not a thing i give much value in anime, in fact i already saw great animes with terrible sound (in my opinion). But it´s always better to have good sound and well synchronized with the story. However, i don´t really like some openings, endings are not so great at all, and during the story is also not amazing, but it´s at least aceptable so 6 fits quite well.

Character (7-good) Character is for me one of the strongest points in bleach..i like the Shinigami hierarchy, especially some captains (like Zaraki Kenpachi, Hitsugaya, etc..). Also Bounto are not bad as well (i am still watching, but i have already formed and opinion). The main characters are good, but i don´t really like orihime, some shinigami and the modified souls don´t sound great to me, so only a 7, anyway, still great, cause i don´t give high ratings so easily, it must be really almost perfect or have something special to deserve more.

Enjoyment (7-good) Enjoyment? Well i can watch the episodes without getting to sleep or disconect myself..so i can say i like to watch bleach, however, there are some lame parts, some boring parts that could be avoided..but in the other way abillities and fights, and even some comic scenes, sound good, yeah i also like to laugh, but some character abillities really catch my attention so 7 sounds quite good for enjoyment.

Overall (7-good) you may ask, i gave more 6 than 7s, why a 7 in overall? Well, the fact is that bleach is quite a good anime to watch, it hasn´t something special to me, but it´s like a balanced one, it focus a little in all aspects, so it makes easier to get the attention and after all it´s one of the most famous anime nowadays, that´s why.

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Bleach, Bleach, Bleach. It has alot of popularity, and for reasons I don't know because I find it awful.

I have given Bleach a lot of chances and I think I have seen enough of Bleach to give a review.

==STORY==
One of Bleach's many bad points is its story, it's about as typical as a story gets. The premise is basically 'save the girl' and 'beat the strong people'. That is it, often running into huge monsters that never really seem like much competition. The story never improves, every arc starts the same. Ichigo in school hanging around with his horribly annoying, useless friends, then a new enemy will show up, capture someone or blow up something, then it is up to Ichigo to save the day. This process isn't quick either. One fight would be 4-6 episodes of struggle before something actually develops, and thus leads to many hours of boredom. But from the Soul Society Arc to the Arrancar Arc, Bleach never excels, it's stuck in one spot it can't seem to get out of.

==CHARACTERS==
Oh God, something actually worse than the story. Characters, let's start with our protagonist Ichigo, I'd say he is about as interesting as a wooden post. I didn't realise main characters can lack such depth, but it's possible, Ichigo is a character that never develops, his personality, his relationships. The only thing that Ichigo actually improves in the whole series is his strength, but everything else tends to remain the same. We are left with a very boring, serious character, surrounded by several really happy characters. His school friends are very annoying, Inoue seems to follow too deep into the cliche, "damsel in distress" because that is basically all she provides, often his other friends will try to join in on the action and get beat up. Ishida starts out as a potential threat to Ichigo, then ends up far behind, Chad is big... and this soon becomes natural, the unimportant classmates, (Keigo and the Lesbian in particular) will provide moments of forced humour, to the point where you would want to repeatedly hit yourself with a lead pipe. Then you'll have the 13 division captains and lieutenants. Basically just a horde of characters, in fact, too many characters that will get about 1 or 2 fight scenes then become unimportant to the rest of the story. The antagonists are either extremely insane or extremely moody and that is all you get, I tried to analyse deeper into the supporting characters, but then I realised the characters aren't deep enough to delve into, what you see is what you get.

==ART + ANIMATION==
Well backgrounds aren't exactly awful. They provide with fairly decent backdrops. Sometimes you'll wonder where all of the people are but while not anything special backgrounds are colourful and scenery contrasts well. Art is very inconsistent for the most part. Good episode, rushed the next. You don't know what you are going to get and it becomes really unpredictable.

Character designs, not so good. Sometimes you'll wonder if a 5 year old designed some of the characters because they tend to be very different looking. Some characters will look incredibly standard, and others odd, the inclusion of a hollow hole for me is unnecessary because it just adds to the strange character designs for most hollows and arrancar, just a huge, randomly-placed, gaping hole going through their bodies. Reason? I have no idea. Just to add to the stupidness maybe. Well, they are about as strange as their choices of names and fanservice is extremely common, just about every woman other than Rukia has massive breasts, I think its just a ploy to make most of the women memorable since they seem to lack character. Rukia is perhaps is the only female in the series with any character.

Animation is not fantastic, you'll find yourself laughing at most running motions. Fight scenes are incredibly boring, it feels like the animators took every shortcut they could to make the fights easier to animate, movements of characters are far too static and stiff, I would like the characters to loosen up and fight properly but in the end it gets repetitive to the point where it is unwatchable, and all they tend to do is bash swords together for several episodes, using energy blasts and flying into eachother at high speeds. Yes, it's DBZ with swords, the only thing is DBZ managed to pull those fight scenes off and make them interesting. The main problem with the fight scenes is that there is no fluidity, no originality, everybody has the same thing: Sword strike and energy blast. But most importantly it is the lack of style that ruins it, it's like no one has freedom when they fight. Since most of Bleach is fighting, I judge most animations on the fights which is perhaps the biggest disappointment I get when watching Bleach, as I am a big fan of well choreographed fights in animation.

==SOUND==
The sound in Bleach succeeds a lot of the time. OPs and EDs are good, you can see the standard of music for Bleach is high, as people are usually disappointed when a series changes OPs and EDs, but with Bleach the current OP is usually just as good as the previous. Background music also fits very nicely, it is actually Bleach's strong point, the music is very refreshing. And usually suits moments. The only problem is that after a while you will hear the same songs, this isn't much of a problem but you can tell after a while the music variety starts to become limited. Voice acting is standard, sub and dub.

==CONCLUSION==
Bleach is just an overhyped shonen. Most of the time I sit there watching, incredibly bored, the series never really goes anywhere, the pacing is really bad, things tend to take too long, fights drag on. The series has been running for too long. There are too many fillers, too many characters, not enough development, I don't care enough for the characters. It's boring conversation followed by boring battle every episode. After the Soul Society Arc I thought I'd give up on Bleach until a better Arc comes out, when the Arrancar Arc came out I was excited thinking that Bleach would finally excel to heights I'd expect. But it was all a big disappointment, I am now in the Shinigami v Arrancar Arc and so far I have been wasting my time and I am ready to give it all up. Basically, it is a modern, lackluster DBZ laden with huge swords, uninteresting characters and fanservice. I feel, when watching Bleach I am just missing out on better series'. I don't just want to flame Bleach because it is overhyped, but I really don't think Bleach has any of the qualities that make anime good. Overall, I really wish it was better read more

This anime starts out good, and then sucks a lot later on.

Towards the end of the Soul Society arc, everything goes downhill. The story starts to get repetitive and overrun with filler, and character development progressively gets more stale.

The artwork and sound effects are of great quality however, and the story isn't too terrible before the Soul Society arc ends. As the anime is right now however, fight scenes and other forms of story progression all take too long, often spanning over what seems like a dozen episodes.

All in all, I would highly advise against wasting time to watch the entire anime. The story progresses too slowly, and it's nothing special. read more