Bleach

*NO SPOILERS*

Bleach had great potential, but became annoying with poor character development and random powers.

Bleach has one of my favorite concepts ever. The Soul Society is awesome and the Gotei 13 are probably the best part of the show. They are squads composed of a multitude of Shinigami(Soul Reapers) and the show focuses more on the Captains and Lieutenants of those squads that are the most interesting characters in the show. Although, their could have been less squads(like 6) with less members in them(like 5) to have a more focused cast of characters that get more development. Hollows are also very interesting, they are souls that have either decide to let themselves be taken by evil or have been capture by other hollows. The basic concept is that the Soul Society dispatches Soul Reapers to purify the souls of hollows to let them live in the Seretei(basically heaven) unless they were evil while human( then they go to hell). The Soul Reapers use their swords called Zampakuto, that have 2 transformations to purify hollows.

The story of Bleach is ok, it is basically a regular shounen protagonist (Serious while fighting and Over powered) vs a traitorous, power hungry, intellectual villain.

Bleach biggest problems are its disrespect of its own power level system, its useless side characters, its horrible explanations for certain powers and its fillers..

Bleach doesn't make sense when it comes to power levels, a character can be defeated by an opponent, and then can defeat someone that utterly destroyed that opponent without training or power ups. I don't know how to describe it without spoilers but the power level system is non existent and it is really aggravating to not see that system in place. Ichigo, the main character, will discover some new ability to beat his opponent that is portrayed as being way more powerful than Ichigo, this will happen multiple times. Ichigo is easily defeated by the main antagonist(villain), that same villain levels up 5 times and is defeated by Ichigo who trained for 3 months. What? at least don't make the villain level up 5 times so it makes more sense.

The side characters in bleach are useless. The Captains and Lieutenants aren't, but Ichigo's friends are. First off, Orehime Inoue, F**K is this character annoying. Shes is the typical damsel in distress, she is hot, she tries to be extra cute and she has stupid powers that have no explanation(Maybe Fullbringer). Orehime's only use is healing Ichigo so he can get back into a fight. Chad has *MINOR SPOILER* Fullbringer powers, these are probably the stupidest powers in the Bleach universe. Fullbringer is the abillity to control the souls found inside objects. WTF!! an object has a soul? I guess it does in the Bleach universe. Uryu Ishida is probably the on except-able friend Ichigo has. Uryu is a Quicy, they are similar to soul reapers, but instead of using a sword they use a bow and arrow. They also kill hollows instead of purifying them. The problem with all three of these characters is they become to weak to participate in battles except Uryu who can still provide support in battle.

Bleach is almost 50% filler. These can be skipped if you binge watch Bleach but on a week to week basis it can be really annoying to have to watch filler almost every other arc.

Although Bleach has a huge list of problems I was still hooked until the last cannon arc because the concept of Bleach was so interesting. The Soul Society and the captains are the main reason I continued to watch the show. The most annoying part of Bleach for me was its lack of explanation and logic for powers, Ichigo's friends that shouldn't have existed, especially Orehime and the fact that the main characters can just come full circle and defeat a character that should be way above them in terms of power.

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---- Spoilers

(FIRSTLY THIS SEIRES CONTAINS AT LEAST 40-55% FILLER! )

Bleach: This anime is a cluster-fuck!
Nothing more, nothing less.

The concept of bleach is actually decent, and it's execution was 8/10 right up till episode 63. The relationship between hollows , humans and shinigami(death gods) was interesting and continued to progress into a rescue mission . This anime honestly should of ended as that!

But instead we get shitty plot after plot hole, deus ex machina(shikai >bankai> hollow mask>hyper bolic time chamber) and basic shounen formula... the current manga for this series is in such a shit-hole that there is literally no hope for this series in my opinion ESPECIALLY with the death of Tsukada Masaaki the voice actor of yammamto.

Essentially, the plot for bleach has devolved to a transparent sequential pattern>> i.e ( antagonist enters op status ( aizen) where it canonly be matched and beaten by ultra op status ( ichigo))>> the end. STORY 4/10

It's saddening that really the only redeeming quality of this series is the sound !Shirō Sagisu the music producing god behind such titles such as NGE , black bullet and ofc BLEACH! 9/10


ART: for the first 63 episodes art was definitely 8/10 , honestly even with the lower ratio, the quality of animation and art were superior to the other 300 so episodes...

In fact I'd go as far as to say that every episode after 63 is 4/10 in art rounding to 6/10 overall .

Characters are thrown into the series in hope that the viewer will like at least one, the main problem with this is that there is virtually not nearly enough time to distribute to each character evenly leaving low amount of needed character development and understanding.
5/10

Enjoyment: There are definitely some good fighting scenes, but there is way too much inconsistency in the story and the power levels between the characters leaving for some predictable plot.

5/10


Overall this series is mediocre as fuck, and it's a shame. I really felt kubo could of rapped up this series ages ago and went on to another one... the first 63 episodes of bleach had a certain flavour to it that couldn't be tasted by any other anime just the versatility of the characters and the interaction between them were interesting. BUT FILLER AFTER FILlER + the cannon material becoming saturated really made this series barely watchable!

4/10

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THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS! BE WARNED!

Story 6/10

I would like to start by saying that I would have given this show an overall score of 8 or 9 if it had only consisted of Agent of the Shinigami and the famous Soul Society Arc. That being said, the story is about a teenager named Ichigo Kurosaki and his life as a Shinigami/Soul Reaper.
Firstly even tough the Agent of the Shinigami arc partially ripped of Yu Yu Hakusho it was still enjoyable and unique in it's own way. It's the only well written arc that focuses a lot on character developement which is a major thing that this show lacks.
The Soul Society Arc was extremely enjoyable with awesome fights and lots of plot twists. Some very likeable characters were introduced. It's also probably the reason why this show became so popular.
After ignoring all the terrible filler arcs lets just talk about the Arrancar/Hueco Mundo Arc. At first this arc started of very well with a lot of possibilities. Anyone who was watching the show at this point was probably wondering what the hell was happening in Hueco Mundo. What were these strange Arrancars? Are they Shinigami or Hollows? Is Ichigo like them? Is Ichigo’s mask related to them? But to everyones disapointment midway trough the arc the show went down hill. With extremely long fights and with extremely long fights which did not help the plot progress in anyway! And to add to all this disapointment the fight between Ichigo and Grimmjow was total BS! I don't care how many fanboys say that he was holding back from the begining because he was afraid of scaring Orihime. And as soon as he sees her crying he turns in to this killing machine, now that’s what I call stupid. The second big fight was between Ulquiorra. In which Ichigo actually dies and comes back to life in this new godly hollow like form. After that scene my faith in Bleach ever becoming something more and following the succses of the Soul Society Arc died. Last of all the final fight between Aizen was extremely predictible and again total bs. At this point the only good thing about this arc for me was the backstory about Gin and that milf with the huge tits.
The Fullbring Arc
Complete rip off of YYH.

Art 8/10
Besides the filler arcs animation was pretty solid.

Sound 9/10
A lot of the intros and ending songs were pretty good. Majority of songs that played in the background while there were fights were also pretty awesome.

Character 6/10
Ignoring one of the worst female characters in any shonen show "Orihime" the Gotei 13 are extremely likeable. In the Soul Society Arc Ichigo was pretty likeable as well but that changed pretty quickly for me with the Arrancar arc. But what these likeable characters sadly lacked was decent character developement.

Enjoyment 5/10
Like I said it all went down hill

Overall 5/10
A show that had a solid start and then went completely downhill. Nothing more nothing less.

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This is one of those anime, that only a dedicated anime watcher could finish, despite the relentless effort of the creators to continue on a dead plot. Shounen anime tends to become very pointless, and redundant, because of how long it drags on. Bleach is a prime example of this. After watching 100 episodes of Bleach, though the series is somewhat enjoyable, I'm not able to sit through one more minute of this draining anime.

I’ll start with the good points of the series, just to reassure any skeptical Bleach fans reading this, that I'm not just biased because of my negative opinion on Shounen. First of all, the premise of Bleach is very interesting. The Soul Society, Hollows, shinigamis each with their own unique zanpakuto swords, etc., all of this is great shounen, sci-fi, and fantasy elements with a ton of potential. The character designs are very cool as well; each character looks distinct, considering there are a lot of characters to keep track of. As for the characters themselves, most of the main cast, like Rukia, Chad, and Ishida, are well developed and unique.

Another respectable aspect of Bleach, is the music. The series has a wide variety of great j-pop songs, plus animation that matches the the flow and mood of the songs perfectly.

Now the rather dissapointing portions. One which, for me, stood above all the rest; lack of good character development. First off, as I said before, a lot of characters within Bleach are complex, and interesting on the surface. But I feel that too many are lacking in character development, especially the star of the series, Ichigo.

First, let me compare Ichigo two other shounen protagonists, Luffy and Naruto. Though they all present admirable battles, fight strongly for what they believe in, never back down from fights, gain super powers along the way, etc, an important difference I’ve noticed is that, in addition to seeing them kick ass in battle, we also get to see Luffy and Naruto’s fun-loving and appealing sides. When they’re not fighting, they come off as comical, fun, and enjoyable characters. All these things make him all the more well developed and interesting.

Let me say that there are a lot of tough, arrogant, bad-ass male characters in anime, as any fan probably knows. But what makes these characters appealing isn’t so much their toughness as their less-shown, soft side, as well as character development over the course of the series. Looking at Ichigo, my opinion of him hasn’t changed at all since episode 1. As for Ichigo, sure he cares about his friends and family, but there’s nothing really special about that. I really can’t sense any significant conflict, relationship, or character attribute he has that makes him stand-out among other shounen heroes.

Regarding other Bleach characters, it does have enough good characters to make it worth watching; Rukia, Chad, Orihime, Ishida, and Yoruichi for example are great. But there just seems to be so many characters and not enough time to develop them all. This is the main problem I had with the Soul Society arc and why I liked the Bounto arc better. Each of the 26+ Soul Society captains, lieutenants, etc., that we’re introduced in the Soul Society arc were all begging to be important characters, but there just wasn’t enough room to develop them all and move on with the plot at the same time. The most screen time any of them got was a few battle episodes with Ichigo and co. It was just too many characters to introduce all in one arc. Since there were just a few Bounto, there was more time to develop their personalities, so I felt like the Bountos were more interesting villians, even if the arc is filler.

Also, there just seems to be too many tough bad-ass male characters in Bleach. In addition to Ichigo, there’s also Renji, Ganju, Kenpachi, and other supporting characters. And they all suffer the same flaw as Ichigo that I mentioned before; we pretty much see only their tough-talking kick-ass side in battle and nothing else really interesting or unique in their character development.

Other minor characters like Ichigo and Orihime’s classmates for example, are about as stereotypical as you can get and don’t seem to serve any other purpose besides adding some hyperbolic humor(Tatsuki’s the only one with any hint of character.) And Ichigo’s dad always kicking him is kind of annoying too. That kind of unnessecary slapstick humor seems out of place in the relative seriousness of the show.

Overall this anime wasn't bad, but it certainly wasn't outstanding. It loses the audience's attention too quickly, and has no real direction. The characters are lacking, and leaves a lot to be desired. I suggest this to hardcore Shounen junkies, who get off on non-stop mind numbing action. Those looking for a bit more fulfillment, or satisfaction, I advise you watch a few episodes, then relinquish it before having to suffer the emptiness of this series.

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