Bleach

Ichigo Kurosaki is an ordinary high schooler—until his family is attacked by a Hollow, a corrupt spirit that seeks to devour human souls. It is then that he meets a Soul Reaper named Rukia Kuchiki, who gets injured while protecting Ichigo's family from the assailant. To save his family, Ichigo accepts Rukia's offer of taking her powers and becomes a Soul Reaper as a result.

However, as Rukia is unable to regain her powers, Ichigo is given the daunting task of hunting down the Hollows that plague their town. However, he is not alone in his fight, as he is later joined by his friends—classmates Orihime Inoue, Yasutora Sado, and Uryuu Ishida—who each have their own unique abilities. As Ichigo and his comrades get used to their new duties and support each other on and off the battlefield, the young Soul Reaper soon learns that the Hollows are not the only real threat to the human world.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kurosaki, Ichigo Main

Morita, Masakazu Japanese

Kuchiki, Rukia Main

Orikasa, Fumiko Japanese

Inoue, Orihime Main

Matsuoka, Yuki Japanese

Abarai, Renji Main

Itou, Kentarou Japanese

Ishida, Uryuu Main

Sugiyama, Noriaki Japanese

Sado, Yasutora Main

Yasumoto, Hiroki Japanese

Zaraki, Kenpachi Supporting

Tachiki, Fumihiko Japanese

Urahara, Kisuke Supporting

Miki, Shinichiro Japanese

Aizen, Sousuke Supporting

Hayami, Show Japanese

Cifer, Ulquiorra Supporting

Namikawa, Daisuke Japanese

Simone, Jamie Producer

Hagino, Ken Producer

Sugiyama, Yutaka Producer

Aoki, Shunji Producer

Reviews

Nov 2, 2024

mszroms

Recommended

An anime that was really iconic during its time; It was produced during the early 2000s and it was a quintessential A-tier closely up there with the likes of Naruto, One Piece, DBZ and such during its height. Although there are some factors that really stained its ratings for me and I'd discuss it in this review. Nonetheless if you got time to kill, I don't mind recommending it.

Animation (7.5/10) - It has a trademark that was nice for its era, also throughout the entire 366 episodes you would see its animation quality slightly evolve which was an indication that its producers actively spent some ... time and money during its run. Although on some fights it feels like they are reusing frames which was a common thing for older, action-based animes. Nonetheless, I do not think it'd hurt your viewing experience in any major way.

Storyline (5/10) - Do not get me wrong, its major arcs were great and entertaining. But the way this anime pumps out its filler episodes is through arcs and you'd have to mostly sit through 15-30 episodes of nothing but canon stories which is agonizing. Also, its pacing in general is a little slow. Probably because they are trying to maximize their television runtime then but still, I personally think its these two factors that really held the show back for what its worth. Could've had a higher score, seriously.

Soundtrack (8/10) - Its music library and sound engineering was good! I personally liked it. They have a flexible selection of music ranging from rock, ballad, J-Pop and such that they chose for their intros and extros, and all the sounds and ambience effects they utilized were really atmospheric and distinct. So props on that.

Overall - 6.83 out of 10

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Oct 20, 2024

junime

Mixed Feelings

Is watching the original Bleach so you can watch the new, much appraised, seasons worth it?

That's what I did and here is what you are looking at if you plan on doing the same.

Plot: 4/10

As a short summary: Ichingo Kurosaki is thrust in the world of hunting bad ghosts called Hollows and as the story advances evil plots are uncovered and his job becomes saving the world - more or less. The story has a promising start, but the writing direction is plain bad as it's too focused on the action battles.

The basic plot is not bad but the story just fizzles along the way. ... The main problem is that the anime has too many "important" characters it wanted to show the power abilities of. And by too many I mean there are at least 20 characters whose fights we have to witness before we learn even the tinies bit of information about someone's backstory, motivations or aspirations. In the second arc, there are around 35 episodes of pure fights before we learn any information about why things are happening the way they are.

I understand fights are the staple of shonen but even according to the mid-2000s standards the battles remain under average. It’s a parade of people you barely know duking it out for what feels like an eternity. There’s no choreography, no strategy, no teamwork—just flashy attacks and lots of yelling. Forget clever power combos or strategic thinking. Nope, in Bleach, it's all about brute force. And for some reason, everyone fights one-on-one like it’s an unspoken rule of the Soul Reaper universe. Teamwork? Who needs it when you can shout out the name of your attack and hope for the best, right?

At least there is none of that "power of friendship" victories.

The fact that the power system itself is never fully explained (in the canon episodes at least) just adds to the confusion. Especially since the anime introduces new and unexplained power systems all the time. The last arc makes absolutely no sense, clearly, nothing screams "solid writing" like reworking your universe’s rules in the last episodes!

And speaking of dragging things out: subplots appear, disappear, and reappear when you’ve almost forgotten they existed. This isn’t so much of a series as it is an obstacle course where the obstacles are your brain cells trying to keep up.

These many fights also put a damper on the time given to character development.

Characters: 6/10

The main and supporting characters in Bleach start off with solid foundations and interesting dynamics—emotional characters paired with more logical ones, which is fun to watch and there are some unique characters worth watching. But character development moves slowly, and the timeline for when we learn more about them is chaotic. We are left confused by some characters' choices, betrayals or sacrifices because the show didn't explain in a timely manner their inner feelings and history.

Even the MC doesn't actually have any tangible and intricate objective or ambition. He just wants to get stronger to protect people. There is no justification about why he would go through so much trouble, no goals, except for "that's who he is", which is a bit lacking.

If we take another important character, Inoue, supposedly the most powerful healer who could potentially rewrite reality—yet, she spends the entire series being annoyingly useless. Her main role is standing on the sidelines, sobbing dramatically, worsening the situation for everyone and then maybe throwing a shield here or there like a confused Pokemon. It’s almost impressive how she manages to do so little with so much potential. Also, most of the female characters, not all, are often damsels in need of protection.

The characters' development is also hindered by one of my biggest pet peeve in anime...comic relief gimmicks. If you think you’ll get a break from the action with some deep, heartfelt conversations—think again. The show insists on inserting ridiculous comic relief into even the most serious moments. A character could be on the brink of an emotional revelation and another one will roll in with a tasteless joke or a physical punch to interrupt it.

Then we have the villains, who are more focused on giving long, dramatic monologues and twirling their metaphorical mustaches than actually using their absurdly overpowered abilities to wipe out the heroes. Their development makes no sense either, and by the time they do anything, you’ve already stopped caring.

Art 7/10:
The design of the characters is impressive especially given the variety of characters. They each have stylish outfits and powers to go with it. The art of the swords and their evolution is creative and beautiful.
The animation itself is good considering the period the anime aired.

Enjoyment: 4/10
Even if the show drags on and on, I can't say I am completely indifferent by it and it did crack me a smile from time to time.


OVERALL:
Bleach crumbled under eight of it's own ambition, taking it - and us - all over the place. The early episodes are fun, with an interesting concept and cool designs but it doesn't make up for the lack of emotional development of characters that progress every 50 episodes. Without getting into a review of the new seasons, I think it's worth watching the original Bleach if you are a patient person really into fights.

5/10. I just can't bring myself to give more to the execution of the anime seeing how it is either confusing or boring most of the time.

But hey, at least the swords are cool, right?

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Mar 26, 2024

Eironn

Not Recommended

Well-written

Spanning 366 episodes, Bleach is regarded as one of the big shonen shows out there, sitting at the same table as One Piece, Naruto and Dragonball. Watching it in 2024, however, I can tell you that Bleach aged like milk.

First of all, I could sit here and talk about fillers all day, but we've all seen the memes. Bleach is *at least* 45% filler, but even that is a generous number. If you remove all the useless shonen tropes like pointless flashbacks, repetitive shouts, long running scenes, still shots, slow camera panning and reused frames, you'll soon realize that Bleach is more like 70% filler.

Bleach ... also has a serious issue with bystanders that *constantly* interrupt fights and serious moments so they can do their comedy routine. And it's not even good comedy. It's children's comedy. Manzai is a very popular (and exhausting) type of comedy where the "funny man" does goofy things while the "straight man" gets angry and reprimands them. Alright, now crank that up to the maximum, shove it in the middle of life-or-death situations, and make it as long and obnoxious as possible. That's Bleach's comedy. The thing is, Bleach knows how to create funny moments, but it does so at the worst possible times as the story progresses.

Speaking of progress, that's one of the weird things about Bleach. Instead of getting better as the series goes on (like the other three big shonen series), Bleach does the opposite. One quick search and you'll see that the community generally agrees that Bleach was awesome in the first few arcs but had a drastic decline in quality and pacing as the story progressed. Even my friend who recommended it to me said that he skipped almost all of it. Putting Bleach on the same category as Dragonball, One Piece and Naruto is almost disrespectful. How can I recommend a series that only has one or two good arcs and then say: "By the way, it gets really bad towards the end."

-- Minor Spoilers Ahead --

Another big issue that Bleach has are the power levels. The power levels are all over the place and it's not even funny. Ichigo always gets his ass kicked by every new enemy, only to be saved by someone he defeated previously. Now the person who is supposedly weaker than Ichigo proceeds to defeat the villain who is supposedly stronger than Ichigo. This happens because Bleach is a kid's show where the protagonist befriends all of his enemies, even the ones that do unspeakably evil things. No matter how edgy Bleach tries to be with its dark imagery, at the end of the day it's just a kid's show. The constant bickering in the middle of fights is no different than children fighting in the playground to decide who gets to be the Red Power Ranger, and in the end we see everyone holding hands and singing a song together.

Bleach looks particularly ugly when you compare it to the flashy and action-packed modern shonen shows we've been getting recently, but it also looks ugly when you compare it to the other big shonen shows of the 2000s. The action, pacing, story and even the training arcs are completely messed up. Honestly, I basically just watched 366 episodes of a show I detest for the sole purpose of watching the sequel, which people say is really good.

The sad thing about Bleach is that it had such a strong identity. The captains are cool as hell, the overall theme is unique, the setting had a lot of potential, and the Soul Society arc was amazingly good. I loved everything about Bleach at first. Hell, even the way the characters hold their swords when they're not fighting tells you something about their character. Even some of the lines that characters say are so powerful that they'll stick with you for a while. The creativity and attention to detail here was great, and I hate using the past tense here.

Honestly, I don't even think that this is the case of a bad anime adaptation. For example, you've probably heard someone somewhere say: "Bleach is good but the ending was kinda scuffed." And no, it's not like a beloved character dies or anything. The "ending" is bad because the author decided to introduce the weirdest and most nonsensical magic system ever created. Everything that made Bleach great is suddenly replaced by elements that genuinely make you forget that you're watching Bleach. Hueco Mundo's arc was bad in terms of pacing and power levels, but the last arc is especially insulting. Bleach's antagonists stopped being cool and memorable after the Soul Society arc (save for a few exceptions), but the last arc manages to be even worse in that regard. We even get a discount Aizen that fails to capture even 1% of what made the original a good villain.

In conclusion, I unfortunately can't recommend Bleach. It's simply not worth it. It doesn't hold up well today and only serves as an example of how to ruin something that had everything to be great. This review may sound overly negative, but it's just an honest warning.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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