| I recommend you do watch the anime because it has some cool openings and osts, but you should really just skip the filler arcs. They literally add nothing to the story and you wont miss anything. I would also recommend to read the manga because the art and character design are way more consistent and totally more badass. |
If you enjoyed the time you wasted, then its not a waste of time.  |
| Bleach manga is worth reading for the amazing drawings of Kubo alone since it makes the action looks badass but beware that he does not do a lot of background art though so a lot of manga panels have white backgrounds |
| Both are great, but yes, the manga is better. I recommend you read it first, as that is the definitive way to experience the series. Bleach's aesthetics are state of the art and the page composition is cinematic. This is thanks to Kubo's craftsmanship, which is undoubtedly one of the greatest in the industry. And in terms of character designs, he is unmatched. His heavy use of black tones also contrasts beautifully with the white tones whilst complementing the major theme of duality. The art is clean and sharp, elevating the smooth panelling that's especially important for a battle shounen (things that cannot be said for the cluttered mass seen in most other shounen, such as Naruto and One Piece), the dialogue is mature and doesn't read like a typical shounen, and there is attention put into how the dialogue is formatted in the speech bubbles so the lines are more impactful. Pacing is also another reason. Bleach is an amazing read whilst bingeing due to Kubo writing in volume style with the cinematic pacing, rather than in serialised style like the format it was actually being released in. The chapters are light and flow elegantly as a single, cohesive unit. Of course, there is no censorship in the manga either. I want to briefly mention the fights too because someone else did. Fights in Bleach are indeed about the emotional content driving the narrative of the battle, but I think they're just as entertaining as Naruto's in a powerscaling sense as well. Bleach has some of the most unique abilities you'll ever see in anime, especially in the TYBW arc where a lot of the powers go into abstract territories like manipulating concepts and warping causality. A lot of thought is put into these powers and assigning them to characters; every single character's powers complements them in one way or another. Due to the nature of a lot of the abilities, fights are less materialistic "I have this much energy and can use it to blow up this much" and more conceptual "my power allows me dominion over this", which makes for a lot of interesting dynamics. That being said, if you enjoyed the philosophical battles in Naruto, you'll love the ones in Bleach as I believe they're much better done. Fullmettle explained very well why Bleach gets the absurd amount of hate it does relative to Naruto and One Piece. It really is the black sheep of shounen (albeit with its recent resurgence, this bashing has died down and people are realising Bleach's apex dominance in influence over the shounen landscape today). It's also because Kubo's way of storytelling and character development is really subtle, and when reading such a long-running series as it's being serialised, it can be easy to miss. Kubo is a brilliant visual storyteller who utilises the medium of manga to its fullest extent, so he respects your intelligence and will never spoonfeeds you these things. Finally, since the lack of background art was brought up here, I'll address that directly and tell you it's a non-issue. Another overrated and outdated criticism now reduced to a meme talking point that those who haven't even touched the series will parrot once it was popularised by SuperEyepatchWolf in his video on the series that he has now taken down, just like "Bleach fell off after Soul Society", "Bleach is repetitive" etc you're seeing in most of these amateurish reviews on this site giving the anime and manga a low score. The empty backgrounds are a stylistic choice, Kubo's heavy use of black tones contrasts it really well and he wants to put emphasis on his detailed and expressive characters instead. Besides, the recent New Breathes From Hell one shot showed he's not incapable of drawing detailed backgrounds. Anyway, that's my rant over. I highly recommend the manga because it lets you appreciate Kubo's aesthetic ingenuity, is a faster experience and because the TYBW arc hasn't been animated yet. But unlike Naruto or One Piece, where the former has atrocious animation quality aside from a few stellar fight scenes and the latter has atrocious pacing for what is already a sluggish story, the Bleach anime is still largely inoffensive to the original source material, has consistent animation quality (the Fullbring arc's animation still looks beautiful to this day) and most notably, has some of the best soundtracks in all of anime orchestrated by Shiro Sagisu along with OPs and EDs (but you can always enjoy the music on YouTube).  |
019XYZJul 19, 2023 5:55 PM
| Anime has a lot of filler and some of the animation was quite poor at some points. Manga is better, but the last arc despite having some amazing moments, has terrible ideas as well, the good thing is that it seems Kubo will fix some stuff with the new anime, so I am looking forward to that. Overall, give it a shot, it is much better than JJK, but not as good as YYH. |
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