Bleach started out as a very promising character-driven manga with several great arcs. It’s a massive shame it didn’t keep up. The story starts with a bang, builds and builds, wraps up the first few arcs in a satisfying manner and then trips over itself, rolls down a hill, into the ocean and sinks into the abyss. I can say I was thoroughly disappointed with the way it ended after the potential it showed at first.
I've been reading this manga since I was 13. The story was never really anything special, but it was fun. Initially, the characters were interesting and dynamic, they felt important
...
and the threats felt like something they needed to overcome, to grow and to protect each other and their family. I loved seeing the way everything was depicted - supernatural or not - and the absolute creativity of some of the designs hypnotized me.
The plot, simple at first, evolves and escalates, jumping through several arcs and then begins to degrade after a specific point rather rapidly. More characters ended up introduced than it felt was needed, and often there was so much focus on the new characters that there was no room for anyone else. Ichigo (our main character) in particular was a black hole for focus, and the side characters may as well have not existed. Their motivations were paper thin, felt reused or just plain didn’t go anywhere. After a while it felt like I'd seen the same characters come along several times and not really add anything, and just questioned why they were even included in the story.
Boring, throwaway villains, silly misunderstandings, pointless trips, unclear motivations. The last arc has been particularly shameless with making the final big bad just… the worst the manga has ever seen even amongst the minor henchmen. He had little to no personality, nothing relatable, charming or fascinating about him and more or less just felt like a silly plot device to try to prove how strong Ichigo was and /try/ to reinforce that he has an amazing relationship with the people he's met on his journey.
Sadly, the message of friendship and being together as humans is undermined constantly and almost the entirety of the manga makes it a pointless aesop. Ichigo is impossibly strong and unfailingly virtuous, with just enough flaws to add a bit of depth to his character, but he is the main character who rises so far above his friends that he doesn't ever truly seem to connect with them. His friends who began as interesting become quickly underpowered compared to him and to the enemies he faces.
Having a character who is miles above the rest in terms of power can be pulled off successfully, provided that he shares a deep enough emotional connection with at least some of the cast and that doesn’t lower the stakes of the story. Unfortunately, Bleach does not succeed in this and most of the initial friends Ichigo made get the same treatment as much of the side characters from Dragon Ball Z, becoming completely unable to compete on any level, or even keep up, with our main character.
It was a true shame to once again have a shounen series fall victim to this. It left a terrible aftertaste.
For anyone willing to read things before the downfall, up to chapter 182 was a great exciting adventure with plenty of characters to enjoy (but not too many), and a fairly well balanced character driven story. Or up to chapter 423 where it was still...complicated and interesting but beginning to feel a little bit samey.
For those willing to continue reading past that point, I would advise that you prepare yourselves for disappointment. I don't know what Kubo was thinking with the majority of the later plot, but much of it felt flat or just plain not impactful. A common and well-deserved complaint was how cheap many of the plot devices were and how little things seemed to actually matter in the long run. Another complaint was the over build up for many a lacklustre reveal.
As for the art - it was clean and fairly well executed. Later on a lot of the scenes become hard to follow, with too many effects and cluttered panels, but the character designs and environments were overall of an acceptable level. You could however argue that, barring a few, Kubo falls into same face syndrome much like many manga authors, reusing the same general faces for specific types of characters with marginal alterations. It wasn’t the most amazing art ever but it was definitely above average.
In summary, Bleach started its run as a pleasant experience with more ambition than it knew what to do with, and it eventually caved in under the weight of its enormous but underdeveloped cast, disproportionate focus on a single character whose importance was poorly justified with increasingly contrived plot twists, and an overabundance of questionable creative decisions.
Sorry if this is kind of all over the place, it's my first review and I wanted people to know this manga started well, but still ended terribly. I mostly want to save anyone else from reading the next 200-300 chapters because it isn't worth it.
Alternative TitlesJapanese: BLEACH English: Bleach InformationType: Manga
Volumes: 74
Chapters: 705
Status: Finished
Published: Aug 7, 2001 to Aug 22, 2016
Serialization:
Shounen Jump (Weekly) Authors:
Kubo, Tite (Story & Art) Statistics Ranked: #11192 2 based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded. Popularity: #14
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Aug 19, 2016 Not Recommended
Bleach started out as a very promising character-driven manga with several great arcs. It’s a massive shame it didn’t keep up. The story starts with a bang, builds and builds, wraps up the first few arcs in a satisfying manner and then trips over itself, rolls down a hill, into the ocean and sinks into the abyss. I can say I was thoroughly disappointed with the way it ended after the potential it showed at first.
I've been reading this manga since I was 13. The story was never really anything special, but it was fun. Initially, the characters were interesting and dynamic, they felt important ...
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Jun 23, 2009 Not Recommended Preliminary
(Unknown/705 chp)
STORY: 5/10
So this is a shonen manga, and in my opinion it's a bad one. If you've seen Inuyasha, Dragonball Z, or Yu Yu Hakusho then theres no point in reading this. Bleach pulls absolutely everything it has from those other series. flying and energy blasts from dragonball Z, spirit energy (yes, they actually call it the exact same thing) from Yu Yu Hakusho. And the miain character has a Man-sized sword that can shoot waves of energy just like Inuyasha. If i could rate the originality i would give it a 0. The story goes on forever. First one girl gets captured and ... they go and save her. Then to move the story along guess what the mangaka did? A different girl got captured and they had to go and save her. HE HAS SO FEW IDEAS HE'S COPYING HIS OWN FREAKING WORK! ART: 3/10 Now to the art. When they're standing still its not so terible...but this is an action manga. I can't tell whats going on in half the panels during the fight scenes. It doesn't help that the mangaka uses only a pure white and pure black. Theres very little shading so it's hard to make out whats what a lot of the time. CHARACTER: 4/10 Character development: theres none. Theres a gooft girl, a serious guy, a smart guy, a quite guy, and a serious girl. When one adjective can describe each character thats a bad sign. Theres also about 60-70 characters. I prefer quality over quantity. ENJOYMENT: 5/10 There is some enjoyment in the manga. I actually laughed out loud at some of the comedy twords the begining of the series. But once you get about 25% into the manga the comedy becomes a lot less frequent, and a lot less funny. I couldn't really understand what was going on in most of the action scenes so i can't really judge those. It gets a 5 just because of the comedy at the begining. OVERALL: 4/10 Overall i would give this manga a 4 because theres absolutely NOTHING original. Heres a prime example for people who've read it: Remember when the big guy and ulili-something came to ichigo's town? That scene is identical from when vegita and nappa came to earth in dragonballZ. no difference. How people rate this manga above a 5 is beyond me. I think my 4 is pretty generous
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Aug 5, 2011 Not Recommended Preliminary
(459/705 chp)
So Bleach.Or like we fans like to call it; Blah, Plotkai, The Troller's Guide to the Fandom, Rinse.
Story: Well it's really great.Too bad same things happens 17 times with different characters.Or alternatively with same characters who has new haircut or new costume.The Bold and The Beautiful, if it were anime/manga it name would be Bleach. Characters: Yes, there is a lot of those.Really great one, like Inoue Orihime.Lets just say if Yagami Light knew her, her name would be written really quickly. ... Art: At the beginning, there was one.It was messy and reader didn't always get what was happening.So it got fix'd and turned into "lines."No ink is wasted anymore.You can really see how white those manga sides are before they are filled with things..And after that too. Enjoyment: Oh yes. If you see a guy who isn't moving anywhere but spinning at his place and says he is going home - that's quality entertainment. How about Bleach. Well, it's like that guy but all he does is say he is going home. After many years it gets little annoying. My score was 10 for long time after the start.After that it has keep coming down little by little just like the story has improved.It's now 3.I'm looking forward to the future. :)
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Mar 9, 2012 Not Recommended Preliminary
(484/705 chp)
When I was still starting out reading manga, one of the first series that I picked up was Bleach. At the time, I thought pretty well of it and hoped to see it develop further to better things. Unfortunately, the series failed to deliver on that more times than I care to mention.
STORY: Bleach follows the generic shonen manga formula: Fight. Fight fight fight. Fight. Not to say that there's anything wrong with simplicity or fighting manga in general, just that there needs to be more substance in the plot and characters in that case. The problem with Bleach is that it doesn't make up for ... that simplistic formula and instead tries to craft story lines that fall on their face. It follows the arc system of story development, where the overall end goal is reached through a series of arcs. The first major arc, and the point when the series was at it's peak, was the Soul Society arc, but after that, a problem quickly become evident. After that, almost every arc reads like the Soul Society arc and Bleach has become so formulaic that it's not that hard overall to predict what happens. There will be a character who's main goal is to fight Ichigo, regardless of what plans the boss has laid down. There will be a stoic character who tries to stick to the plan, but ends up experiencing an emotional epiphany by the end of the arc and does something against the plan. One or more of Ichigo's friends (usually female), will end up getting kidnapped, or attacked, or brainwashed, or some other way of giving Ichigo a reason to rescue them. And rather than develop the abilities they already have, Ichigo and (possibly) the friends who aren't in danger will receive a power-up that will become obsolete in time for the next arc. Lather, rinse, repeat ad nauseum. Formulaic plots can work, but they work best when the formula for them is simple and easy to make each use of it unique. If it's possible to describe an arc in such vague detail that it can apply to any of the other arcs, your formula is WAY too complicated. Another big problem is that Bleach frequently uses a "tell, don't show" method. What I mean by that is that many things get hyped up beyond belief or a character is established as being great, but these things are only done through characters talking about it. When we finally get to whatever it is that's been hyped up, it very rarely lives up to that hype, and in some cases fails to live up to it even before the hype even happens. ART: I've never really been interested in the art of a manga, or really most illustrated things I read, unless it's horrendously bad, but I feel like I should give credit here. The art of this manga is actually pretty good. Some of the character designs look good, even though at times it feels like it's just the same few characters drawn with different hair styles, clothes, etc., and Hollows look threatening without entering nightmare fuel territory and without looking too cartoony. That said, this manga has a problem with backgrounds. If there are any at all, it's essentially just black or white most of the time. CHARACTERS: Now that the good is out of the way, let's get into the characters. There's a lot of them. Too many of them in fact. Every arc introduces some 20 - 30 new characters that receive very little story time, exist just to be there and in general just take up space. We never find anything out about these characters, just that they exist and than we move on. The character's that do get focused on can barely be called characters at that as they are essentially just one-dimensional character archetypes more than anything. Each of them relates to some general archetype (whether it's the stoic, the hero, etc.) and never receive any development beyond that. OVERALL: I've said a lot of bad things about it, but at it's core, Bleach is just a lot of cliche and mediocre work, especially the later chapters. Still, I'd be lying if I said that I've never enjoyed the series. It has a pretty promising start, but the problems of the series become clear as it drags on. If you don't mind a repetitive plot, than you might like it, but otherwise, I'd advise staying away from it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Jun 14, 2012 Not Recommended Preliminary
(488/705 chp)
Bleach is a joke of a manga with absolutely no redeeming qualities besides the fact that it is mindlessly "entertaining"
The manga is flawed in just about every way possible and its actually getting kind of pathetic to read right now. I mean, I can't name think of a positive thing about it(the whole mindlessly "entertaining" is another way of calling it stupid). The characters are generally one dimensional and receive little to no actual growth or development. There are a few characters with some depth(Byakuya for instance) but most characters are shallow and their entire character analysis can be summed up with in just a few ... short sentences(and some a single sentence). I'm not talking about minor characters btw, I'm talking about major ones. Occasionally Kubo will attempt to give a few characters some "development" but that all resets by the beginning of the next arc. Another problem with the characters is that Kubo has no idea how to use them. The main cast is pretty much thrown away every arc so the captains can shine. Its sad the people like Chad, Ishida, and Orihime are thrown away so quickly each and every arc. Its hard to call them "main" characters at this point. I guess this all stems from Kubo introducing WAY too many characters and not really knowing how to write a real story. Pacing is also another gigantic problem for Bleach as well. Every chapter is filled with reaction faces and posing with very little dialogue. While almost every manga does this occasionally, Bleach does this every chapter on almost every page. In most chapters only one or two scenes occur. EVERY chapter can be fully read and comprehended in less than a minute. Another reason that Bleach has bad pacing is due to the fact that Kubo introduces too many villains who don't matter in the end. The Espada is the prime example of this. People who kept up with Bleach for the entirety of the arrancar arc watched the heroes of Bleach fight against these guys for around 4 years or so. But in the end they really had no lasting impact on the manga at all. They didn't really cause any real story development nor did they actually have any lasting impact on the characters. If the manga took out the Hueco Mundo arc and just skipped to the war, the exact same result would occur and nothing in the manga right now would be any different. Hell even the manga indirectly tells you at one point that the Espada have no point. And for anyone who thinks that this isn't typical for Bleach, look at the Fullbringers(most of them were pointless), and for anyone reading the current chapters, how many enemies did Kubo introduce again? They even had Ichigo fighting against this loser for 3 or so chapters and we're nowhere near close to finishing that fight. We're going to go through another 300 or so chapter arc with only 70-80 chapters that isn't pointless padding. People complement the art, but its really not that good either. I guess the character designs aren't too bad, but that's not where the problem is. My complaint is the lack of background art. Instead of actually drawing out backgrounds, in many panels Kubo will just color in some shading or just leave it blank. The only backgrounds that exist that seem to be consistent are the sky and the clouds. It just doesn't make the manga look good. Fights are also kind of bad. They generally consist of beamspams that do little damage and then the characters go back and forth between powerups. After that, the fights end in a single hit once character A(the victor) reaches his max power level. its a pretty predictable setup. The plot is also fairly laughable as well. The plot is shallow and just... lmao The plot for Bleach completely fell apart after the Soul Society arc. At this point, all Kubo has done is introduce random enemies and make them seem important in order to make make an illusion that things happen. But everything just kind of goes back to status quo after each arc is finished and it just doesn't feel like Bleach has really accomplished anything significant. That's just how I see this manga. The saddest part? I didn't even list all of my complaints about it. I basically see it as SJ's version of Inuyasha, seeing as how both of them are uselessly padded for hundreds of chapters longer than they should be.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Dec 13, 2008 Not Recommended Preliminary
(337/705 chp)
I love the first arc.
Story: The story wasn’t phenomenal but it served its purpose and with a villain of the week style continuity you could easily enjoy a few chapters whenever you like. Art: It was awkward to read it at first because of the unusual proportions, but after I got over that It began to shine. Tite kubo uses hatching in a way I’ve never seen in manga before. I could feel the bright, but somehow faded, colors come off its grayscale pages. Character: The characters are ... diverse and well defined, with enough back-story to get my sympathy. The way they interact with each other is excellent. How Tite Kubo screwed it up Story Why couldn’t Ichigo have just let Rukia go? Fight after uninteresting fight in a setting that gets old after the first 10 chapters. They only introduce the main villain (as a villain) after about 15 volumes. A lot of the time it feels as though it’s supposed to be funny, but isn’t; or supposed to be dramatic, but isn't. the fights aren’t very interesting. Art: I did not realize how much the style relied on the setting. I don’t want to see a bunch of people in the same exact black (or white) clothes in a setting that looks the same everywhere you go. Character: The personalities you fall in love with either change or disappear from the story for long periods of time. Oh but don’t worry you get to know about 50 more characters all at the same time. And that’s not all; they each have their own back-story to interrupt important plot points.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Jun 13, 2023 Not Recommended Funny
I cannot deny the cinematic style many action scenes had and how fashionable was everyone dressed in chapter covers. Kubo knew how to attract an audience through style.
He also had a good grasp of cinematography which was doing wonders for immersion. You were often feeling like you are watching the storyboard of an elaborate movie. But as the chapters went on, and the characters become flat as pancakes this huge positive eventually became a negative, especially when it comes to the pacing. The panels were usually big with close to no talking, resulting in reading most chapters in a couple of minutes. Despite ... this being the first video I make on Bleach I had to go over 25 chapters for finding enough things to talk about. Not because they were empty of stuff happening, but because the plot each one of them covers is very short. It was positive while the characters had some charm in them, but once that was gone the cinematic feel was no longer adding to the experience. It was just wasting pages with running feet and wide empty spaces where nothing of interest is going on. The tone of the story was occult half the time and sitcom the other half. It was constantly jumping from spooky ghosts to everyone constantly screaming and kicking and insulting one another. The whiplash can be too much for a grown man to tolerate, but for the 12 year old gangsta wannabees who were into this shit it must have felt like the coolest shit ever. Eventually the sitcom fades away and leaves behind a bunch of expressionless puppets, making obvious how dull are most characters when the comedy does not distract you. The main appeal was of course the rule of cool during the fights, dressing like a samurai and carrying a huge mother freaking sword that cuts in pieces monsters that eat people. The early fights were very brutal and I can even say semi-tactical as the hollows required field tactics and a specific treatment for being defeated or for basically surrendering. There was also blood and body parts flying around to make it feel mature, since as we all know gore makes a manga mature. Eventually the tactical and emotional side of the fights is replaced with flat pancakes constantly releasing their bankais which win in every fight with absolutely no tactics or logic, but until that happens, the fights were great to follow. Despite the appeal being the fights, the monsters didn’t exist just to eat people and be chopped to pieces. They were all humans once and death left them with a grief that forces them to hurt the living. It was giving a dramatic side to them, they had a sad past which was giving an extra layer of depth to both them and the humans they were related with. Later on this gets completely overlooked, but for now it’s good shit that explains more the appeal of the manga. There was even a zen aspect to the soul reapers. They weren’t killing the monsters as much as they were washing away their sins so the soul can move to the next world. Thus, another layer of depth to the otherwise mindless hack and slash. Too bad even that was completely forgotten later on. Another thing that made Bleach so appealing was the waifus. It began with the dream pixie girl trope, by having the life of a seemingly typical man turning upside down by the arrival of an eccentric girl that messes up everything in his schedule. She lived in Ichigo’s closet, went to school with him, and couldn’t stay away from him because she needs him to fight the monsters with the powers she gave him. Imagine how erotic that was for the 12 year old gangsta wannabees who liked Ichigo for dressing fashionably and slashing monsters with a huge sword. The plot was in general full of typical romantic comedy elements. There is a school, everyone was sexually attracted to someone, and there are lesbians. Ichigo starts right off the bat with two waifus so there can be shipping wars among the fans for which one deserves to be with him the most, and there were a dozen more openings for possible pairings. This aspect of the show was there just for attracting the virgins. Like in every fighting shonen it was never part of the plot, it wasn’t developed in any significant way, it was eventually neglected in favor of transforming swords, and by the time the ending arrived and the main waifus had to end up with someone, the audience had formed headcanons since Kubo had stopped giving a shit. Needless to say, it was a bloodbath for everyone who didn’t get his fan fiction, aka things that never existed in the manga and he made up as the only way for still being invested in something that didn’t bother to develop most of its early ideas. Another part of the appeal is the magic terminology. Like any story with supernatural elements, it needs infodumps for explaining all the spells and stuff, and in this case it’s wasn’t so bad. Unlike in Naruto where for some reason the ninjas didn’t know about missions and jutsus despite going to school all their lives yet somehow graduating, Ichigo and the other mortals truly didn’t know anything about soul reapers and hollows. They were excused to be asking for an explanation instead of being told things they should know about. And the infodumps were funny half the time, because Rukia couldn’t draw for shit. With that said, most of the supernatural shit were not well developed either. Especially the videogame bullshit were out of place in a story like this one. Why would soul reapers who cleanse souls and come from a higher plane of existence be in need of earthly things like money? Why would there be bounties for hollows and item shops where you can buy tools? This is nonsense they added just for the sake of making videogames out of bleach. They otherwise don’t have a purpose and don’t matter in the longrun since it’s yet another thing that gets completely forgotten. Then it’s that Men In Black type of device that makes people forget they saw ghosts which was also never looked into. Erasing memories was not enough to cover up the whole thing, it had to be followed by constantly healing the wounds of the victims and fixing the damage caused during a fight. Do we ever see that, especially in the beginning when it’s just Rukia with no powers? I mean, it’s nice to have an explanation for covering up all the supernatural stuff instead of overlooking it completely as they do in Jujutsu Kaisen. But that’s as shallow as labeling everything as a gas explosion in fate stay night or as an invasion from the north in god of high school. It doesn’t justify why people shouldn’t know about the supernatural. What’s so bad about leaving it as common knowledge? The Quincy abused the knowledge, but that doesn’t mean everybody would rush to learn spells that do the same. Wouldn’t the soul reapers have an easier job if they didn’t have to hide the evidence all the time or humans were respecting the dead a lot more so fewer of them would end up becoming hollows? There is no insight to that, Kubo never cared about it, he just had there because it’s a stereotype in urban fantasy. And his blunders don’t stop there, as most of the lore gets contradicted the more the story goes on. We are told every time an evil soul gets defeated by a soul reaper the gates of hell appear to suck it in. This is only shown once. Here we are told soul society is a wonderful place where nobody suffers, and then we see it and it’s a shithole. And here we see Ichigo’s father being a useless idiot all the time that never helps out in the fights and is easily falling unconscious. Turns out he was a super powerful soul reaper the whole time and was pretending to be useless. This messes completely the tension in the early fights. His family was constantly being attacked and he didn’t do anything to help them despite mourning for his wife. Was he certain they would survive or did he not care about them? No answer, Kubo forgot as he forgot everything that was making the early parts so good for the 12 year old gangsta wannabees. Each of the early arcs was adding something to the setting, such as more support cast and more explanations regarding the ways hollows are created and behave. The world building was expanding and so was the character depth. With that said, the arcs were not exciting half the time. Orihime’s dead brother and Ichigo’s dead mother were great arcs in terms of drama, while the arcs about Chad protecting a bird, Con being a sexual molester, and Don Kanonji being a ghost buster were silly as a whole. Basically the Karakura portion of the manga was important as an introduction to its setting and characters, but it was a mixed bag in terms of quality and it wasn’t making you anticipate what will happen next. There was no long term objective and Ichigo’s only motivation was to protect his friends, which is something every Shonen protagonist does. Bleach had drama, comedy, and good cinematography, but beyond that it was aimless compared to your typical fighting shonen with a main character who wants to be the best in the world and constantly moves towards that goal. Ichigo lacked such a motivation and was coming off as passive. He was just doing his typical school routine and whenever a Hollow appeared he would deal with it before going back to the routine. It was stale and eventually something had to change or the readers would lose their interest. And that change came with the introduction of Ishida, which also marks the beginning of the downfall of Bleach. The end of Soul Society might have been the last good part, but Ishida is where the first cracks appear. The addition of the Quincy to the setting changes completely the up until then understandable logic behind the way souls behave after death and turns everything into whatever. Ishida is one of the last members of his kind, until he isn’t since most of them are alive. He then becomes Ichigo’s rival because he hates soul reapers even though Ichigo is not a soul reaper. He’s half of everything. Then Ishida shows off his power in public which would attract the wrath of the soul reapers. For someone who was all alone and was staying hidden all this time, this doesn’t make any sense. Neither did the whole killing the soul along with the Hollow. If souls can die then how are new souls created? What about those artificial souls such as Con? Do they count? It is never explained. And neither was the Hollow bait Ishida used for summoning hundreds of Hollows. If it’s that easy to lure the monsters then why don’t they go to a secluded place so they can kill them all instead of constantly running after each one of them individually? Basically Ishida made power creep the new focus and ruined the strong characterization everyone was getting so far. Up until now there were no power levels and every single Hollow was taking up a whole arc while having its own backdrop and personality. The people it was interacting with were also getting fleshed out. Out of nowhere all that are thrown to the trash. Now there are power levels, and everyone resorts to power ups as a fix to any problem. And they do it with resolve, a word that ends up being a copout for not having to think of a smart way to win in a fight against a stronger opponent. This is also where Hollows stopped having personality and became one-dimensional monsters that exist to be killed without a second thought. No more sad backdrops for each one of them and the people they interacted with. Now they just kill them by the dozens like they are nothing, as if they completely forgot they were once people who are unable to move to the next life. None of that shit matters anymore, Ishida kills them completely, meaning they don’t go the afterlife because even their soul dies, and nobody gives a damn about it. And you know what else was killed completely? The chance to flesh out the dozens of the students at Ichigo’s school who never got an arc of their own. They remained background decorations and were never important for anything. Because who gives a shit about characterization when you can have a Dragonball clone that is all about mindless power creep? Just to get a taste of how bad the power creep became, Ichigo who up until now was having trouble with one Hollow at a time, out of nowhere is now powerful enough to damage a Menos Grande, which is basically thousands of Hollows fused into one being. A few chapters later Rukia’s brother comes to take her back and completely owns Ichigo, because he’s as powerful as tens of thousands of Hollows. This will keep on happening, for every character without ever having the gravity and drama of the early fights. A welcoming change is how now there is a long term objective that is not something as vague as protecting your friends. Ichigo has to find a way to go to Soul Society for saving Rukia. It’s something that has urgency, since there is a time limit, and the enemy is not a random Hollow that goes away in a couple of chapters. Plus it’s about saving your waifu who depends on you to the point she sleeps in your closet, and who gives you cool superpowers that allow you to turn to a samurai with a huge sword that cuts monsters to pieces and shit. She obviously means more to the audience than random people who don’t give you any of that empowerment fantasy trash. Then follows a training arc where Ichigo has to learn how to turn to a soul reaper without being dependent on Rukia’s spiritual power. It’s necessary for the plot, but it’s otherwise as boring as any other training arc that freezes the plot. It’s not the worst type of training though since it has good aspects to it. There are a few things going on at the same time for spicing things up, such as showing what is going on at Soul Society. There is supposed to be tension since the training might kill the protagonist. It is also not your typical gymnastics type of training. Ichigo has to control his spiritual power through his mental fortitude, which is closer to facing his fears than making his muscles bigger. The training had a metaphysical aspect to it, especially when he goes to his inner world to hear the name of his sword. There was depth and meaning to all that shit. The problem is, it boiled down to the usual resolve copout. As long as you have resolve everything is fine, and since the protagonist is half everything and has infinite amounts of that, he overcomes every challenge in a quick and simple way. Thus once again we see how Kubo had style but not good storytelling. He was making cool shit that had a visual meaning, but didn’t care about the actual procedure of how they would play out. He just had his characters really wanting to do something, and then doing it without any actual tactic or brains. During the early part of Soul Society Kubo attempted to have adventure and world building. In retrospect it didn’t amount to anything since no matter what he did to flesh out the setting of the afterlife he never did something with it. So, people who are existing (not living, since they are already dead) outside the walls are poor and are waiting for their number so they can move on to… what? Reincarnation? Why is there limited space in the afterlife? Why is poverty and hunger still a thing when you are a soul? What happens if you die in the afterlife? These things which are supposed to be building up a theme of social inequality are not going to be used anywhere. Kubo threw them in there and then forgot about them. Thus the only thing you end up remembering from this early part is Ichigo using his big phallic weapon for easily overpowering the gatekeeper’s bigger phallic weapon. Something-something social injustice, but did you see how cool Ichigo is with his sword? Holy shit, I want to be cool like him. It’s not like there was nothing else going on that could count as memorable. It’s just that it felt like random ideas for the sake of it. There’s a pig rider gang whose leader is a firework maker who has a huge canon that can blast you into Soul Society is you are holding a sphere that generates a force field around you. What does any of that have to do with the afterlife? Or with the early story ghosts that kill people? It’s random shit you expect to find in a fantasy series set in feudal Japan, not in the afterlife. And what’s the point of being there if they are shown and are then forgotten? This is why you can’t appreciate anything other than transforming swords. It’s the only theme you were constantly getting and wasn’t forgotten immediately. So enjoy Ichigo fighting a bald guy with a transforming sword and ignore all the shit that happened before with the pigs and the fireworks and the canons and the magic spheres. Hell, you should even ignore the environment. Over here we see Kenpachi walking and getting lost in the streets of Soul Society. If only he could fly so walls wouldn’t stand in his way. If only everybody could fly so they could find the intruders right away and wouldn’t have to chase after them for so many pages. Oh wait, they can actually do that. It’s just that Kubo wasn’t yet bored of drawing backgrounds and wanted to fill the afterlife with pigs and fireworks and canons and magic sphere so he won’t do anything with them. You know what else you should ignore? Every ally in Ichigo’s team. Because they are all useless and you can remove them without changing the plot. Ichigo didn’t need them for winning in any of the fights. There was no teamwork going on here since every fight was always a duel. They were just there because they had an arc in the past and got a power up which they had to use somehow for prolonging the arc with useless secondary fights that you might as well call them filler. Unless of course having an excuse to show off the transforming swords of minor Soul Reaper lieutenants counts as important world building or some bullshit. Or if you are a pretentious overthinker and you can claim every single one of those fights had a deep meaning that led to important character development for minor Soul Reaper lieutenants that never mattered. It’s another case of bad planning, since Kubo didn’t know what to do with the characters he was creating. And boy, did he create a lot. A dozen divisions with at least 5 named characters in each one. How can you possibly give them all significance if the plot is linear and comes down to duels? Kubo did such a poor job he didn’t even add Kon and Don Kanonji in the rescue team, despite giving them their own arcs. He left them to rot as comic relief back in Karakura and never did anything with them. He was too busy with thinking the shape of the transforming sword every unimportant character he was introducing will have. Talk about priorities. Bleachtards will claim that Bleach is not plot-centric but rather character-centric. It is not about stuff moving forward since the story is fairly simple and linear. What makes it stand out is the psychology of its characters and how they are thinking in an otherwise simple plot. There is for example a whole segment where Ichigo is fighting his evil side while time on the outside is frozen. In practice it was just an excuse for giving the protagonist an instant power up for winning in a duel. Instead of just getting one with resolve, which is the number one copout for winning in every fight, Kubo created a whole inner battle where Ichigo has to defeat himself for surpassing his limits. It is not Shakespeare but it’s definitely a creative way for giving someone a sudden power up. It’s not as lazy as simply saying “Sorry but I have to defeat you because I am the protagonist.” Which actually happens in the next arc because Kubo got bored of his own shit. Another major element that was making Soul Society engaging was the mysterybait. Everyone was constantly on the edge, either because the day of execution was getting closer, or because there was a traitor amongst the captains who was constantly manipulating everyone and killing high-ranked officials. Who could it be and how can he be so powerful? The constant stress of time running out and the traitor manipulating everyone as they are wasting their power on fighting each other instead of teaming up against the real enemy was creating a very compelling and thrilling atmosphere. It’s something that was missing in the next arc and yet another proof of Kubo getting bored of his own shit. Although I am praising the atmosphere of this arc, the writing was always shit. Aside from all the wasted ideas and the forgotten characters, Ichigo gets away with being arrested. Despite having orders to kill or capture the intruders, Yachiru does not arrest him when he falls unconscious. She walks away with Kenpachi and leaves Ichigo behind to be rescued by Yoroichi. It’s obvious plot armor and Kubo attempts to make the reader not think about it with fan service when Yoroichi stands butt naked before Ichigo. After you are too horny to think straight Ichigo flies right away to Rukia with a gizmo that was conveniently introduced in the same chapter. He was running around for dozens of chapters fighting enemies in every corner without managing to get to the prison, and then in a couple of pages he flies to Rukia just like that. Thank goodness nobody else was flying in order to stop him. Because nobody can fly in this story… until everybody can, because Kubo doesn’t care about writing. Kubo’s horrible writing continues with Yoroichi air-walking all the way to where Ichigo is in a few seconds. Meaning that she could always get to Rukia, very easily and without needing a gismo for flying. This entire arc could be over in a few pages if she could simply air-walk to the prison and rescue Rukia. Also, Ichigo going there to save Rukia is rendered completely useless, since he is immediately taken away by Yoroichi. Which is the second time it happened in a span of a few chapters and none of the captains can do anything about it. Basically she’s plot armor so Ichigo will be saved no matter how many times he gets himself into trouble. Then Ichigo trains to get yet another powerup, also in a span of a few chapters and again none of the captains can do anything about it. What’s that you are saying? The plot repeats too much? Well get used to it because going in circles is what Bleach is all about. Meanwhile his friends who offer absolutely nothing to the plot get captured by the captains and nobody comes to save them because they are not the super special protagonist. By the way, some of the captains are even worse than the Hollows they are supposed to be protecting the world from. Why the shit were they allowed to have so much authority when they are even worse than the problem they are tasked to solve? Because this way nobody is outright good or bad you might think, but the truth is Kubo was just making creepy shit for the edgelords. The fans definitely didn’t care, since they were preoccupied with the psychology and the symbolism behind every duel, instead of the economics of Soul Society. That is why one of the captains performs horrible human experiments and kills his own soldiers over nothing, and the rest of the captains don’t give a shit. What you are supposed to care about is Ishida facing the sadistic murderer of his grandfather and thus this fight turns into revengeporn for something bad that turned him into the shinigami-hater he is today. Oh, that sounds important and tied to his character, it’s so psychological and symbolic. Let’s completely overlook the astronomically low probability of Ishida from all the places in the cosmos conveniently meets the person who did bad things to him right here, right now. Let’s instead focus on how cool he looks when he gets a sudden power up with his resolve and how he becomes far more powerful than a captain without having to train for centuries. And no, that is not a broken ability because he can only be so powerful once and then he will lose all his powers forever. That’s right, there is a huge backlash for becoming so powerful. He loses his powers permanently. And obviously I am joking, because he gets them back soon afterwards. Did you honestly expect Kubo to have consistency? Anyways, the day of execution comes and the Soul Reapers are split between those who want to save Rukia and those who want to execute her. Why would half of them disobey orders so casually when they were supposed to be doing their job without problems for centuries is not something you should bother thinking about, since Kubo didn’t think about it either. What matters is a civil war erupting and everyone showing his resolve. And by that I mean releasing a lot of bankais because it all comes down to power ups. The power scalers went nuts in this part, making elaborate calculations and 10 page analyses on who is stronger than who while being really hyped up for even more bankai reveals. Let’s completely ignore the fact that there is absolutely no consistency in the power scaling and everyone is as strong as the plot wants them to be at a given moment. Ichigo for example became more powerful than one million soul reapers in just a few days, instantly making every non-captain who is supposed to be training for centuries into a complete fodder. Also, this is where bankais become very trivial because you get so many of them at the same time. The portion of the story when they were rare and special is over since hereon they become like the super saiyan transformation. A casual thing you expect everyone to have all the time and all at once. And here is the moment everyone expected to see for a long time. Ichigo with a bankai, saving his woman and being a complete badass who easily overpowers everyone. Symbolic fights and character depth my ass. This was always the main appeal of Bleach. Ichigo’s personality never goes any deeper than ‘protect friends’ and the fights are always won because the characters have resolve. Anyways, a whole bunch of chapters pass and all you get is people releasing bankais and fighting for a few pages. Nobody dies, most duels are left inconclusive, and eventually the mastermind behind this civil war reveals his evil plan. At that point in time the entire anime community went nuts with the reveal since nobody saw it coming and everyone considered Aizen to be the smartest bad guy of all times for staging his own death and then tricking everyone into fighting each other. But if you look at the reveal with a more critical eye then you know it was bullshit. His brilliant plan is just hypnosis nobody knew about or could counter. Meaning he didn’t actually do something smart for fooling everyone, he just brainwashed them into fighting one another and there was nothing they could do to stop him. It also means all that fuss about every captain fighting for a different reason and having his own way of doing things ends up being a waste of time since nobody had free will the whole time. The ideological conflicts they were fighting over meant nothing since they were all puppets behaving however Kubo wanted them. He never thought of an actually smart plot that will lead to a superb reveal since mind control is a lazy copout that any incompetent writer can use for making his characters to act however he wants them instead of how they would normally behave. Hey, is that Attack on Titan I see crying in the distance? In the longrun this reveal everyone was so exited about actually harmed the narrative since the plot stopped being a grey conflict of interests amongst a group of powerful warriors. It became a generic black and white story about an obvious bad guy everyone needs to stop fighting and team up against. It’s why the same twist is garbage even in Black Clover when it was revealed a devil was manipulating the elves the whole time. A good plot twist changes the story into something better, not something worse. And that’s exactly what happened here, the plot became even worse than it was already. It’s why everyone agrees the ending of Soul Society was the peak of Bleach and everything that came afterwards was going from bad to worse. You see it even before the Soul Society arc ends. Aizen mentions a macguffin that was never shown or mentioned before yet was supposed to be inside Rukia the whole time and nobody could see or sense it. And then he opens a dimensional rift that magically makes him untouchable, which is again supposed to be an ability all the captains know about, yet was never shown or mentioned before. Aizen’s masterplan comes down to zero foreshadowing and magic nobody can do something about. This is not smart. It’s a load of shit. Immediately after the Soul Society arc ends Kubo decides to devalue the special powers of everyone even more. He already did it with the Bankais by making them a common sight and now repeats the same with Ichigo’s hollow power. It used to be one of a kind up until now but as soon as the Arrankar and the Vizard get introduced it becomes just another thing you expect to see all the time. The asspulls continue with Ishida having a father, although he was supposed to be the last of his kind, who came out of nowhere and is capable to give him back the powers he lost, although the damage was supposed to be permanent. Do you want even more asspulls? Out of nowhere Ichigo’s dad is revealed to be a Soul Reaper. Meaning Ichigo is now half human, half hollow and half shinigami. And it won’t stop there, more halves will be added later on and will make him even less of a relatable average teenager with average teenager problems like you. That was his greatest appeal according to the fans of the show. Well, you can now forget all that shit, he was special all along. Do you want even more devaluing? Grand Fisher was the only hollow that escaped Ichigo and which had a direct relation to him for killing his mother. A rematch between them would bring catharsis to the event that traumatized him so much. Yet all we get is his father casually killing Grand Fisher and the whole thing is never brought up again. It’s like Ichigo got over the death of his mother out of screen. Well done, Kubo, you sure know how to handle the psychological issues your fanboys are praising you for. The devaluing doesn’t stop there as the Arrankar keep attacking in waves after that point, making even them a common sight that has no value. Despite constantly saying they have the spiritual pressure of a Menos Grande, just the fact that there are so many of them, constantly doing the same shit of opening a dimensional zipper for attacking Karakura, then everyone feeling their pressure and rushing to fight them with transforming swords makes them lose their appeal. That Gillian from the first part of the story had a far more threatening presence just because there was only one of them around. And if you think the devaluing stops here, it doesn’t, because when these two specific Arrankar appeared it felt like a complete rehash of the Saiyan invasion in Dragonball. It’s literally Vegeta and Nappa doing the exact same shit. The very themes of Bleach get devalued that way. Remember when the story was about people having regrets over death? When one ghost with issues was chasing one human with issues? Where the shit did that theme go? These ghosts have no regrets from the time they were alive. Ichigo and his friends no longer have issues with their mortality. Nothing feels like urban horror anymore. Nappa… eh, I mean Yami eats the souls of a thousand background characters without thinking about it twice and the whole event is instantly forgotten. How can you fuck up so bad to the point where a single human with personality getting attacked by a weak ghost has more gravity than a thousand nobodies getting killed by a super ghost? This is where Bleach devalued itself so much it lost its identity completely and became an imitation of Dragonball Z. Anyways Yami beats the Z Warriors and then Goku comes to save the day with his Bankaioken. But he is not good at it, although he had no problem when he fought the captains in Soul Society. Thus Yoroichi has to jump in to plot armor him in the exact same way for the third time. Is the repetition making you feel bored? Too bad, because it’s far from over. Then the devaluing continues even further when Rukia goes back to school and brings along a bunch of Souls Reapers who also pose as students. This takes away even her special status as the only person who was doing that. Oh, and needless to say nobody mentions the thousands of people that dropped dead yesterday. It’s like it never happened. Yes, they can erase the memories of people so they won’t remember ghost attacks, but how do you make them forget thousands of people who were interacting with them on a daily basis? Oh, well, who gives a shit? Here’s a creatively bankrupt rehash of the beginning of the manga where there is a lot of silly slapstick comedy and Rukia explaining the power levels of the Arrankar with her horrible drawings. True to his status as the troll king, Kubo fools the audience to think Ulqiorra is part of the highest ranked Arrankars and that Aizen has 20 of them, twice than the remaining captains, and far more powerful than any of them. Like most of the things he said, this is proven to be lie, since even Soul Reaper lieutenants can kick the living hell out of the top Arrankar with zero casualties. Next up is more boring Arrankar attacks where the only thing that happens is the lieutenants releasing their bankais and easily overpowering the bad guys who were hyped up to be super powerful. There’s no tactic in how they do it, much less depth in what is going on. There is no tragedy to deal with, as was the case with the Hollows in the beginning of the story, and there is no clash of ideals as was the case with the civil war during Soul Society. It’s just a bunch of battle-frenzy freaks fighting each other while laughing. Because it’s fun, there’s nothing more to it. Bleach became a Dragonball Z clone where everyone is fighting for the sake of fighting. And sure, you can like the manga even as mindless action, but it’s not even consistent with its own rules. Why the shit don’t the Arrankar know about the extent of the powers of the Soul Reapers and they have to research about them? Their leaders are ex captains who were living with the other captains for centuries. They should already know every bankai and power level just from that. Why do they make it seem like Aizen doesn’t know shit? What happened to his god-level intellect? And why don’t the Arrankar use that magical barrier which makes them immune to every attack? That’s what Aizen used to instantly escape and he was both surrounded and apprehended at the time. Yet look at these champs here. They want to escape and they don’t use the barrier. They are not even hindered by being surrounded or apprehended, they just behave like they don’t know about the barrier. Oh my, it’s almost like the superpowers work in whatever way Kubo felt like at the time instead of having some sort of consistency. At least there is some consistency in how Ichigo is constantly plot armored every time he’s in trouble. For the fourth time someone jumps in and prevents his death. It’s not Yoroichi for yet another time, it’s a former captain, but it still counts as plot armor. There’s absolutely no reason to think Ichigo can ever die when the same shit keeps happening and not even the bad guys want to kill him. Fuck you, Kubo. Here comes the part where Ichigo trains to control his Hollow side, and it’s so one-note. Aside from how it’s needed so he won’t go berserk, after so many similar training sessions it doesn’t mean much. How many times can Kubo make it seem like ‘Ichigo will become a Hollow if he fails’ before it becomes a cliché? By the way he’s now half human, half Soul Reaper, half Hollow. If that doesn’t make any sense, welcome to Bleach. Then comes the part where Aizen intends to destroy Karakura, something which doesn’t have much tension. Since the Soul Society arc began the focus shifted from the average people in Ichigo’s hometown to whatever the captains are doing. The average reader just doesn’t care about the people of Karakura after they have been neglected for so long. Can you blame him when you see an Arrancar eating the souls of hundreds of people and the whole thing is instantly forgotten as if it never happened? If Kubo doesn’t care about them how can the audience care? Then the Arrancar attack for the 57th time so good luck giving a shit when Kubo keeps repeating the exact same plot over and over again. The Captains fight them for yet another time and at least they are not winning for once. I mean, nobody dies but at least they make it seem like the Espada can’t be beaten by a Captain. This is proven to be lie later on because Kubo is a troll. He’s also a liar since he promises to the reader a rematch between ice boy and gay tentacle here, and he never does it. The whole thing is forgotten right away the same way Ichigo never got a rematch with Grand Fisher. Also, everything is according to Aizen’s plan even when his men are winning for a change and he orders them to retreat exactly when they are about to kill the Captains. Plot armor anyone? It’s not like he needs the Captains in his plan. They come back later on, kick the living shit out of his Arrancar, and it’s still somehow all part of his plan. Anyways, the bad guys kidnap Orihime for her power of rejecting reality and substituting her own. It’s something so broken no story should have because it ruins all sense of logic and balance. Not that Kubo had any of that, but introducing such a reality warping ability makes everything to be whatever even more than they were already. If anything is possible then nothing matters. And yes, she doesn’t spam her power for the sake of having a plot, but holy shit was it a mistake. Whether it’s Nanika in Hunter X Hunter or Eri in My Hero Academia they always fuck up everything with how stupid powerful reality warping powers are. Anyways, Ichigo hears about the kidnap so he does the closest thing he has to a motivation. Rushing to save his waifu. In case you missed it it’s a rehash of the Rukia rescue mission, only far worse because the Arrancar don’t have the elaborate interactions of the Captains. Plus they become irrelevant as soon as they are defeated. Plus, just like it happened with Soul Society there was no point in Ichigo’s friends coming along since they achieved nothing and didn’t help him in some way. They just separate right away and have solo fights. It’s just a lazy way for Kubo to waste dozens upon dozens of worthless chapters on forgettable fights with Aizen’s minions. Whether it’s the Sound ninjas in Naruto or the Ginyu Force in Dragonball these guys don’t matter. You can skip them and nothing will change. And boy were there a lot of missed opportunities for many of the fights to be significant. Rukia faces an Espada who has the face of the person she loved. He could have manipulated her into turning against the others, or to perhaps open a portal for Soul Society to be invaded. There could have been a big arc just about the two of them coming to terms with what they have become or how they changed over the years. But no, Kubo didn’t bother to do any sort of planning ahead. She just one-shots the bad guy with resolve and that’s the end of it. Wanna talk about another major missed opportunity? How about the entire rescue mission? What exactly did Ichigo and his friends accomplish by attacking Aizen’s base? They didn’t manage to save Orihime or defeat the Espada and the Captains eventually arrive to both save them and to defeat the Espada. Meaning despite their power ups and dozens of chapters of running towards Orihime, Ichigo and his friends accomplished nothing. This by the way reveals another big problem with the manga, which is the complete randomness of the fighting choreography. Everything is possible therefore nothing has gravity. Starting with how the shit did the captains teleport there all of a sudden? Even before that how did Rukia and the Espada appear out of nowhere? And in general every fight has people teleporting out of nowhere whenever Kubo feels like it. Every attack is pretty much someone teleporting behind the opponent and slashing his shoulder. How is everyone moving in this damn manga? That’s not choreography, that’s a five year old smashing toys and making silly noises. And I know, Bleach is a rule of cool action manga that doesn’t need to make sense. If that is so, why are so many overanalyzing the fights and saying how deep and psychological they are? And don’t get me started on how the power levels don’t make any sense. How the shit is Ichigo losing to the Espada while the captains can defeat them? He could defeat the captains even before he got his latest power up and now they own him? And why the shit are the Espada losing to the captains when it had been established earlier that they were far stronger than them? And even if they weren’t stronger than them why don’t they know it? Aizen is their leader. He would know, he was among them for centuries. Why don’t they know every power and trick of the captains and look really surprised when they see their bankais? I’ll tell you why, because Kubo doesn’t give a shit. You know what else he doesn’t care about? Injuries. Whenever somebody gets slashed, usually in the shoulder, it doesn’t matter. A fight is over when someone is cool enough and releases a Bankai, not when he has injured his enemy enough times. Ichigo and Kenpachi are prime examples of this since no matter how many slashes they receive, they just keep going like it’s not something important. And sure, they have instant healing abilities from Orihime and Nel, but even without them, Kubo just forgets the injuries they have received. Anyways, after this mess an even bigger mess happens when the remaining Espada invade Karakura town. It sounds so simple at first. All they have to do is go to a town, and create a key for invading Soul Society. Then Kubo wanted to make it seem like there are tactics in his manga. Turns out that town is fake. Also there are 4 pillars you have to destroy so the real town will appear or something. And Aizen gets trapped behind some fire that he can’t pass for some reason despite being the most powerful in the world. Why didn’t they use that ability for trapping him back in Soul Society? Why isn’t he using that Menos Grande shield for escaping? Did he forget about it? Oh, and let’s not overlook Aizen’s amazing plan of trapping four of the captains back at his base by sacrificing seven of his Espada and 95% of his soldiers. What an amazing ratio. Kubo did it again, Bleach is a really smart manga. The fake Karakura Town battle continues to prove how incompetent Kubo is as a writer. First he creates way too many characters that are not relevant to the plot. Then he thinks they are going to be relevant if they get to fight someone. And then instead of having most of the minor characters using teamwork for taking out a powerful Espada, he just creates dozens of minor Arrancar that exist just for fighting a minor Soul Reaper and to then disappear from the plot. The result is hundreds of chapters where nobodies are fighting nobodies and the plot going nowhere. The bleachtards will claim these fights are actually pretty deep because the soul reapers are facing their dark counterparts. Ah yes, a staple of Bleach is how everyone is always conveniently fighting someone who is like him but evil. If he is a scientist, he fights a scientist. If he’s a berserker, he fights a berserker, and so on. They spend most of the fight in talking about their emotions and ideals and the good guy always wins in the end because he has more resolve. It sounds like it’s smart, but down to it it’s completely artificial. Why do they always accidentally fight their evil counterparts? And how does that affect the plot again? Oh, that’s right, it doesn’t, it’s a waste of time. Also that means every Arrancar exists only to be a dark counterpart and not its own character, which is why it disappears from the plot as soon as it’s defeated. Well done Kubo, your entire cast for this arc is all fodders. Meanwhile, the power ceiling has been reached for yet another time so Kubo had to think of something for taking things to the next level. What he came up with was as lazy as Super Saiyan 2. Just the second stage of a bankai for Soul Reapers or the second transformation for an Arrancar. And the funny thing is, every power up so far had a psychological explanation. Ichigo would always go into a dream state where the avatars of the sword and his hollow side would explain how you can attain the new level. There would be some sort of training and it would take at least a few days for managing to get it right. The second stage of bankais and transformations has no explanation and needs no training. Everyone has it and it just happens on its own, meaning it’s more of that cheap excuse for winning because you have resolve. That translates to this new stage having absolutely no foreshadowing before it happens. All of a sudden everyone has it and was just hiding it all this time for no reason other than dumb spectacle. Haha you thought this was the peak of my power? This isn’t even my final form, and more shit like this one. Oh, do you remember the time when bankais were special the same way the super saiyan transformation was special? Well fuck you, now we get to devalue them even further with extra stages that everyone just had all along. The battles between captains and top Espada continue and the trolling never stops. Starting with how everyone can now hover in the air, something they couldn’t do before. If only they had done that back in Soul Society instead of running around like idiots for dozens of chapters. Some defend it as if it is possible here because it’s fake Karakura. But that is not an explanation since it’s made from spirit particles from Soul Society where nobody could fly. The only explanation is Kubo getting bored of drawing walls so he had them up in the air. Now the backgrounds can be empty spaces and he can complete his weekly chapter in a fraction of the time it was taking him before. Too bad people loved his detailed paneling and got bored of his huge and usually empty backgrounds. Then come the bullshit wins against the top Espada, which shouldn’t be possible since they are supposed to be stronger than any captain. One of them gets defeated by turning his own decay power against him, which is like poisoning a snake by making it bite its tongue. They try to make it seem like it’s something super smart, but it really isn’t. Anyone would die if you teleport a corrosive bomb in his guts. It’s not something that works only with this Arrankar. Not even teleportation means something anymore, since everyone is now teleporting instead of running. The other two also get defeated in lame ways. One of them with a bankai we had no build up as to what is its power and it came down to a child’s game about colors of all things. The other one was killed by Aizen who got bored and wanted to get rid of it, since he didn’t really need any of them. He was strong enough to defeat all the captains by himself so what the hell was the point of creating the Arrankar? I remember the community’s reaction to this, they were all really salty with how they waited so many years to see the top Espada kicking the living shit out of the Soul Reapers for a change, and they got this bullshit. 100% casualties for the bad guys, 0% for the good guys, and Aizen didn’t really need any help from anyone. All the fights could have been avoided and nothing would change. Obviously the king of trolls couldn’t stop there, he just had to keep asspulling even more bullshit on top of the already huge pile of bullshit. Such as a non-numerical Espada that was conveniently there just for blocking the powers of the strongest captain, or Espada 10 who when he transforms he becomes Espada 0. Meaning, he’s more powerful than the ones who were with Aizen, yet he stayed behind in Hueco Mundo with the supposed trapped captains. So how do they defeat the most powerful creature under Aizen? Out of screen, that’s how. Kubo didn’t even bother to show it. The plot and the fights have no structure anymore, they are random ideas with no build up or choreography. They mention something they will do and it happens just because they said it and not because Kubo did the slightest thing to prepare it properly. Despite that, he kept doubling down on that by making Aizen to repeat “It’s all part of my plan”. It was enough to fool thousands of fanboys to believe it’s not random bullshit, it’s all part of a masterplan. When there can’t be a plan because he doesn’t plan ahead. “All your battles were part of my plan”. No, they weren’t, you are just saying it for giving the illusion of order in the complete chaos that is the actual plot. After that Aizen goes to Karakura where all he has to do is blow up the place. But he doesn’t because he wants to provoke Ichigo into getting another power up. He changed his plan just like that and wastes his time killing nobodies in town, which of course will never be mentioned ever again because Kubo doesn’t give a fuck. In the meantime Ichigo trains in the space between the two worlds, where very conveniently time passes a lot faster. Not an asspull for a cheap way to train fast, it was part of Aizen’s plan. Also Aizen lied about the way the magic gizmo works. It’s part of his plan. Also he lied about needing Orihime to unlock its powers. It’s part of his plan as well. Also Gin was lying the whole time about his ability. Not an asspull for backstabbing Aizen, that was part of his plan too. I can keep going forever with this, everything Kubo does is an asspull and he expects us to think he had it planned to be like that since the very beginning. You know, the same way we are supposed to believe Luffy’s fruit was never rubber, or the titans never wiped out most of humanity in Attack on Titan. It isn’t a retcon, we just have to believe they were lying before and now they speak the truth. Until the next time they lie even about that. Anyways, as if Aizen wasn’t powerful enough already, he digivolves into a human-sized condom and then into Butterflyzed where he is as strong as his design is stupid. No, seriously, these new looks of him were memed to death. Then Ichigo comes and he is also stupid strong after fighting a fusion of his sword and hollow avatars in a sunken dreamscape. Don’t ask what the shit do all that mean, it’s just random cool ideas and you shouldn’t overthink them like the fanboys do. Then they have a stupid duel that has no choreography or tactics, it’s just brute force and one-liners. Then Aizen loses his fight, which I am sure it was part of his plan, and Ichigo loses his powers forever, which is of course a lie since he gets them back a bit later. He is taken back to his normal life where Rukia tells him goodbye and leaves forever, which is of course a lie since she comes back a bit later. Everyone in the audience gives a slow clap for the lukewarm finale, since it has to be the finale. The final villain is defeated and there is nothing left for the plot to continue. Oh look, another troll by Kubo. The story continues with the Fullbringers, an arc nobody gave two fucks about. Kubo and the few remaining fanboys of the show kept on saying this is a very important part of the manga because we get back to basics and we see the heroes living a normal life. Yeah, because that is why people were reading Bleach for. It’s not bankais and asspulls and Aizen having everything as part of his plan, it’s slice of nothing happens. Remember when they were saying the same shit about everyone showing their rooms in My Hero Academia? Yeah we really care about the rooms of all these nobodies the creator didn’t give a fuck about, doing absolutely nothing of interest. Hundreds of them died by the Arrankar and they are not even mentioned. We really wanna see more of them doing nothing and not of the captains and their bankais blowing up shit. 50 chapters pass and the only thing that happens is Ichigo trying to get his bankai back by playing games with some nobodies. Something which shouldn’t be possible when he said he lost it forever. I mean, what else can Ichigo do after he lost his powers forever? It can’t be to give up because that would end the manga exactly when it should have ended. Kubo had to keep making money, that was not an option, so what else could Ichigo do? Ask the Soul Reapers to give them back? That is not possible, since they left forever. Right, Kubo? Also Ichigo really needs to get his bankai back so he can protect his friends. Because his friends can’t protect themselves. It’s not like one of them can negate reality and undo every negative consequence there is. Including the event where Ichigo lost his bankai so he can get it back. But we are not supposed to think about that, do we Kubo? Anyways, Ichigo finally gets his powers back by becoming half-human, half-Soul Reaper, half-hollow and half-fullbringer. If that doesn’t make sense, just remember that you are reading Bleach. So, Ichigo gets another power up but loses it almost instantly when his new friend is revealed to be a liar the whole time and wanted to steal his bankai. Oh, my, another one who lied about who he is and what his powers do. I guess he too is part of Aizen’s plan. Then Rukia appears out of nowhere, although she was never supposed to return, and gives Ichigo’s bankai back, which was supposed to have been lost forever, as soon as his other bankai got stolen by the Fullbringers, who were lying the whole time, and which he wanted for protecting his friends, even when they never needed protection because they can literally reshape reality however they want. And all that shit happens in 50 chapters of complete boredom, but the fanboys insist this arc is amazing because it gives a lot of character development to Ichigo. Said character development is based on him thinking the Soul Reapers would never return as well as the Soul Reapers never saying they would return his powers (which were supposed to be gone forever). So basically this entire arc happened because of a silly misunderstanding. It could have been easily avoided and nothing would have changed, since Ichigo would have gotten his powers back even if the Fullbringers had never talked to him. Kubo at his finest. Then a battle breaks out between the Fullbringers and the Soul Reapers and you expect at least the finale of this bullshit arc will be good because it will have a lot of bankais, the only reason people were reading the manga for. The first fight is between Kenpachi and a guy who has an eye patch. Why does that matter? Because Kenpachi also has an eye patch therefore he has to fight someone with an eye patch, exactly as he did in the previous arc when he fought the Arrankar with an eye patch. Kubo is once again showing us how every fight is deep and symbolic by constantly making the enemies to be evil counterparts who exist just to be defeated because there is no thought put into them besides being evil counterparts. So Kenpachi fights the eye patch guy and the fight lasts one panel. He instantly defeated him and said what the entire fandom thinks about this arc. It’s boring. There is no Aizen, or tension, or charismatic villains, or fights to give two shits about. The entire arc wouldn’t exist if a single Sour Reaper had bothered to say “We will give you back your bankai, don’t trust the Fullbringers”. And despite Kubo not giving a shit the fanboys kept defending him no matter what. The fights with the Fullbringers continue and they are all super lame. One gets stronger by making her boots dirty, one traps his enemies in a videogame, one fights with teddy bears. They all suck and they all get easily defeated, so let’s skip the crap and move to the next and final arc of the manga, which is about the Quincy. You know who I am talking about, those people who were completely wiped out by the superior in power Soul Reapers. It makes complete sense why they have a huge army when they were completely wiped out, why they can steal the bankai of the captains when we never saw such a thing, and why they can use other weapons besides bows with no build up to such a thing, or with no explanation as to how they were hiding all this time when there are thousands of them and they have strong auras. What do you expect Kubo to do at this point? Waste his time in trying to make sense of the bullshit he has created? Can’t you see he is busy thinking of bankais? Anyways, what stands out in this arc is how easily someone can die. So far they would only be getting slashes in the shoulder and nobody among the good guys would die, but now they drop like flies in a couple of seconds. Does this make the arc better than the previous ones? No it doesn’t. It raises the stakes but that aside none of these people matter or have any presence. There’s a point where they say the Soul Reapers murdered tens of thousands of innocent people in Soul Society just so the balance between the worlds won’t collapse because of all the Hollows the Quincy are killing. You never see the slaughter, it’s mentioned in a hurry and is then forgotten, just like the hundreds of people who died in Karakura Town or the hundreds of thousands of souls that suddenly entered Soul Society by killing so many Arrankar at once. You are never made to care if someone lives or dies, or where he ends up when he dies. Not even Kubo does. Plus, the fact that they die so easily now and never in the previous arcs feels more like a sudden lifting of plot armor and only because it’s the last arc. It feels artificial in both cases. Plus as I said they don’t matter so it sucks either way. Anyways, the Quincy win mostly by stealing the bankai of others. Which is counterintuitive since at this point people care more about the bankais than the characters using them. Kubo took away the only thing that his dwindling fanbase still liked. But it’s okay, they can’t steal Ichigo’s bankai because he’s the protagonist and thus an exception to every rule there is. One said exception is the number of different bankais he has gained throughout the story. Like, holy shit, he can fill a storehouse with their number. And since bankais matter more than the characters using them, with this amount he’s easily the deepest character of them all. Then there is Kenpachi who doesn’t have a bankai yet, so he just wins with brute force. And he does such a good job Kubo describes 3 of his victories in a single page, since who is reading Bleach for the action? We are reading it for the bankais, and if there are no bankais in these fights they might as well be summarized in a few panels. In case it wasn’t obvious, Kubo is bored out of his mind at this point. He doesn’t bother with motivations or build ups or one-liners, not even with fights. He just kills people we never cared about in seconds and thinks this counts as a good enough reason to continue reading his garbage. Someone who got more than a few seconds of a fight was Yamamoto. Kubo was really stretching the shit he could do with his bankai. But even he lost to the new bad guy because he attacked a lookalike and not the real thing. How are we let to know he is the lookalike? Why, by explaining it as it happens. No need to have build up, development, and pay off. Just asspull an explanation exactly when you need it and call it a day. Also known as it was all part of Aizen’s plan. Kubo doesn’t have to bother with that thing called proper storytelling. He showed you Yamamoto’s bankai, the only thing his fanbase cares about, so his work is done. With Yamamoto out of the picture, Ichigo becomes Soul Society’s chosen one, just because he has immunity to all the tricks of the bad guys. They can’t steal his bankai, they can’t trap him in an energy jail, and the main boss can’t even fight him because Aizen hypnotized him or some shit. The reason for why is that possible is given to us as it happens instead of introducing it or foreshadowing it many chapters ago. In other words, more asspulls by the king of trolls. What follows that battle is a really long downtime where everyone is training to get new bankais, which by the logic of the show’s fanbase means more character development. This is actually a fine way to flesh out many of the characters who up until now were part of families we had never seen and who had various obligations with their families and allies. With so many captains Kubo could have easily made an epic with the complexity of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. But, it was too little too late. Nobody was reading the manga for a complex war epic. They only cared about bankais and explanations for how something works being given as it happens instead of having any buildup. Thus although it fleshed them out it was also out of place this late in the story. Around this time we also find out Ichigo is a half-human, half-Soul Reaper, half-Hollow, half-fullbringer, and half-Quincy. If you somehow haven’t figured it out by now, Kubo is just adding another half in every arc because he can’t think of a better way to give Ichigo more powers without multi classing him all the time. Also the only way for this mess to be excused is by making it all according to Aizen’s plan. There is a flashback that explains how all that shit is possible and it actually makes sense. I mean, the mechanics are bullshit, but the explanation based on the mechanics is logical. With that said, everything came down to Ichigo getting a new bankai, so the whole thing is still an excuse to reveal more transforming swords. After this cool segment we go back to the captains fighting the Quincy who stole their previous bankais. They go as far as literally telling you they are fighting their evil counterparts for yet another time. So much for that war epic and logical explanation for what is going on with Ichigo, Kubo returns to the only thing people care about in this stupid manga. The last 150 chapters are mostly plotless fights between captains and Quincy. They seem a lot, but it’s just Kubo filling every page with a couple of images. Half the time nothing was happening. Just dead space. You can read most chapters under 2 minutes. The fanboys will claim it’s building atmosphere, but what is there to build when nothing has any build up and is discarded as soon as it’s introduced? It’s just whatever crazy idea Kubo had at the moment, introduced and forgotten in minutes. There are zombies, a guy who thinks something and it happens, a chicken angel, and a giant hand that is supposed to belong to a god. Many scenes are gross, deviant, and outright not allowed to be shown on broad daylight television. They will censor and trigger warn the heck out of them in the adaptation. Anyways, the final battle is basically the bad guy changing the future however he feels like it, which means time reset for yet another time, it’s the go to cheap solution for any problem. Until Aizen mind controls him to think he won, yes mind control, the other go to cheap solution for any problem. Then Kubo pulls a new power out of his ass a
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Dec 11, 2010 Not Recommended Preliminary
(430/705 chp)
To start with, Bleach is a fantastic manga to read. Maybe a little cliche with the whole 'save the girl' aspect, but it's still enjoyable. The characters are fun, interact with each other, and you can see their development. It's quite promising. And in the Soul Society arc, it delivers. There's the mission, the new characters, the fights and the plot. I'd recommend reading up til the end of the Soul Society arc to anyone looking for something new to read.
But after that? I say give up. Drop it. There's not much in store other than way too many generic fangirl/boy fodder characters with weak ... personalities and no history. Even the characters you met before this point become pathetic and dull. And the plot? Gone. Oh wait, sorry. There is one - save the girl. There's an original for you. The best part after the Soul Society arc was the Turn Back the Pendulum arc. And that was probably only because it concerned two of my favourite characters. Actually, there's another point - the characters are hideously neglected, especially if they don't rank highly in the popularity polls. The panel-time is skewed and uneven between those that are supposed to be main characters. The artwork is also another point worth making. The amount of wasted panel is astounding. You frequently find a whole page dedicated to an incomprehensible spattering of ink that you're sure is supposed to mean something, yet it really doesn't. It adds to the over-all sloppy, lazy, I-really-don't-care-anymore feel that has become Bleach. Also, for me, the chapter titles became an issue. I felt like breaking things when it got up to "Deicide 23". 23???? That spans three volumes. For nearly six months Kubo was using the same title. Words fail me at this point. I have continued reading up til this point (430), but I honestly don't think I can last any longer. I'm only really continuing in the dying hope that I will get to see my favourite characters again (who haven't been featured for over a year now). I don't find it enjoyable or interesting to read at all, and I get annoyed at myself for going back to it, as it leaves me in a bad mood. It used to be good, but now Bleach is a pathetic excuse for a manga, and should be dropped.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Apr 27, 2020 Not Recommended Funny
It's deeply horrible where this story goes. It start as a interesting story and unfortunately lost his own propose. I mean, Ichigo never has a goal to start with, right? That's how Bleach kills itself from the very beginning. Ichigo has no propose, no goal, not a meaning in his life. He just came across with Rukia some randomly day and gets through Soul Society and the whole thing. As the series goes through, the author tries somehow get a meaning to the story, and end up loses how to guide you into it. It says throughout Internet that Tite Kubo only plans Rukia's rescue
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Arc and that's it, end of the story. But Shounen Jump convinced him to goes on. I dunno if this is entirely true but you've some clues when you think Ichigo is basically a Pokemon thing (HE HAS NO IDEIA WHAT HIS DOING ANYMORE) . I really enjoyed Bleach till the Aizen's fight, and I agree with everyone that's only get worse till the end. I mean, The Blood Thousand War it's supposed to be the grand finale, but doesn't work well. The comedy is good, the characters not so much (only in the beginning he cares about it, the second half he just forget it and that's it). Just sadly how isn't ended up well.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Dec 17, 2023 Not Recommended Funny
BLEACH by Tite Kubo is an absolute travesty of a manga, initially it had potential, but you must remember that potential by definition is not being used.
CHARACTERS: - Due to the sheer size of the cast, many characters receive little to no growth or actual development, this can be seen in Ichigo's friend group as they gradually lose impact and influence as the story goes on, majority of the characters from the major factions like the Soul Society, Wandenreich and Arrancars are simply just one personality trait, contradict themselves later or become useless take for example the Espada and the Arrancars who serve ... as Aizen's army and the antagonists for several arcs only for them to be quickly defeated, have no lasting impact, and Aizen himself even admits they were useless and served no purpose to him. - You could remove Grimmjow, Starrk, Barragan, Hallibel, etc and the story would barely change at all This is the main problem of Bleach, Kubo constantly bloats the cast with characters that have little Return-Of-Investment instead of fleshing out the key cast members. - You have cornball antagonists like Aizen who had more than enough strength to carry out their goals, but constantly undermine them by wasting their time recruiting useless subordinates or giving time for Ichigo and the soul society to get stronger. -These antagonists are supposed to be "master" manipulators and strategists LMAO, what an absolute joke Story: The story of Bleach is not of any regard as Kubo is one of the most unimaginative writers in Shonen Jump as he completely ripped the Soul Society arc and entire Aizen plotline from Gemini Saga of Saint Seiya, and not only that Kubo also rehashes the same arc repeatedly. Each arc follows the same formula of one of Ichigo's friends getting kidnapped/attacked, Ichigo and his remaining friends fighting through a series of "commanders" til they reach the boss, and in each of these fights the good side will get backed to a wall but release a power they never knew they had instead of actually beating the opponent through strategy or worse, the enemy loses through sheer stupidity or plot (Ex: Gremmy, Yhwach). Setting/Worldbuilding: The worldbuilding and setting of BLEACH is an absolute joke as well, it starts off well-grounded but ends up contradicting itself in the later arcs which the most egregious example being the Quincies who were said to have been wiped out to a diaspora until it is later revealed that there is an entire empire which had 0 foreshadowing and reference until now. Or take for example the Soul Society which has been portrayed as a government that regularly experiments on its own citizens, commit genocide, and other corrupt acts. This is a society that is stubborn in keeping traditions which do not work which leads to characters like Aizen who want to change said system into a new one, the story presents Aizen as evil while ignoring the actions of the Soul Society and not providing any meaningful alternative to this system. And you would think that Soul Reapers like Rukia, Renji, and Toshiro who have experienced the corruption first hand would want to change sides, but NOPE. Even at the end of the series they still serve a government that would kill them without any emotion In conclusion, for the amount of time that is required to read Bleach there are much better stories that you could have read which hit the same themes or have the same setting like D-Gray Man or Saint Seiya. 0/100, absolute garbage.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Mar 2, 2024 Not Recommended
Ah Bleach, the most middling of the big three. What can be said about Bleach that hasn't already been said? It's dragged out, repetitive, kind of a rip off of Yu Yu Hakusho, has a bland magic magic system, and Ichigo isn't what most writers would call a compelling character.
So what does it have going for it? It's cool factor? I was a teenager when Bleach was coming out, and managed to miss it at the time, so I don't have any nostalgia for its particular style, but my girlfriend watched it as it was broadcasting, and she just cringes whenever she sees the character ... designs or hears the dialogue now, so I'm not sure how well it's coolness has aged. Story: It's Yu Yu Hakusho. Boy gets spirit powers, fights demonic entities, fights other spirit detectives, etc etc. As for the arcs themselves, they vary wildly in terms of quality. The 1st one (spirit detective): You get introduced to the characters, Ichigo gets his call to action, learns some new skills and eventually Rukia's brother shows up and drags her back to spirit society. It's pretty bland overall, but it's fun for the most part. Some characters like Kon and Ichigo's dad drag it down, but over all the arc is made up of small stories that generally build well off each other. Soul Society: It's in the second arc where cracks begin to form. It's long and it all takes place in a single location that has very little in terms of visual identity. My girlfriend remembered it as being "the part in the maze", and I can't say she's wrong. Volume after volume of fights in the same corridors, with low white walls, fighting characters with samurai swords wearing black robes. It's tedious at best, soul grinding at worst. The plot here is dependent on the leader of the Soul Reapers being a complete moron, an issue that will be exacerbated in later arcs, with him just blindly following edicts from a poorly explained governing committee that he never actually interacts with. Eventually the secret villain is revealed, Ichigo gets a new costume, and Rukia is saved. Hueco Mundo: it's Soul Society....again. They go to hell to save Orihime who was kidnapped, just like Rukia in the last arc. We meet all the Arancarr captains and fight them, just like the Soul Reaper captains in the last arc. Ichigo gets a new costume and power up to beat the guy who kidnapped the girl again. The big bad was Aizen, again (but at least this time his motivations are revealed). This arc is brutally bad. It's a longer version of Soul Society but without the conspiracy plot to occasionally switch up the pacing. So instead it just has more endless fights in sterile white rooms against enemies who all wear white robes (unlike the black robes in Soul Society). This the arc where I had to fully accept that I didn't get what people liked about Bleach. It's style didn't work for me, it's characters were boring, and it's magic system was filled standard shounen powers (if I have to see unlimited blade works in another anime or manga, I'll die.) In the end, Ichigo beats Aizen, loses his powers, and the series wraps up most of its plot points. I was content, not happy, but content that the series was over. "Nope" said my girlfriend, with a sadistic gleam in her eye. "There are two arcs left." "Impossible, the main villain was defeated. Ichigo's character arc sort of finished. Anymore would be pointless." She laughed at my ignorance. "You have roughly 30 more volumes to read." Full bringer arc: Ichigo gets his powers back. Chad's powers get explained (unlike Orihime's powers)....... There's not much else to say about this arc. It was quick at least, so I didn't have time to get bored. It's the second best arc of the series. Thousand Year Blood War: This arc starts so strong. Soul Society gets crushed by Nazi's led by Jesus and fire captain gets killed like a chump in the best fight of the series. And then it keeps going and going, and just repeats the exact same formula of Soul Society and Hueco Mundo. Ichigo gets a new power up and new costume. A black robbed soul reaper fights a white clad Nazi in an empty void, and once that's done another set gets to do the same thing. And then they introduce the way to kill Jesus five chapters before the end. And so Bleach ends on a whimper, much like it's more successful competitor Naruto. Characters: I'm going to focus on main characters and supporting characters who left an impact. For the sake of authenticity, I will use the nomenclature my gf and I use while discussing the series. Ichigo: ichigo suffers in comparison to his equivalents in the other two of the big three by not having much in the way of a goal. Now having a repeatedly stated goal isn't exactly subtle writing, but in media aimed at children it does allow for an effective baseline of characterization. Ichigo starts with a basic goal of avenging his mother, but that plot point is solved without him long after he had stopped being concerned with the average Hollow on earth. As a result, Ichigo comes across as as an incredibly reactive character, being pushed and pulled by the whims of the plot with little agency of his own. He's a bit of a marysue, allowing the audience to imprint their own personality onto him. Aizen: Aizen is a genius manipulator, with his genius predicated on the stupidity of everyone around him. However as the end goal of his plan is to kill God, he is able to fulfill basic anime tropes to a level I found kind of entertaining. Ywhach: Jesus, but he wants to kill God (hey that's what Aizen wanted too). There's not much to his plan, as he and his Nazi cosplayers are just going to brute force their way through Soul Society. But I can't argue that he has presence. His character design really stands out compared to a lot of shounen villains. Chad: deserved better. He had to listen to Ichigo's dumb speech about being persecuted due to his strawberry hair, while being a mixed race person in Japan. Rukia/Orihime: To be honest, I kept forgetting that these two were separate characters. They both exist to get damselled, and beyond that have little identifiable character or impact on the plot. They're both basically the worse version of Sakura from Naruto. Bucket hat: the best mad scientist of the series. And he's got a fun hat. Fire Captain: I love characters that are repeatedly said to be the strongest character in their organizations, and then lose every single conflict they're involved in. He gets beaten by Aizen strategically in Soul Society, physically beaten by him in Heuco Mundo, and then folded by Jesus in thousand year blood war. The guy is pathetic and it's hard to take the Soul Reapers seriously due to their reverence of this moron. Rukia's brother: his Bankai is Unlimited Blade Works. I wonder if people die when they're killed by it. The Soul Reaper Captains: the big guy who thinks bankai are pointless is a stand out, I really feel his vibe. The big dog is definitely a big dog. The guy who dress like samurai had a pretty fun bankai, the children's shadow tag game was very different from the rest of the captains. The ice kid is so forgettable that my girlfriend was convinced I was trying gaslight her about his existence. She had no memory of him whatsoever, and refused to believe she had forgotten a fan favorite character like him. The rest of the captains are there, not much more to say about them. The Arrancar/Quincy Captains: they're the soul reaper captains, but in white and are (debatably) more evil. Most of them are introduced to be killed off in a few chapters, and most of their gimmicks aren't that memorable. The Cat: 10/10 no notes, 2nd best character. Pesche: G.O.A.T. I love him. I read this series for him. I made a mood board that was just images of him. He should've been the lead. I relate to him because I also find Ichigo forgettable. Also he's voiced by Dio in the anime so he has a sensuality that you wouldn't expect from a hollow. The rest of the characters could probably be removed from the story without much change to the plot. World Building: The world building in the first arc is pretty good (until we find out that hell and Hueco Mundo are apparently different things). Each little story introduced something new, and we get a good handle on the balance between Soul Reapers and Hollows. And then Soul Society happens. Soul Society is the afterlife (for only Japan?), run by the Soul Reapers. The Soul Reapers are also eventually revealed to be a different species from humanity, which begs the question where do their souls go when they die. In Soul Society, Soul Reapers just police the slums inhabited by the souls of humanities dead, who eventually reincarnate back into the human world. It's a poorly explained version of feudal Japan, and the Soul Reapers are Samurai. It also makes them massive dick heads, a problem the series never recovers from. Every villain that wants to destroy them is justified, tear down the system and build something new. By Hueco Mundo, Kubo had given up. It's basically the neither world from Beetlejuice, hollows eat each other until they become sentient, and then they go to the big Arrancar tower. There's no depth to this. The Quincy empire is so oddly explained. Is it in a pocket dimension? Did they conquer part of earth five hundred years ago in Nazi outfits? Kubo doesn't care and neither do I. Art: I'm going to cover this real quick. I don't think most of the character designs work real well. The Captains of the respective factions mostly blend together since they all share a basic aesthetic. A lot of Kubo's faces are incredibly similar, and his backgrounds are at best lazy and usually just white empty voids. However, Kubo can actually draw black people, which is almost unheard of in Japan, so I was really impressed by that. Themes: The main issue with Ichigo being such a reactive character is that hypothetically his motivations should change arc to arc predicated on whatever external conflict he's faced with, however due to Bleach's repetitive story structure, he basically just repeats the same character arc four times. Become strong to defend your friends and protect the week. This isn't an inherently bad theme, but there's not much in the way of exploring it, making Bleach feel a little Hollow. Final thoughts: Do I think Bleach is particularly bad? No, it's fine as it doesn't excel at anything, but also isn't especially bad at anything other than pacing and repetitive story structure. I don't know if I would feel differently if I had started reading or watching Bleach when I was a teenager, but I have to admit that I doubt it, due to Bleach's greatest issue. It's far too long for what it is. It doesn't have the depth to sustain 74 volumes. If it had been shorter, 20 to 30, it would've been fast enough to keep me engaged, like equally simple series such Demon Slayer or JJK. But as it is, it's a slog to get through.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Nov 12, 2011 Not Recommended Preliminary
(427/705 chp)
People have consistently compared Bleach to Naruto and One Piece. However, for Bleach to be like those two, it would require character development, which Tite Kubo seems to completely disregard.
It would also require it to have a good plot, which it does not. Naruto, One Piece, Fairy Tail and other Shounen of the like all have something Bleach is sadly lacking: originality in attacks. Naruto found a way to make Puppets badass, One Piece found a way to make a talking skeleton with an afro one of the more powerful characters, and Fairy Tail found a way to make a tiny old man with a ... giant moustache have insane strength. Bleach however has...swords. The only original and likeable powers are of the Captain Commander, Aizen, and the espada. Even the main character's powers are unoriginal and boring! I have no idea why people go crazy over this series.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Aug 31, 2023 Not Recommended Funny
Out of the “big three”, Bleach is undoubtedly the most… bland one. I honestly believe that it only counts among them by accidental association of filling the void of the third realace.
Originally I planned to make this review much more wordy, but as the author couldn’t bother to put more effort into the manga, I too won’t got the extra mile so instead I’ll just describe my thoughts on the series shortly in no particular order in form of short rants: First and the most glaring issue is the protagonist. Ichigo has boring character, boring powers and boring goals. Which is to say, Ichigo’s character ... is that he wants to protect his friends. That’s it. And that is also his goal – Ichigo has absolutely no agency on his own beyond “Well, I guess I’ll have to go beat up the bad guy to save my friends” or occasional “Well, I guess I’ll have to get stronger so I can go beat up the bad guy to save my friends”. Literally every part of the plot is caused by an outside force and Ichigo is only a bystander caught by all of it in accident. He also somehow has the most boring character design out of the main cast beyond maybe Origihme. Regarding the powers, Ichigo is pretty much just spamming one strong attack but making it stronger each arc. It’s like Saitama’s punch but unironical. Ichigo is literally just a dude that won a genetic lottery (through multiple retcons), and demolishes everyone with barely any training. Like seriously, right in the first arc he fights multiple supposedly strong enemies in row with very basic knowledge of the world and only few days of training, somehow not only survives but also wins. This makes the hyped up characters looks just weak and ruins my capability of taking anyone allegedly strong seriously since even the elite gets beaten by a literal novice. Like imagine if Naruto was a kid outside of Ninja village, then he gets the most basic ninja training possible, one that doesn't even cover *all* the basics and proceeds to crash Leaf Village and beat up Kakashi. That's essentially what happens in Bleach. Also, back to Ichigo’s character, despite it being the most simple barebone characterization it could be, it still manages to not make sense? The whole "no that wasn't actually me who defeated you, so cut off my arm to make it fair" is also incredibly stupid. The only agenda Ichigo has is protecting his friends, yet he's also willing to throw it away mid-battle for... pride? His characterization makes no sense. Was that supposed to make him seem righteous? Because it only makes him seem dumb. I get it if he was portrayed as overly proud or something and if it’s presented as his character *flaw* but no, it just comes out of nowhere and goes nowhere. Regarding power system in general, it’s made very unclear. For series about swords, there is very little actual sword fighting and the swords really serve more like magic wands. The characters don't even seem to try to fight seriously anyway - instead of trying to slash artery for a fatal wound, instead we get chest/arms/etc wounds just so the fight can go on longer and the protagonist can get up after remembering his friends or something. That said, later characters are shown to survive getting their insides gouged out by just somehow recovering off screen, so I guess there are no stakes either way. The special powers just do random things that look cool higgledy-piggledy. Your sword just summons a giant poisonous baby? Sure, why not, might as well. The only actually good part about Bleach is the art, in particular the design. Many of the still images look cool, and many of the outfits look cool. I respect the drip. I especially adore the chapter title pages which are among the most creative I've seen. Honestly, the art is the only thing that made me still pay attention to the pages. That said, and artbook made out of the cool-looking pages would be more enjoyable to read than the actual manga they belong to. Because man, the fights are bad. There are absolutely no stakes, you don't wonder whether the protagonist will win, but how much overpowered the protagonist will turn out during the fight. The fights have the strategical elements of Michael Bay movies. Powerups aren’t foreshadowed at all but just given out when needed. Any supposed drawbacks or risk for main characters are irrelevant - like seriously, both of the times the main characters are told that the powerup will cause them to lost their powers forever they get them back literally the next arc. The only time the drawback is actually finalized is for a side character that nobody really cared about. Ichigo’s fights are especially terrible since they pretty much go all like “Haha I, the villain, win!” *Ichigo starts thinking of his friends and shit, stands up from his beaten up state, receives a new power and wins*. The repeated situations of Ichigo dying completely outclassed, then suddenly getting a random-ass powerup and winning gets really tiring, none of it feels earned. Not like the side character fights are any better, but most of that is because thy just… don’t matter. They are fillers because each new arcs drops a whole group of new characters that don’t actually contribute to the story other than so the previous group of side characters have someone to fight. I also hate how often the series is like “Oh I am the mighty Glorbglorb and my grand Chakachakaboom has never been defeated in 300 years!” and then the character just gets one-shotted. It’s just silly. It’s all so silly. Regarding the story… well, there is barely any story. Bleach storyline is pretty much the equivalent of mashing toy soldiers against each other and making up cool sounding attacks. Other than the intro there are basically 4 arcs, three of them being practically identical in story and the last one being almost the same too. We have 1) Girl gets abducted so Ichigo crashes Soul Society to save her 2) Girl gets abducted so Ichigo crashes Hueco Mundo to save her 3) Girl gets assaulted so Ichigo crashes the Xcution society to save her 4) Ichigo crashes Soul Society again, but this time on the side of Soul Society and to save not a girl, but the world. Such stunning and creative writing. The Fullbringer arc (the 3rd one) is the most silly - it's Bleach's attempt to temporary become a JoJo rip-off. And it also *really* feels like a filler mademad just so there’s some excuse to give Ichigo his powers back. By the start of the final arc, I was completely disinterested in the story and kept reading simply because I don't really drop manga. The amount of cool art decreased, which as mentioned previously was the main thing that kept me going. The fights while still being basically the only content of the manga degraded into mostly talking - like "Oh I will do this" "Oh no he will do that... but we will actually do this" and then few panels of the actual fights - if you're lucky. The influx of even more random characters makes it that most fights have also be an infodump about the characters powers. Also the villain of this arc manages to be even less interesting than Aizen, which is a feat in itself. In general it’s clear that the author didn’t plan out the story more than 3 or so chapters ahead. Regarding the finale, one one hand I would like to say that readers shouldn't be surprised how abruptly the manga ends, given that the protagonist has literally no own goal to accomplish. On the other hand, the way the final fight was just cut off was so damn disrespectful lmao. It really feels like Kubo finally just gave up of trying to come up with something that makes sense. The good thing is that at least I wasn’t as massively disappointed as with Naruto, because Bleach lacked potential right from the start. On the other hand, there is really no reason to even read Bleach in the first place. If you’ve read any battle shounen manga, you’ve already read Bleach in some other form. Oh I guess you should read this manga if you for some unfathomable reason wanted to watch the anime, because manga is average, the (first) adaptation is just absolutely terrible. So I guess that’s one reason to read the manga.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Aug 18, 2017 Not Recommended
First, what Bleach did great: Action. The series really have very good fights and the actions scenes, even for a manga, is great.
Kubo's art is very good, despite being very noticeable he don't have much variety. Mostly of the female characters are too much alike, with just the hair and breast size different. Now, the worst part: the story. At first, the story start very good. With a lot plot twist, some mysteries during the first arcs and the Arrancar arc ends. To be fair, that was a very good finale to this manga, in my opinion it was perfect, and I would give 6/10 here... ... but they continued with the FullBright Arc and Quincy arc. The Fullbright arc looks like a filler. It have no purpose at all, but being used as a McGuffin to the next arc. The Quincy arc really started very well with a sense of despair and because this was supposed to be the last arc I really was hoping that everything was possible...nah! This arc ends with plot holes, unresolved issues and a lot Deus ex Machina. And the characters...well, Kubo really like to create a bunch of characters. The problem? They are just that, a bunch of characters. A lot of them have zero characterization, or are definite by a quirky or a gag. The worst really go to Ichigo's friends who have no power at all. They really like very interesting characters, but because they have no super powers they never have a character development and some are even disappear "mysteriously" like Ikumi or Ryo. This is a real problem with a story with a lot characters and sadly Kubo didn't knew how to deal with this. I like to say Bleach is like Transformers, it has cool fight scenes and sexy ladies...and that. The last 2 arcs really damaged the plot and characters.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Aug 18, 2016 Not Recommended Preliminary
(686/705 chp)
Bleach. Basically, a show with potential that just became a show on repeat.
I remember back when I was just a mere child when the show first premiered on TV. The first arc was spectacular; the actual fights and plot was extremely consistent and the entire show was enjoyable. Individuals faced a challenge and the dexterity characters faced showed the depth of the story. But, after the first arc, some thing went wrong. It just... collapsed. I have no idea what to call this effect, but for now, I'll call it the "Bleach Effect". This effect is basically when the author literally uses ... the previous arc as the plot for the new arc with just a rehash of new characters and new powers. Maybe other manga have done this, but the author takes takes this to an entirely new level. So, there will not be any spoilers; I will try to keep the story as vague as possible, and with the ridiculous amounts of reviews, I'll try to be honest about one of the first shounen anime that I watched. Without further ado, BAN - KAI! Story - Hmmm, where do I begin? Like I said before, the story was consistent and very likable at the start. In the most rudimentary story synopsis; the story concerns a group of high school students who run around the main character and help him succeed. But, the story was heightened by the concept of shinigami (Death God's). This is not something like Death Note, however, it was including the Death God's with sword. Kurosaki Ichigo, our main protagonist, stumbled across a wounded Death God who was hurt by other wordly demons, also known as Hollow's. The Death God, through desperation, transferred powers of a Death God to Ichigo. This starts the story of a long and adventurous anime, filled with action scenes and much more plot development. Ichigo and his group of friends, who all have some sort of special power, go along with his adventures and save their friends from time to time from peril. Sorry, I don't want to spoil much more of the story, so I'll keep the plot vague, but essentially, the story will follow complications that occur with Ichigo inheriting powers from a death god, and a huge story that opens up due to Ichigo's powers. There are power struggles, rescue missions, great plot development, and of course, "revealing of the past" development (more well interpreted as backstory development). This is a very good shounen manga, until we finish the first arc. Then, it's the SAME. DAMN. ARC. alllllllll over again. This is the part where I break out in hives. The story line never flinches (this is in a bad connotation). It's as if the story is on repeat from arc 1, as arc 2 has the same story line. Sure, there is some development in terms of the immediate story, but from a wholistic standpoint, arc 1 is repeated throughout the manga. Let me emphasize more on this: Imagine if a manga had absolutely no unique plot after the first arc, if the manga just continued with a recurring theme. Moreover, this manga relies heavily on plot armor, as if Ichigo is always in need of some form of power up, transformation, or anything of that nature. But, it is ALWAYS IN THE MIDDLE OF A FIGHT. There is nothing that will take you by surprise in this manga after the first arc, it'll be easy to predict what happens, and only a few times will you be wrong. This is most likely because there is no over-arching reason to commit in this manga. For example, many manga's have an ultimate goal that moves the story forward. Bleach does not; it doesn't have an ultimate goal, but just a general rule of thumb to protect your "nakama" (Sorry for my horrendous japanese, I should be on a stake). That's all good an all, if the plot was different per arc; BUT IT's NOT. IT's the SAME STORY OF SAVING SOMEONE or SOMETHING again and again. At one point, you just ask yourself why you continue with a manga like this, and the answer is on the next topics. Story Score- 4 Art- This is one thing that the author knows how to do well. I read only a few shounen manga, and none of them have such great art as this manga. The quality of art in here is very clear; I genuinely like the art as it goes. The fights were also clear, and as long as the manga provides a good setting, I think the art style gets at least a 6 (Sorry, that's just my opinion). But even then, there is not much discrepancy when it comes to the artwork. It is consistent, and apart from the last few chapters, I think it really does work well with the atmosphere Bleach sets up. This is sad, but it is so good, in my opinion, that it makes you want to read the manga more... Art-8 Characters- Characters a well developed. Not the best, but definitely not the worst. This is because the motive that Ichigo and his friends have stems from how they interact with one another. And, believe it or not, the first arc sets up the characters brilliantly. Ichigo, who may seem as a rough and absent minded individual, is actually very caring, and deep inside, he wants to protect them from harm. He also has this astute sense of justice, which sometimes hurts him, and sometimes helps him. In essence, he is a character that cannot ignore the cries of his friends nor can he watch is something unjust is happening. This sense of justice is, of course, cliched as hell, but the protection of his friends that he wants to continue, is somehow, spread through all his group members, and the actions that take course in because of these characters are the only thing which move the plot in such a cyclical path. So, in essence: it is a good thing that characters are developed so well because it can provide us a good reason for why the people act in the way they do, but it is bad because.... DAMN IT ALL; IT ADDS TO THIS REPETITIVE GODDAMN CYCLE OF REPEATING THE ARCS. Since the plot/story was already scored, I have to give an unbiased score towards the characters. And, all in all, I genuinely think that characters were pretty spot on. Characters - 4 Enjoyment- Notfound.jpeg . Honestly, I don't know if I found it fun that sometimes I was close to ripping my hair out because of this predictable plot line. Other times, I was just confused as to the "asspull" that was done in the middle of a fight. The fights that happened are so one-sided that you think that there would at least be some sort of change, but there wasn't. It's plot only exists per arc, and doesn't have an ultimate goal story, and thus, the manga is rendered to just be endless. My only rejoice was in the art and the tenacity of characters. However, the endless plot holes that developed is ridiculous. If you think otherwise, then you must be right, as questions that are not answered in a manga is obviously not plot holes (sarcasm). It's a fun manga to dabble into, and I honestly kept up with it because it was a childhood anime that I watched. I was determined that I would finish it, no matter how horrible the ending was. Also, the ending was horrible. So, yeah. Kubo tried too many things and it backfired on him. Enjoyment- 2 Bleach is honestly just a well done shounen manga. Don't come in expecting some magnificent plot with ridiculous surprises. It's cliched, but it was very well as a cliched manga. I've enjoyed it enough to follow it for 9 years, so I guess it can't hurt you guys. Overall : 4 ... Still, its a 5 in my heart. With all it's bullshit, I sure will miss Bleach.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Aug 22, 2019 Not Recommended
*Review may have some spoilers, but mostly talks about issues with writing and story telling in generic way. The intent is to help prospective reader decide if it's worth reading 700+ chapters of manga.
I started watching and reading bleach the same year it released. Let me introduce you first hand to the suffering of many bleach fans such as myself after this ordeal of 15 years. Are you having a bad day by any chance? Or a bad week or even a month? Whatever it is, be thankful that you are at least not Tite Kubo, who essentially retconned his entire career worth of creative ... work down the shitter, for seemingly no good reason. Let's begin! What made bleach popular: This might be outdated 15 years later, so if you start bleach today none of it might even hold true anymore because manga/anime has changed so much since then. Bleach in its own time was revolutionary. From the style of character designs, to the concept of soul society, to the distinctly emotionally intelligent/melancholic way the characters expressed themselves, to a huge line up of characters with amazing powers and untapped potential, bleach had it all. And boy did it deliver! Bleach's soul society arc is one of the best (maybe even the best) battle manga I came across in my time at least. The fight scenes were amazing, the characters were unique, the momentum of story telling was explosive. Could you ask for more in shounen? You couldn't, but Kubo delivered even more! The complex relationship dynamics between the characters, be it Rukia and Ichigo, or Byakuya and Renji or Rukia and Byakuya or Soifon and Yoruichi (SPECIALLY these two, because yuri hints in shounen in those times were an anomaly), it was these dynamics that made readers invested in the series like no other shounen. Readers wanted to know if Ichigo can master an attack, but more than that they also wanted to know what is he feeling in his heart. Even the relationship between Ichigo and the soul of his zanpaktou is very dramatic and full of mysteries. What led to the slowdown: Now comes the period when soul society arc is over. Kubo has pretty exhausted all the awesome plot devices and character designs he started out with and needs to come up with a new story. In the meantime he still had bonus material to work with like Ichigo's hollow transformation. The real issue begins with Hueco mundo arc, from completely unoriginal plot to long dragged out fights, to gazillions of unfleshed characters with same faces/personalities to seemingly non stop ass pull winning moves, the dominoes started to crumble one after the other. The exhaustion of not being able to write compelling scenes or develop the characters was clearly apparent in Kubo's writing. He would still pull his magic here and there but we could see a genuine decline in the story as well as a drop in quality of drawing. What utterly destroyed bleach: I don't know why, in a shounen to boot, Kubo came up with a plot device for hero to lose everything to make bad guy stop once (not even kill him, just restrain him) but I think that was the definite moment bleach tanked fully because there was no saving it from this deadend. Now in order to make bleach progress in any way, Ichigo needed his powers back, so Kubo had to come up with an entire asspull arc to provide a premise for Rukia to give Ichigo powers for a second time. The entire arc focused more on development of Rukia and Ichigo's relationship, isolating Ichigo from all other characters except Rukia, than it did on creating any meaningful plot that justified the existence of the full bringers in first place. Anyway, we can understand. Kubo did a major oopsie with the end of HM arc and needed something to fix it. And Ichigo needed some mature/romantic development. Gotcha! So now bleach is on track! And what does Kubo do in next arc? Utterly destroy and retcon every single character of the manga including the MC. It's not even a shounen at this point, it's a tragedy. If he had known any better, he would have stopped bleach at HM arc. If he didn't want to completely throw bleach into dustbin he would have at least stopped at fullbring arc. But making of the last arc required him to undo essentially the entirety to bleach and play with the bonds characters share with their fans, because he had no other ideas to create "wow factor" at this point to stir the pot. Bleach was already failing for years at this point and a large fraction of readers were passive or had zoned out completely. So here goes - What's that? An established villain? Let's make him good guy and save the hero. A dead person? Revive him. Revive ten of them actually then kill and revive them again. Let's create an utterly useless sidekick fight for 10 chapters and finish the series in one chapter which doesn't connect to anything that happened in the 699 chapters before. NOTHING in the last arc makes sense. The ending chapter is so OOC you might as well insert a fanfic there and it won't a difference, because there was no prelude whatsoever leading to the blank period, in fact the final boss battle ended mid fight with no conclusion. If you were reading a physical manga, you would think someone ripped a few pages off the chapter because it ends that abruptly. What's worse, by the end of the series, every character and plot development regressed back to zero, essentially making the whole point of the manga NADA ZILCH ZERO. If you were to ask today why did Kubo write bleach or what was the purpose of it, what were the goals the MC wanted to achieve, I can bet Kubo cannot answer. Somewhere during this clusterfuck of keeping a failing plot alive by nonsense plot devices, he forgot why he was writing. He forgot who these characters were. He forgot who is reading this manga, who is the core demographic. He forgot the message Ichigo was going to tell. But most of all he forgot to respect his own creation and giving it the closure it deserved. And so bleach is a story that tells itself in first half and reverses itself in second half, and if this sentence made no sense to you, congratulations, you figured out exactly what bleach manga is. Bleach is not the first and will not be the last manga with superior potential that tanked due to poor writing. What makes bleach unique is how monumentally bad the fall was and how truly crazy Tite Kubo is to knowingly bring his manga back to square one. I wish I could say it was the mad hatter kind of crazy for those of you who love chaos and lack of logic, but with 700+ chapters of mediocrity, slow reading and lack of plot, it's the kind of crazy you don't want to deal with. With that, this bleach fan... oops.. this EX bleach fan, signs off.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Dec 10, 2023 Not Recommended Funny
Bleach is one of the worst mangas i have read. It starts well with a common shounen plot but after that it starts to get insanely repetitve. Plain characters that started with a lot of potential but you see they hold no relevance or importance in the story other than fight every 100 chapters with a new ass pulled villian.
The insane ammount of ass pulled power ups that Ichigo (The main character) has is impresive, and i have read dragon ball, black clover, naruto... Any of those mangas have even the half of the ammount of plot and invented power ups. Like the ... main character is losing? Don't worry, he will suddenly get 10 times stronger because he casually is 1% of a insanely powerful race and he awakened his powers. Really bad writing, story (it basically doesnt have, is all fights), trash world building and power scaling (below dragon ball level). Bleach is only cool if you are 13 years old and you like flashy non-stop swords fights.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Feb 9, 2021 Not Recommended
Bleach
I started reading the manga when the anime came to an end after the Fullbring Arc. I was a little curious about what would happen next in the story and whether Bleach would finally bring a story to the table. And no, it never got that far. I started reading from the "Invasion Karakura" Arc in the hope that some detail of the manga in the Aizen Arc might have been lost and no, it was not. And then it came, the Thousand-year Blood wWar Arc, and for heaven's sake it was a stab in the heart. I heard Tite Kubo was pushed to complete the arc ... quickly. Nonetheless, the fact is that Bleach's final arc turned out to be by far the worst. It only rained Asspulls and Plot Armor from the sky and not even the fighting was convincing. Except for a few that you could read through on YouTube with suitable background music. And even then, there was no sign of quality. Bleach is a title that offers and can entertain cool scenes and characters. But if you are looking for story or character depth, you are enormously far removed from it. In the end, there was no such thing as a main storyline. But just a bad guy according to the other scheme. And that to the bitter end. Story Where should I start ... the whole concept of the Soul Society and the Shinigami is interesting but poorly implemented. It got particularly bad with all the antagonists. One follows the other. There are endless fights with poor power balance like Dragon Ball and it just keeps getting worse and worse. Until the end I gave up trying to classify the strengths of the characters at all, because the mangaka did what it wanted. Depending on the situation, everything was adjusted at will so that it simply results in something. Until the bitter end, there was no real story either. Among the Shounen, he has been cursed with one of the weakest acts. Drawing/illustration The Bleach Manga has improved and increased immensely from the first chapters to the last. The character design, the fights, and the environment were extremely solid. One could see in the mangaka, however, that hardly anything had occurred to him in the area of fighting and choreography. Characters There are an enormous number of characters with massive recognition value. And also those that I will never forget because of their personality. Unfortunately it was already. The characters are all completely superficial. There are cool, funny and personable personalities. But there is no trace of well-written characters here. At least I have to admit that among all the long-term shounen, Kurosaki Ichigo is definitely one of the better and smarter characters. Even if his plot armor reserve seems infinite. The antagonists in particular are a prime example of how cool you can look, but how empty you are. Conclusion The anime will soon be finalized as an anime and I really hope that you will make some changes to the final arc. As it is at the moment, you can hardly touch these half-finished grits. As long as it's epically animated and musically supported, that's all well and good, but otherwise you have to fundamentally change a lot. Unfortunately, it is too late for the arcs that have already been adapted because they are of the poor quality of the manga. At the end of the day, Bleach is your average shounen no matter how you look at it. It had its advantages, but nothing more.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Jun 4, 2017 Not Recommended
You know that feeling of wonder one might have when starting a book or a movie or anything else they heard plenty about, to find out for themselves what it's all about? Well then I'm sure you also know the feeling when all that excitement deflates into apathy as you find it to be just what you expected. That's Bleach, it's bad, not spectacularly bad but just bad in the least entertaining way possible, but let's go over it step by step.
Art: If there's one aspect of Bleach that doesn't require shutting down perception organs to tolerate, it's art. Not to say it's great ... but for a weekly series it's not bad either. Bleach starts out a bit rough, angular and cartoony, very fitting for the time period when it got first published. Few volumes later it smoothes out and starts to look a bit more attractive as lines get cleaner, sharper and proportions become more realistic. Character design quality varies wildly, at best they look stylish, fit character's personality to a tee and simply are nice to look at. While worst of them look like edgy teenagers OC they painstakingly polished for weeks to post on deviantart alongside their fanfic. Architecture is worse off with absolutely nothing to show off. Over the course of the manga you'll see: modern Japanese suburbs; dense european city looking environments; desert full of nothing; large squares and cylinders with equally exciting interior and finally heian era looking areas. Story Characters: Hoo boy are they nothing, simply nothing. Their personality, goals and purpose can be exhaustively described in one short sentence or less cause many miss one or two of the aforementioned points. Thanks to genius way the plot is structured, many characters lose relevancy when their ark is done with and will mostly appear only when there's a need for an asspull of which there are many (sasuga Kubo sensei!). One of them is so amazingly useless I can't help but mention it for your amusement. Near the end the main baddy, Jewish nazi god Yhwach breaks Ichigo's sword to a point where even time and space denying healing power can't fix it. Out of nowhere comes a guy, stabs Ichigo in the back to implant him with the past where his sword isn't broken by Yhwach and that somehow allows them to fix the sword. Whole thing lasts only a few pages and has no point at all. Last off I want to give Ichigo a special mention for being the most pathetic shonen hero. His entire adventure is nothing but getting beat up half dead by everyone until he gets a powerup and steamrolls their opponent. Plot: there is one, I think? Each ark is kind of self contained and follows some basic plot that revolves around saving friends and beating a bad guy. Soul society is the only one with any buds of ambition as initial save a friend premise then out to be a plan of baddie's clever keikaku to fuck everything up but it still ends up to be dumb and simple. None of it matters, events, characters and new powers are quickly forgotten and don't have any effect on overall story. Fights were outsourced to nearest kindergarten or at least they must be to explain why each one of them is the same. A fights B, A or B is getting clobbered until receiving a powerup, then positions are reverse until A or B wins. No clever planning, choreography or tricks like in JoJo or HxH, just mindless back and forth. Fun factor: none, I can't even recommend it to people who love shonen, even Naruto at any point had more going for it, even Hero Academia which I dislike a lot is a better time than Bleach, there is no point to reading it unless you want to personally familiarize yourself with what somehow became one of the most popular shonen manga to date. If you have that desire you're probably deep into this hobby and need any reviews, otherwise avoid it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Jul 3, 2017 Not Recommended
For those who think like me, the path of Bleach was just like Samurai Jack's flawless path to a horrible finale. I was so angry for the poor ending almost made me threw all my Bleach volumes through the window, but in the last moment, I realized that life isn't always fair, and the one who you trust your time to may disappoint you in so many ways ike no human beign shouldn't ever be. Thank you, Tite Kubo,for ruining my favorite manga/anime/heroine in one simple chapter. Goodbye World, it was a pleasure and worth living while Bleach still made sense.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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