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Bleach remains one of my favorite mangas of all time, and I was excited to see it as an anime, but after finishing it, I wish I had just stuck with the manga.
Lets start with story; Which the anime did a decent job of conveying from the manga, that is, when the anime CARED about the actual story. There is so much filler in the anime. There are entire filler arcs that completely de-rail the pacing of the rest of the show, adding filler characters that have their own filler back stories. FILLER INSIDE OF FILLER.The plot also moves at a snails pace in the anime, one issue of the manga boils to about 4 episodes at best. Some times it just feels like a chore to watch, but it has its moments.Overall, the story is very good with many, many, unexpected twists that you won't see coming, and a very satisfying ending, (I'm actively trying to forget anything happens after the fullbringer arc)
Art and Sound; The animation is nothing special, very stereotypical stuff. Does nothing to shake up the formula, but doesn't really need to. As for the soundtrack, its very, VERY hit and miss. The beginning of the show hosts some great openings, decent at best endings, and at the time, a GREAT in show soundtrack. Notice how I said 'at the time'? Well it's true, in the beginning, every song seems so cool, but with 366 episodes and only 1 or 2 songs added in, the background music quickly gets repetitive and tedious,except for the series's "signature song" 'Number One', and it's many re-mixes
Characters; Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. Here we have Bleaches biggest downfall, the cast. While they're a certainly great, funny, relate-able, and bad-ass characters in bleach, their screen time is very lacking. The main cast that has most of the screen time are either 2cool4u edgemasters (like Ichigo, Renji, Byakuya, Rukia, the list goes on...) or just annoying as fuck charecters (KUROSAKI-KUN, KUROSAKI-KUN, KUROSAKI-KUN....) It's not a completely hateable cast, its a 50/50 draw of whether you will like a certain character or not. For the most part, you can put up with them, but it is by no means a solid cast.
Overall Enjoyment and Recommendation; Bleach the Anime is very, very long. And in my opinion, the amount of enjoyment you get out of it vs the amount of time you put into it is not equal. It's so painfully average in everything it does while just being able to barely keep you enticed for the whole ride. My recommendation is that if you really want to experience bleach, just Sod the anime and read the manga. If you are hellbent on watching the anime, I would quit after the soul society arc, because it goes far downhill from there.
