For the story, there was not much of one. Ichigo reluctantly became a Soul Reaper through some special circumstance, but did not have much of a goal. Then it turned into "save the princes"' for several different arcs. I am not sure what happened to the last arc, but some of the filler arcs are better.
The characters, I liked a few of them, but there were too many to actually have a focus on. If there was, it was at the sacrifice of the MC's screen time. Surprisingly enough, the one character that I disliked was the MC himself. Ichigo starts off as a badass, fights, then makes a shocked face at his enemies power, then loses his resolve, Sometimes, he somehow miraculously escapes his enemies clutches, then trains in-between an event. He loses his resolve so many times, I forgot to count, once or twice would have been alright, but then it became annoying. This should not be spoiler, because it is rare for the MC to be killed off, especially early in the series. Ichigo is a zombie, he literally gets killed three or four times, and somehow comes back from the dead each time. Also, other characters that should be on the verge of dead, somehow gain a power-up, and fight like their injuries are non-existent. It happens several times in one fight, this series takes plot armor to the next level.
The saddest part of this series is that it had great potential with a lot of characters, but it failed.
