Even before I became a gigantic anime weeb a few years ago, I had heard about Bleach. It was always right up there with Naruto, One Piece, and Fairy Tale in terms of easily recognizable animes. Bleach has it's fair share of good points. The cinematography is pretty good, the voice acting is incredible (in the sub at least), and the OST's are high quality. The show also does an acceptable job in terms of character development (other than the main character, who get's a ton of development). It's nothing to write home about, but it gets the job done.
I've had a few problems throughout the life of the show that I think are worth pointing out. First off, the length.
I've generally found that throughout my anime experiences up until now, length can be a significant contributing factor to how enjoyable the end product is. Obviously, how much the length affects a series depends on a variety of factors, namely genre and story pacing. For example, if Show A is a comedy/slice of life with no complex plot, you will be more likely to have success with a smaller length than you would with Show B, an action/adventure with an ensemble cast and heavy character development. Even after taking this in to consideration, I just found myself loosing interest in Bleach more often that I expected. It can get hard to watch a show when you need to watch 30 episodes before seeing anything significant happen. What can I say, I'm just impatient that way. Bleach was just too lengthy for me.
Another concern I ended up having with the series was the overly cyclical plot.
After a couple arcs, once the novelty of the series had worn off, I found the same cycle repeating itself. Step One: The main character gets destroyed by a powerful opponent, Step Two: The main character develops an awesome new power, Step Three: The main character barely beats the same opponent in a long, drawn out battle, Step Four: Repeat. The show did a decent job of making the fight scenes somewhat suspenseful (mostly done by trying to make us hate the villains by giving them all uniquely irritating personalities), but in the end you knew what the result was going to be.
Finally, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, the filler arcs.
Oh the filler. Wow the filler. SO. MUCH. FILLER. I kid you not, 45% of Bleach is filler. Why so high? Well.... mainly because of the fact that the producers were repeatedly catching up with the author, Tite Kubo, and they apparently felt that it would be better to show terrible, meaningless filler just to keep milking the fans for money, rather than take a break for a while to preserve the integrity of the show. Is anyone going to stop watching Attack on Titan just because it took a break so the manga could get ahead? No. What I would recommend is looking up a filler arc guide before starting the series, so you can be ready to skip the filler. If you are absolutely insistant upon watching the filler, please limit yourself to only watching the Gotei 13 Arc (eps 317-342). It was, in my opinion, the only filler arc worth watching.
Overall, decent show, way overrated, not for everyone. Give it a shot though. Regardless of it's shortcomings, Bleach is something everyone should experience.
