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.
