I'll start off with the good news: seven years later, Tite Kubo has not sacrificed a single bit of artwork quality for Bleach. One of the best things about Bleach is it's imaginative character design. No two characters have the same fighting style, and it really is amazing the level of detail that goes into shading, considering most mangas with over one billion kazillion chapters like Bleach tend to sacrifice art quickly in order to churn out more chapters with less effort.
But, that is sadly the end to the good. Because while Bleach has amazingly creative character designs, it falls horrendously short in original character personalities, or having a passable plot at all.
I'll be honest, the first few volumes of Bleach are quite good. The characters all have their own distinct and interesting personalities, the story is a bit random but solid, and the whole product gives off a cool samurais-meet-Ghostbusters theme. But sadly, all that is thrown down the drain when Rukia is taken to the Soul Society and Ichigo and the gang go and rescue her. At this point, Bleach makes the mistake so many other animes and mangas have made before, and that is introducing way too many characters way too fast, and as a result having dozens of creative characters who get almost no screen time whatsoever while a select few get more than the main characters.
Also at this point in the manga, the fights begin to suffer heavily from "Dragon Ball Z syndrome," in which all skill and agility is replaced by power levels and energy beams.
But the killing blow comes at the beginning of the next arc. I won't spoil anything, but let's just say that Ichigo is suddenly transformed from a punk with a heart of gold into a generic moody manga lead, Orihime is transformed from a pretty girl with a very odd personality into a centuries-old princess that needs constant rescuing, and Chad continues to never win any fight ever.
I loved Bleach when I first started reading it. It felt like such a breath of fresh air. But quickly that freshness gave way to the staleness that plagues the shounen genre so. The only solution is for Tite Kubo to end his shinigami magnum opus as quickly as possible, and try his hardest to give the manga a halfway decent ending (if it's even possible as this point).
