Everyone has at least heard about bleach. It was the first anime I ever watched. I'm just gonna say this. The first 70 episodes had good plot. The filler is not as bad as people make it out to be (it just appears at bad places). The animation starts out pretty bad but if you've seen the latest episodes the animation quality is brilliant. To make it simple
Animation at start: 5
Animation at end: 9
Story at start: 9
Story at end: 5
Also there are far too many characters in Bleach to remember.