Now the TYBW adaption is ever so close so I thought this might be the best time to discuss about bleach with fellow fans.(6 months to go till anime is out)
My opinion:
Best: Aizen.
Secondly the character design, osts, Art, fight scenes and obviously the power concept and world(Soul society) of bleach.
Worst: Rushed ending with the final ships.
Some arcs were unnecessary long and Fillers were boring(Compared to naruto)
Best: All the interesting villain powers. Like Aizen illusion powers.
Worst: Every defeated foe comes back as ally eventually.
So author gotta put random squad members, vice cap and 13 captains into fights. And Chad, and Renji, and Spada, and Rukia, and Vaizards, and Ressurrection, and Yoruichi, and the SS Royal Guard, and ... and they can't really do much because Ichigo has to be the mvp. And they had like 1 to 3 chapters in their fights, so it dragged arcs by a lot.
Plus: Ichigo is fighting someone who has some extra interesting trick, and the fight becomes a slugfest.
that was my main problem most of the times the characters win through powering through though its mostly Ichigo
I really liked when Gin used his Bankai and Shikai by hiding his zanpaktou behind his cloak at times to trip up his opponents I wish more ingenuity was placed on not just the powers but how the characters use the powers
Best Things: Villains (Aizen, Ulquiorra, Ginjo), themes, art style and design, characters in general are really cool and well written (like, your favorite can be each one of them), animation (for the time it aired it is top - tier), the concept & story.
Bad Things: Some repetitive choreographed fights, fillers (you can skip them now), quality (Viz did a terrible job on it), some characters really needed to die for developing the story and main cast in TYBW ( Byakuya must die )
some fights should have been cut for better pacing and so it was less of a slog to go through
I feel like having an overabundance of fights can detract from the interest in those fights like a lot of the vice-captain fights during karakura town
I agree with you on the characters they're all well designed I wished momo died she's my favorite character but shes a non-factor in the story brought back for a repetitive gag of being stabbed
she could have been a tragic character instead she becomes a joke and a gag
Best: Ulquiorra, Ichimaru, Grimmjow, art style, character designs/drip, great protagonist, and it probably had the most unique concept in a shonen anime at the time.
Worst: Way too many characters, fillers, fights being stretched out for no reason, characters gaining new power ups like It's nothing, and characters explaining what their abilities can do to their opponents. I hated the Fullbring arc and TYBW was really dissapointing. Also, personal nitpick, I found 90% of the supporting cast to be really boring and uninteresting.
as someone who is watching it right now in preparation of the final arc in october
Best: the art and sound aged well for a 20 years old show
Worst: i hate that characters never die in this show and some power ups are just convinience for the plot at that specific moments, really feels like the top characters are meaningless when ichigo shows up
Edit: will probably drop it, to add to the worst part: everything i said before got amplified 10folds in the hueco mundo arc and the meaningless fights just drag on forever and ever without substance, only grimmjow vs ichigo was good but even then i doubt grimmjow is gonna die which he really should, he exausted his purpouse like 90% of the characters so far (also plot armor all the way)
I think Momo dying would have been good for the story and having more deaths would have contributed more to the whole war against Aizen
also Aizen defeating everyone yet noone dying is such bunch of yarn not even momo dies when stabbed by Hitsugaya
I think Hiyori literally gets cut in half yet survives
i haven't finished yet but i have began it so i could see the new release coming soon. so far what i think is the worst about it may be changed within this new series. because what i think is the worst about it is how early 2000-to early 2010s it feels. i havent had this problem with anime before from the same decade but just something about bleach makes it feel kinda bad imo. maybe the style of adapting anime at the time just doesnt suit the series very well, so i hope that this changes with the new one
the best parts about the show i think is just the fact that it's kind of a power fantasy. i cant say much for the way things are done later, but in these first 100 episodes ichigo has been able to accomplish everything within such a short amount of time that rather than dwell on that story choice, im just having fun with him being able to suddenly kick everyone's ass immediately
Best: All the potential it possesses. Bleach could be a shounen manga/anime so good as Hunter x Hunter. Its world is a fertile land for a detailed world-building, with a rich lore. Also, Bleach has a large catalog of interesting characters with great charisma.
Worst: All of that potential stays as only potential. Bleach is a great fruit that could offer litters of juice, but it doesn't. And the reason for that is because Tite Kubo is a mediocre writer who doesn't know the potential of the material he's holding.
have we been reading the same manga? a lot of kubo's greatness comes from his show-not-tell writing style and i think it works personally.
I understand what your saying but at the same time I feel like Kubo simply creates too many characters and it becomes a hard task to manage
“Wow I’d sure like to know more about Unohana and her past”
“What about Harribell”
There’s subtle and then there’s not enough time for more fleshed our character focus
Yea, this was something which black clover tackled beautifully, as BC's cast is just as big as bleach's , and everyone is useful in one way or another, also characters in black clover gets enough screentime(useful and interesting ones), while kubo wasted most of screentime on characters which didn't contributed to the plot even a bit.....still i don't mind that much cuz bleach seemed to me more of a character-driven story, rather than plot-driven.....
@Raines27 I sort of get what you mean like the plot served to flesh out the characters even more
All in all I felt like TYBW was a way to add more to previous captains and characters like Kenpachi, Renji, Rukia, and Yamamoto
The whole secret Quincy Empire on the border of SS felt pretty shoehorned in with some technical babble on how they used the reishi to cloak themselves
I'm still in episode 61 but my opinion so far:
Best: Cool artstyle, a lot of cool characters (Kenpachi, Urahara, Shunsui, Yoruichi, Shigekuni, Ichimaru, Ukitake, Aizen), interesting fights, interesting world building.
Worst: Too many flashbacks, some fights are too long and some too short, no one really dies because all the hurt characters are healed or scape which remove almost all the dramatic sense.
I don't talk about the huge amount of fillers because I'm going to skip them, the good thing of watching this show in 2022. x)
Bleach would've been my favourite if it weren't for these things:
• bleach might be the only series with so much dialogue between fights, that sometimes it just kills the hype for me, for example the fight between shunsuke and stark, and ichigo vs that gatekeeper in hueco mundo (can't remember his name) etc....
• side-characters getting too much screen time(i mean the ones which don't affect the plot much)
• another reason which is not about bleach but the studio is censorship and somewhat mid animation. Ik it's good, but not as great as what naruto had, it felt like studio pierrot's main priority was naruto at that time, and didn't gave bleach that much focus.....(hope they give bleach their all this time)
Yea except these, i don't think there's anything that i dislike about bleach.....
Best: Best Character Designs
The rad sword abilities with it ranging from a sword slash to a twin shikai that replicates childrens games or flips your perceptions of reality
-The minimalist and abstract style
-the aesthetic that felt philosophical and zen-like but also really abstract in terms of culture and punk rock youth mixed in
-great dynamic sense of paneling with fights
Worst:
-Too many side characters that get like 5 min of spotlight dedicated to them each arc in my opinion
-Momo should have been killed no reason to keep her around my favorite Bleach character but she was more or less a paperweight character for Hitsugaya with little dedicated screen time also I feel like Byakuya should have died in TYBW
-The powers are great but the characters rarely used them in nuanced and creative ways that made it feel stale Gin hides his blade behind his cloak and then extends it which creates a cool sneak attack I wish more of the characters had that
-Ichigo never winning through ingenuity means not just him adapting or getting a powerup which I have no problem with but Its usually he uses the powerup in a straightforward way
I got to where the anime finished in the manga a few days ago.
likes- brutal fights for a action shonen, a diverse cast that you’ll probably meet at least one character that you really like, and Ichigo wanting to be strong enough to protect his friends is good enough motivation for an MC for me, I don’t need more than that I just need to be able to understand an MC really and I can do that with Ichigo.
dislikes- things can feel slow at times, especially in between arcs, like we gotta go back to school and Ichigo gotta find some new power again or something, things just felt slow for me in between arcs. Some side characters are pretty forgettable, I think something like One Piece does a better job at this by bringing back small characters in later arcs to give them a moment to shine.
Favorite characters- Grimmjow, Aizen, Ichigo
Least favorite characters- Rukia
Best thing: Kubos art
Worst thing: All the clones it inspired
I mean every notorious jump title inspires clones look at dragon ball with Goku and how many people took from that series
Though to be honest I’ve never seen or read poor clones usually I’ve read the inspired ones that took influence but added their own stuff in tandem as well as a mixture of other stuff
Maybe Black Clover but the style is so far removed from Bleach that it feels more like traditional jump what with the exuberant protagonist and mix between exaggerated whimsical and slightly serious tone whereas bleach was mostly trying to exude an overly serious and trendy or stylistic tone
Idk maybe I haven’t seen the worst of the worst when it comes to what you call clones