Anime Review: Bleach

15-year-old Kurosaki Ichigo is not your everyday high school student. He has from as far he can remember always had the ability to see ghosts and spirits. A fateful day arrives as Ichigo encounters the shinigami Kuchiki Rukia, who saves him and his family from a Hollow at the cost of injuring herself. During this encounter, with Rukia unable to defeat the hollow she transfers her shinigami powers into Ichigo. In the aftermath, unable to continue with her job, Rukia allows Ichigo to take on the role of a shinigami in her place as they together defeat the Hollows plaguing Ichigo's town.

Bleach Genres: Action, Comedy, Supernatural

Bleach Synonyms:

Bleach Studios: Studio Pierrot, TV Tokyo, Dentsu, Viz Media, TV Tokyo Music, Studio Kelmadick,

Bleach Review

From unique beginning to mindless battling continuation, these series are a sh?nen powerhouse

With as many episodes as there are days in the leap year, Bleach are quite some interesting series to review. They are known as one of the most famous battle shounen out there and for the biggest part of the audience, that is as far as they get. When asking various people about Bleach, their feedback will usually vary greatly. That is because the story-line the series follow is a heavily uncommon roller coaster, going up and down in pretty much all aspects, from quality to the general focus. When going into an in-depth analyze, Bleach can be quite hard to understand. Therefore, I will mostly review the series chronologically, as well as connect the matters with past information given.

For many critics out there, Bleach was at its prime at the very beginning. Looking at the quality of the story overall, I would have to party agree. The idea of a special community watching over and protecting the human race with our main character later becoming a sub-member of it is excellent. The whole set of events as well as execution is very well done as well, bringing us a slice of life setting with quite heavy influence of the supernatural and fantasy genres. In other words, at the beginning of the series, we are presented to a unique flow that stands on at least some sort of realistic ground, with the scenes brought in connecting and creating an overall whole.

However, that doesn't last for long. Soon, we are thrown into the next season of the series, which could serve as a so-called tunnel between our beginning setting, and the focus that has later influenced the entire series and was persistent until the very end. It is the Soul Society arc, an arc that cuts the slice of life genre apart and puts the whole story into a pure rescue mission with supernatural battles on every corner. Those who were still closed in and under the effect of the old-styled Bleach have found this arc as a run-around-the-maze pack. In all honesty, that's about all it is. What used to be a well thought out series of events including a spice of supernatural and fantasy took quite a turn into the favours of battling and nothing more. With that taking place, this was the first step where the series hugely dropped in quality and gained in complexity.

After the whole rescue mission was completed, many fans of the old style were hoping for the series to go back on track and execute thought out scenes, as well as hold the story within an understandable limit that could still be controlled and carved out in detail. Unfortunately for those, Bleach became something even more extravagant. Some specific series of events triggered the story to make another big jump in favour of those who seek battle scenes and sadly, the series lost in detail and quality yet again. This time, it went extremely for the worse. Prior to the start of running in circles of battling, there has been some sort of progression on focuses that needed progression, for the sake of understanding and enjoyment. A great example would be character progression. While the characters continued to grow at the beginning and we were learning more and more about them, that suddenly stopped. After one point onward, our main characters did not grow one bit in their thinking, but went straight forward on their mainstream brain path through the entire time in the episode that followed.

With that being the case, the series united all the enjoyment in one focus, and one focus only. The Bleach that used to be enjoyed for multiple factors, from the characters, various special scenes, thought out issues that were still on a realistic level, to comedy parts and light presentation has suddenly been transformed into one factor only, battle. The only progression our main characters get, or if I'm more specific, Ichigo Kurosaki gets, is power and new forms. Shikai, Bankai, Hollofication, Vasto Lorde, Final Getsuga Tensho, Fullbring, return of the Shikai, return of the Bankai, etc. All that the story focuses on from even prior to the ending of the second season and onward, is Ichigo and his upgrading in power, as well as the increase in power between the lead enemies, too.

In other words, what used to be a well-executed anime with a spice of the supernatural genre has emphasized the latter to the maximum, swallowing all other focuses along the way. Such an action taken is perfect for young teens who long for action, but for some older audience it just becomes weird and disappointing. That is because unlike most other battle shounen, Bleach actually starts off with some sort of premise and has the potential to be a great fantasy-orientated slice of life anime, with a touch of heroism along the way. Regardless of what it could have been, the path the series take is still unique. Many people out there round it up by saying that it has lost quality through time and slam a lower score, but is that really all there is to it? Sure, the story might have greatly lost in quality from the beginning to the end, but judging from the battle shounen ticket point of view, Bleach still is grand.

This is where another matter comes in, and that is personal preferring. Even after all the examination I've done, I still don't understand why the series have decided to take such a different path after the beginning, or why they have started out like that if they have wanted to continue on totally differently. For those who preferred the overall quality and were tuning in because of it, the start might have seemed interesting, but the continuing was most likely disappointing. For the inversed type, in other words those who came for the power battles, the beginning might have seemed a little bit boring and slow-paced, while the continuation most epic. Among the audience, those who have liked the focused and quality beginning, as well as the extremely increased battles later on on the approximately the same level are very uncommon. Therefore, I do not understand why the series had to make such a beginning, just to totally flip the coin later on. This only leaves one part of the community bored at some point, while the others disappointed.

If my first part of the review has mainly focused on the community that prefers quality over all-out destruction, my second part will be quite the opposite of that. When it comes to the matter of the battle shounen focus, these series exceed and go higher than the others on various factors. What we are presented to later on in the story is constant growth and the need of increasing in power in order to save others. The power scale, as well as the scale of who to save constantly and we could even say linearly increases. From one person, all the way to the whole town and in the manga, even more. However, what truly leaves an impression is the style of powering up. The whole idea of the main character having bigger potential than everyone else and gradually increasing in strength he can control, both the graceful and brutal one, is executed marvelously. The training and then the grand battles that take place do tend to be of top excitement for the audience that prefers such type. In other words, fighting scenes, or battle scenes if we're precise, are presented wonderfully. They truly kick in the inner wish of wanting to possess such power for some time and beat everyone up. Therefore, if there is one focus where the series are more than good in the continuation, it's the battling, battling, and more and more battling.

When it comes to the matter of originality, Bleach goes its own way. It is original and tends to stand strong on its own. This is one part at which I truly respect the series, due to them coming up with new battling ideas that could best be examined as "cool". The hollow masks, the holes in the bodies, the special attacks, all the way to the epic names and titles of moves and groups. With that being the case, it's yet again even more evident that the latter part of Bleach as a whole is truly directed towards the younger audience that seeks vengeance and power releases. As we move through the story, everything gets cooler and more and more powerful. It continues going up at a certain pace, until one moment. After one point, which gamers around like to call the "boss fight", everything goes from the boiling point to the cool down state. At that time, if the series would have ended, the finish would have been excellent and would round one relatively huge arc up.

Unfortunately, that didn't happen. For some unknown reason, the series simply had to receive approximately 50 more episodes and a new arc, which totally messed the tempo up. What was at the peak of its strength lost in power, but it was still continuing. Due to the power only rising all the time, the sudden drop didn't feel pleasant at all. This is where my biggest criticism would come in - the final animated arc was truly unnecessary, or simply executed really poorly. At some points through the story, it almost seems like the series want to go back on the track they were at the beginning. Even if that were to be the case, they didn't come even close. Everything has been lifted upon a certain level of possibilities, and while the story we are presented to is able to be followed, it's not quite appropriate after what has happened. On short, the final animated arc could be examined as the lead clusterfuck that has happened in Bleach. It tries to be a fill-in in which Ichigo could recover from the heat that took its tool in the most heated ending of the longest arc. However, such a fill-in is totally unnecessary if it ends with just-it. It should have connected it to a new arc where Ichigo makes his total recovery return, but unfortunately, it doesn't. Therefore, I cannot say that the final arc which took approximately 50 episodes overall is overly bad, but it certainly is inappropriate. The anime version of Bleach would have been better off without it.

Saying a word or two about the animation, it is clearly visible that it has improved through good 7 years, but it was never highly below or above the average. At the beginning of the series, the colors were a tad more blurred and had a grey contrast to them, while they have lost that through time. Regardless, the power the animation has on the presentation and overall effect the series bring is not close to the story thought up and delivered. The battles are animated nicely, but we are too busy understanding just what is going on at all other times to focus on the swiftness of the visual presentation. The sound, on the other hand, is clearly one of the stronger points of the series overall. The original soundtracks have the right timing of kicking in, and they are as majestic as needed. In other words, the soundtracks presented contribute greatly towards the whole sensation during various battles between the characters. Just the style they are in is already epic-influenced, with great examples being Invasion and Treachery. They certainly bring the mood and let us know that something heavy is about to go down. That is one of the main reasons why I hold Bleach's soundtracks in a tad higher regard than most others.

In the end, Bleach could be seen as some highly egoistic series. They start off by showing wonderful progression on multiple focuses, bringing quite some enjoyment to a specific type of audience. Later on, though, they change their style of the story massively. Everything specializes in one focus alone, and that is the progression in power and new forms. What used to be an anime with a tad of slice of life influence and what has stood within some sort of limits so it could be detailed and carved out was blown like a nuke. It was spread like an ultra storm. Nothing was put under the microscope anymore, and nothing has progressed anymore. Everything lost its shine, except for the matter of battling and getting stronger. The sheer enjoyment the audience could leech from one point onward was the coolness factor packed up in the shape of battles. Even so, Bleach has stayed and has walked an original, although chaotic path from the beginning to the end. Some find pure battling in an original way as art in itself, while some just see it as a disappointment overall. What is for certain is that Bleach is one of a kind. It takes itself where the imagination reaches, and not where the limits were meant to be to fully present a piece of story. It takes that path with pride, for the better or worse.