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Bleach   
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Description

Type
Manga

Related Series

Associated Names
Bleach Yomikiri (Oneshot)
Sứ Mạng Thần Chết
Блич
Бліч
בְּלִיץ'
بليتش
بلیچ
ब्लीच
பிளீச்
เทพมรณะ (NED)
ブリーチ
死神
블리치

Groups Scanlating

Latest Release(s)
c.250 by MANGA Plus 5 months ago
c.249 by MANGA Plus 6 months ago
c.248 by MANGA Plus 6 months ago
Search for all releases of this series

Status
in Country of Origin
74 Volumes (Complete)
26 Conbini-ban (Complete)

Oneshot (Complete)

Completely Scanlated?
Yes

Anime Start/End Chapter
Starts at Vol 1, Chap 1 (Bleach) / Vol 55, Chap 480 (Thousand-Year Blood War S1)
Ends at Vol 54, Chap 479 (Bleach) / Vol 67, Chap 609 Page 11 (Thousand-Year Blood War S2)

User Reviews
Bleach by Cypher-Khan
Bleach by tsubasa22

Forum
489 topics, 10448 posts
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User Rating
Average: 7.6 / 10.0 (4747 votes)
Bayesian Average: 7.59 / 10.0
10
 
 22%
9+
 
 15%
8+
 
 21%
7+
 
 17%
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 9%
5+
 
 5%
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 4%
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 2%
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 4%

Last Updated
March 20th 2024, 1:04pm


Genre

Categories

Category Recommendations

Recommendations

Author(s)

Artist(s)

Year
2001

Original Publisher

Serialized In (magazine)
Shuukan Shounen Jump (Shueisha)
Akamaru Jump (Oneshot Pilot)

Licensed (in English)
Yes

English Publisher
MANGA Plus
Viz (74 Vols - Complete)

Activity Stats (vs. other series)
Weekly Pos #483 increased(+101)
Monthly Pos #755 increased(+180)
3 Month Pos #856 decreased(-139)
6 Month Pos #818 decreased(-139)
Year Pos #721 decreased(-21)

List Stats
On 12558 reading lists
On 750 wish lists
On 3677 completed lists
On 992 unfinished lists
On 822 custom lists

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User Comments  [ Order by usefulness ]
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Rule of Cool Run Amok!  
by LazyReviewer
July 7th, 2023, 3:36am
Rating: 4.0  / 10.0
I am one of Bleach's biggest fans (I write fan fiction for it). I am also someone who saw the fullbring arc as an ill omen of things to come when it first came out. And boy does it choke hard!

Initially, Bleach is one of the best shonen manga in existence. Complex characters, decent comedy, great world building and a plot that, while not unusual, pairs with themes that make some of the best moments in manga. Memories in the Rain, and the fight with Grand Fisher, was some peak storytelling.

And then the world expands, and expands, and expands. New enemies, new kinds of conflicts, and one of the most densely packed foreshadowing sections I can remember. Before Ichigo even sets off for Soul Society, certain things have already been established that we won't truly understand until well over 600 chapters later. But....

While Tite Kubo is a master at drawing, character design, coming up with cool ideas, and even planning some things well in advance, he is a poor storyteller beyond one villain arc.

Bleach has several smaller arcs under an overarching villain arc, and for that one big villain, it's a great plot. The biggest issue the first overarching arc has is its inconsistencies with power levels. Flash step is incredibly useless or incredibly overpowered depending on what the story wants, for example.

But that's not the biggest issue there; that would be Ichigo's fluctuating strength, which seemingly makes no sense until it's explained halfway into the Thousand Year Blood War (the second major overarching villain arc). And honestly, that was a brilliant reveal... that was subsequently wasted and simultaneously turned the next villain encounter into a gaping plot hole.

And that's the issue, after one good villain arc, Tite Kubo couldn't write a lion out of a wet paper bag without expecting us to believe a cave man developed a teleporter for the lion to use despite the story being a documentary that's supposed to be accurate to real history.

Not that Bleach is real history or has lions in wet paper bags, but I hope that sums up the severity of the issue before I elaborate on it. Kubo insists on doing something cool even if it breaks the story... over and over and over and over and—I think you get the point.

Oddly enough, Ichigo is not a Mary-Sue/Gary-Stu character. That would be the villains. You see, the villains get to break the Bleach laws of nature when they feel like it, but the heroes have to follow them. The universe bows down to make the villains overpowered, and so they are some of the least believable villains in any manga, anywhere.

This results in the heroes needing equally unbelievable power ups, which makes it seem like the heroes are only winning because of plot armor—and they technically are—but that was only necessary (and the plot armor is necessary) because the villains were so broken to begin with. For example:
Spoiler (mouse over to view)
Ichigo gets introduced in a scene by moving a few kilometers in such a short amount of time his 3 future quincy opponents shake in terror because they couldn't even see him move. He also casually deals with their strongest moves. But literally, 3 or so chapters later, when Ichigo gets a chance to confront the big villain Yhwach before Yhwach gets his power up, those 3 quincy suddenly become fast and strong enough to block Ichigo and delay him long enough to let the villain get away.


That's right, the main villain would be dead (he should have died one already) if the story didn't cheat and give the villain the advantage without ever having written a logical reason for the villain to have that advantage. The bad guys are consistently Mary-Sues, and this not only breaks suspension of disbelief, it means the protagonists have to break suspension of disbelief in order to win.

That hurts the story so much, and wastes the good things it had. For example, in Bleach, no one—not even Ichigo—gets stronger through the "power of friendship". No one magically heals, either. All power ups and heals have a cause that doesn't come from friendship. The protagonists in Bleach earn their power ups and require outside help to heal... and it's all wasted.

The fullbring arc can be summed up as follows: contradictory cause and effect.
Spoiler (mouse over to view)
Ichigo, without his SR (soul reaper) powers, is contacted by Xcution. Their secret plan is to train up his FB (fullbring) powers, which work by connecting to the memories of objects, to then steal his (nonexistent) SR powers by stealing his FB powers. It's a literal oxymoron of a plan.

Not to mention, a captain class soul reaper is somehow affected by someone with powers that, admittedly, can't compare in potency to a captain class soul reaper. The Kenpachi fight clearly established that such an unbalanced matchup will only hurt the weaker individual, and the stronger one wouldn't be affected.

Well, actually, fullbring powers are fragments of the soul king, and as a result can do some weird bypassing of the greater power laws. Rangiku Matsumoto had her FB powers stolen by Aizen to create the Hogyoku. But we only find that out in the written novel that came into existence after the manga ended!


Characters actually get killed off... but that's wasted, too.

The manga becomes so much about cool moments it stops worrying about consistency, plot holes, characterization, world building, etc. Just keep bolting on the latest shiny thing.

The magic system in Bleach is broken beyond repair without a rewrite.

And then we get to the ending. There was no foreshadowing, nothing was shown (it was all told), and one of the two major relationships was never earned.
Spoiler (mouse over to view)
I'm sorry, Kazui, as soon as you go off to college or marry Ichika, your parents are getting a divorce.

They love you, but your mother's hero worship of your father really did neither of them a favor.


TL;DR: For most people: read until the Fullbring arc starts. Don't actually read the Fullbring arc, just use it as your finish line.

Also, if all you can remember about the female characters is they have large breasts, that's because you're only looking at female characters who have large breasts. There are so many without.
Spoiler (mouse over to view)
Sui-Feng, Momo, Rukia (more important than Orihime), Yuzu (when she grows up), Tatsuki (C cup—not small, but not unrealistic), Kiyone, one of the royal guard members, the female soul reaper who was one of two soul reapers assigned to patrol Karakura Town at the start of the Thousand Year Blood War arc, Ryo and Michiru (classmates of Ichigo and Rukia), Manaha (like Tatsuki, not small, but not unrealistic), lots of the arrancar, several quincy.

And more!

... Last updated on October 25th, 2023, 12:09am
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Awesome art, not so awesome story.  
by dibidabua
October 13th, 2021, 1:14pm
Rating: N/A
The art and character design is great, I also love how creative Kubo gets in regards of Zanpakutos and their powers. That being said the story is not the best, it kind of reminds me of DBZ, a stronger enemy appears, so the MC trains for most of the arc, he gets a power-up and then he's able to badassly defeat the enemy.
Just like Naruto this series reaches its peak around the middle(Aizen arc) and then goes downhill, the final arc is a shitshow of "asspulls" due to the introduction of undefeatable enemies and underwhelming fights with a cast of too many characters that just don't really do much. Hell, the final arc is an asspull itself(where did the Quincys even come from after 1000 years?) and somewhat innecesary, the story could've easily ended with Ichigo regaining his powers and it would've been fine.
All in all it's fine, great art, hype moments, an OP MC and a female cast with exaggerated boobs, everything you could want/expect from a shonen.

... Last updated on October 13th, 2021, 1:17pm
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Shame  
by Cryvern
July 5th, 2020, 4:53pm
Rating: 7.5  / 10.0
Sick art, good characters and start and premise but too bad Kubo can't pull the story through. For the last hundreds of chapters it was just a mindless scroll for me, just trying to get to the end because I've already come so far.
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Nice title  
by Nyxsha
October 17th, 2019, 3:47pm
Rating: N/A
i hope the anime get continue becouse its ry rly good manga, and sombody start the petition about this: http://chng.it/sVzgM4Xn9Z
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Not a good story writer  
by Acradnxy
August 3rd, 2019, 2:25am
Rating: N/A
Kubo should be an illustrator or short story creator rather than long running mangaka. He's struggling with story and character developments and tend to drag the story of one arc for too long. He said it in interview that he only wanted to focus on drawing something cool and didn't care for the story very much.

If only he did shorter story on this manga, it won't suffer from bad backlashes so much. It's hurting the fans too, people wanted more of Bleach back when it came out fresh, then it went down so hard, I could feel Kubo didn't know what the direction of it then started to not cared anymore about this manga he CREATED and wanted it to be ended fast. Despite the rushed full of stupidity ending he gave us.

One that I dislike is Orihime... OMG, I used to like her in the earlier of the series, she's pretty much lovable, but then Kubo decided to give her bs powers and turned her into a goddess princess who everybody needs to protect at all cost due to how awesome she is, how beautiful she is and how big her B00Bs are, so basically a typical useless Mary Sue. Ichigo also a Gary Sue, nobody could defeat him because he's the most badass of them all.

The story from arc to arc also similar a friend needs help, go to rescue the friend, battle scene, more talking, defeat the bad guy, bad guy left, and another friend needs help again, go to the rescue, another bad guy appears,repeat repeat and repeat until Ichigo gets his final form. Then boom, ending where everyone is married and have kids. So disappointed with this series. Again, another manga that started strong then ended badly, on top of that the mangaka didn't even care about it. I get it, you want to express your ideas, but when your idea is having a wrong turn, you need to think why? How this is happening? How can I fix it? Instead of just giving up and put more bs arc on it.
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Author cannot arc well  
by frostydeery
March 4th, 2018, 4:39pm
Rating: 5.0  / 10.0
I want to say first off, the character arcs(after the first) are abysmal. Stagnant, bland, done several times over(lookin at you ichigo) or dropped completely.
I can't say I hated anyone single story arc, they all had their high points i found interesting. Though they give me the badly conflicting thoughts "why the f is this taking so long" and "hold up wtf was that, author get back here and do some in depth explaining or at least put it in a extras book".
I really wanted to like the series, it kept interesting me back into looking at it, but oh my god was it failing story growth. "oh look, a elite enemy! level grind this much to oneshot the roadblock" was all i was getting after the entire aizen arc.
I'll even give credit to several of the anime filler arcs for interesting plots(manifesting zanpakto spirits was hella cool), but it just never went anywhere with the build up.

I'm not even sure where i was going with this ramble now, 5/10 it's kinda cool if you don't mind weird pace and low payoff.

... Last updated on March 4th, 2018, 4:50pm
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Popular shounen manga that dragged on for too long  
by Shonaiula
September 28th, 2017, 3:54pm
Rating: 8.0  / 10.0
I used to love Bleach. And I still do, to some extent. That is, I love it up to the end of the Soul Society/Hueco Mundo arcs, after which I feel like that manga just went steadily downhill to what many other reviewers have agreed to be an abysmal end.

My advice: Read up to chapter 423, and just... stop. Really, I think that the manga should have stopped there, leaving it on that bittersweet feel, rather than adding on arc after arc that just tried to churn out the same old formula but simply failed to keep up the hype. And chapter 423 itself is set up in a way that you can easily see it as a final chapter.

At any rate, if you're looking for a shounen manga with cool action and decent story, give Bleach a try. For all its flaws, I definitely found it to be an exciting read while it lasted.

... Last updated on September 28th, 2017, 3:56pm
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Great action. Not so great storytelling  
by DaBomba
April 13th, 2017, 9:27pm
Rating: 8.0  / 10.0
Very fun exciting fights (except for the awful final arc) but the characters lack any kind of real definition. They have backstories sometimes (the villains usually don't tho) but they still never stand out very much. Also the over all world isn't defined very well.
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I can't believe I'm giving this a 4  
by Ikumi
November 22nd, 2016, 1:57pm
Rating: 4.0  / 10.0
At the start, reading Bleach and watching the anime and all of its movies, I fell in love. I thought I would've given this a 10/10 for sure. I like how the story was, and the characters. But after awhile, I felt like the story was getting dragged. And in the end it was a rushed ending.

Spoiler (mouse over to view)
And I am so disappointed at how Ichigo didn't end up with Rukia. They had such great chemistry, and now it's like Naruto where their kids will end up together. This just sucks. Kubo most likely just paired Ichigo with Orihime for fan service and it was easier. It would've been better if no pairing was officially made. I don't know but I'm done with my rant and thank God this manga is over.


... Last updated on October 20th, 2017, 1:17pm
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The last arc was just terrible  
by SangMo
October 27th, 2016, 10:16am
Rating: 5.0  / 10.0
It wasted time introducing too many new characters, it rushed through it, the final fight was super anti-climatic. It left so many unanswered questions. It doesn't show what happens to many of the important characters.

Spoiler (mouse over to view)
And the worst thing is Rukia ending up with Renji. From a story standpoint, Rukia and Ichigo had much better chemistry and it would have made much more sense for them to get together. And no, this isn't just me shipping them. Seems like both Bleach & Naruto suffer from terrible end pairings.


... Last updated on October 28th, 2016, 10:16pm
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