I hate this manga it is the worst of all EVREY TIME IT COMES ON WHEN WACHING T.V. I SKREEEEEM!!!!!! I hace to close my eyes when changing the chanl. I tryed reading the manga but i couldenget over how ugly the charicters looked this manga has to be the worst you know what Id rather wach The miss advencers of flapjack (wich is a skary show) Sooo how about some InuYasha so take that U bleach lovers

Bleach is an interesting manga. It has a lot of charismatic characters, a wonderful begining and everything. Recently, the autor seems a little lost. But it's a normal thing to big series. But now he seems to be coming back to what he was in the begining.
The protagonist is that kind of guy that is stabbed almost to death, but them something gives him a ultra power and he wins the fight. The strange is that even being a common and boring kind of character, we still cheer for him.
But in my opnion, the great character in this manga is the antagonist. He is an extremelly overpowered guy. And the best part is that we don't know how bad he is... Can't wait to see more of him.

Once in a distant time, I was a HUGE fan of bleach. Now, I'm too much displeased, that I can't even say that reading the past-soul society phase is anything near to "worthy"

"The characters start undergoing stupid power-up to super-weak cycles that are unpredictable. One second they can beat anyone, next a low level enemy beats them to within an inch of their life.."

That alone just summarizes everything in the after-soul society phase.
The power scale were just fucked up. You don't know who is strong, who is not.

The manga is all about showing power and skills, but when stuff turns to completely random, it's just pointless to see badass moves, if in the next chapter the hero's tides can change from "absolute ownage" to "absolutely owned".


I just hope Kubo will put his mind on the tracks and, in the future, give us some good stuff like in the first arc.

i Know this is a popular manga.I first watched it few years ago.But apparantly It dun seem it suit me.My bro love it and I try to watch it too but end up with, i dun hv feeling over it.so i guess bleach is not for me.but naruto yes.

I have to say that everybody is right in here. In other places people get too passionate about the subject and they just respond to comments with insults. Oh well, I got hook with bleach a couple of months ago. I like the story a lot, but now is way too slow. I think that all the bleach fans would be with at smile is at the end of the soul society arc the story end with ichigo rescuing Rukia going home together and showing at the end of the manga a picture of them with kids. The first arc was full of interesting stories like: how renji met rukia (very interesting and captivating) Why rukia is going to be executed. Why she was adopted. Who was kaien shiba. The friendship between ichigo and his classmates. Kon ( he is so funny) How ichigo's mom died.
At the beginning of the story Rukia was a great character and very different from other mangas. Why? She was strong, intelligent, self confident, and she knows how to fight ( she doesn't take crap from anybody) Ichigo was that idiotic boy with no significant meaning in his life until he meets rukia. Until that everything was great. The problem is that the mangaka gave secondary characters and situations the place that they didn't deserve. I read a fanfic that was more interesting to read that the real manga. I hope that the mangaka ends this arc as soon as possible come back to focus in the main characters, answer the questions that many fans have like: Why is ishiin kurosake a shinigami? Does Ichigo knows that rukia killed kaien shiba? When renji is going to tell rukia that he is a vice captain? ( in part B he said that he would surprise her with the news) and many more questions in the air.I am still a huge fan but I would like to see the strory coming back to the original plot.

Plot/Length
Initially, when I first read/watched Bleach, it was quite captivating and a great piece to read. Unfortunately, although the start was great and I'm sure many of us agree. However, the series soon got dull. In the case of the anime, the fillers pretty much screwed things up. In the case of the manga, the series just kept dragging on. For a manga with a plot, 370 something is very long.
3/10 for Plot.

Concept: To be honest, I liked the concept of samurai in black killing evil ghosts, I mean who wouldnt? The whole concept of hollows, shinigami, soul society, etc. was well thought out initially. However, as the story moves along some of the original concepts are gone (e.g. Purified hollows are supposed to go to Soul Society and the concept of Hell only lasted 1 chapter). Hueco Mundo was pretty easy to understand... don't know why some people don't take it in well. But the explanations do get boring.... Can't they jsut say its the Hollow version of soul society?
7/10 for concept.

Art: The artwork of Bleach is pretty well done. The action scenes are easy to follow and the characters look alright. Need I say more?
9/10 for art.

Characters: The main protagonist, Ichigo is your typical shonen character.... Starts out normal, then gets dragged into strange situation, powers unlock and becomes overly strong. Orihime is also a typical shonen female secondary lead.... Thinks shes weak... wants to be useful... gets captured... etc. I could go on about Uryuu and Sado but we'll leave that for another day. The shinigami are better imo, each shinigami is like a typical guy in anyone's high school classroom. Espada, on the other hand, are a bitch to pronounce and type.
Characters 5/10

Final rating: 6/10
Additional note(s): Would do better in Monthly Shonen Jump/Jump SQ as the fight scenes won't feel as tedious.

Reading the first arc, I loved it. Had some flaws, but was otherwise awesome. As someone else said, I really liked Ichigo's hollow form, and pretty much the whole of the first arc was good. Soul Society was new, and a creative way to see the After-life, and the characters seemed slightly different from most series I, personally, had read at the time.
Then.. it stopped. Then I had to quit reading, because it got a) extremely boring, b) I stopped being able to say/read the names of the places and people, this left me with the inability to connect to any of it, much less connect from chapter to chapter outside of "Hey, the big guy.. or the smart guy.. or the .. the guy.." type of things. The characters start undergoing stupid power-up to super-weak cycles that are unpredictable. One second they can beat anyone, next a low level enemy beats them to within an inch of their life..

As far as the anime, it was good until the same place and then the fillers started. I don't need to go into that, because it hurts my head to think of the stupidness. So in the end, read it.. read it until the end of the Soul Society arc, and then stop and never think "What happens after..." and you will be left with a good taste in your mouth. Read past that, and your IQ will drop for every chapter you experience.

Update because I decided to read, since I kept being told how awesome it was again..
My experience: Imagine the DBZ anime, specifically the Frieza arc... imagine that all drawn out into a manga. Now, split it by having each time someone talks, punches, or powers up become a chapter. Thousands of chapters, right? Yeah, this is Bleach as it is now.

"He cut a dozen buildings in half, split the world, and hit the boss! He must be.. must be... dang he isn't hurt at all and he is now powering up a single slice that will mortally wound, but not kill, us! Nooo! I need to power-up!! Okay, oh noes! He beat us all again, power-up!"

They could have made this entire arc like.. 10 chapters of real good story telling, but now it is nothing but fluff with almost nothing happening in each chapter, outside of making the main bad guy more and more God-like (I guess he does fully qualify as a superior God now, though?). Either way, read until Soul Society arc is over, and then close the book and remember the fond memories, because if you read past that.. you won't have any left. You will end up a dried up husk of "I don't care" like many other Bleach readers, who only read the manga still because they need to have an end, an end or a death. Either or.

... Last updated on July 28th, 2010, 5:50pm

I agree with pretty much every single thing that CowTail said below. Except worthless... I mean, the guy apparently makes a living off such a manga, so.. its still worth something.
What's funny is the anime runs 10000000x better, and that's just because the director doesn't seem to be a retard like Kubo.
Ah well. Even after all these insults, I still keep reading it. Guess cuz I'm waiting for it to end... but if after 385 chapters , probably means this is gonna take a while. I'm just glad its getting there, since there can't be TOO many wildcards left for Kubo to keep extending the plot with.

BUT I WAS WRONG. WOW.

... Last updated on March 10th, 2011, 9:16pm

Well, I've been keeping track of this manga since before it started getting crazy popular. It's just not good anymore.

The beginning was fairly awesome, it introduced new ideas that haven't been done before and it had an engaging plot. Now, it's flooded with characters. I'm on chapter 384 and I come to realize that I don't even remember any of the characters' names! I had to scroll up just to remember Ichigo's name, and he's the lead character! That's just how insignificant the characters in this manga have become over time because there's too many to even care about.

Even worse are the battles. They have a single battle spanning what feels like entire volumes. If you're doing only one chapter a week, that's months for a single battle. Who's going to retain in memory all the slew of characters that weren't involved in that battle?

And impossibly none of the good guys die even though they get sliced and stabbed with huge slashes of blood going everywhere. Somehow they either recover in that same battle and power up or whatever, or they take a time out and are revived by the time the story tosses them into another worthless battle along with the mob of other forgettable characters. Kind of reminds me of DBZ, except worse because at least those guys grunted more when they powered up.

I only recommend this manga to guys who don't care about plot or character development...the types who are easily entertained by shallow action manga. "oooh, a guy just got full-body slashed by a blade 2x his size....oooh, he's back up and using some ability he for SOME reason decided not to use from the very beginning"

Worthless.

I began reading this without much interest, since most of my friends hated it. The first ten pages or so I thought were horrible. But I LOVED it. My one real complaint is that when Ichigo and his friends (Chad, Uryuu, etc) went to save Rukia from the Soul Society, about 30 characters (Soul Reapers) were introduced at once and it got incredibly confusing trying to keep them all straight.

I'm only on volume 27, so we'll see if I continue to like it, but right now, I think its wonderful.