I reviewed both. To sum up: Bleach´s (4/10) reign of quality, if a B- can be called that, didn´t last that long and it became unreadable money printing years ago.
Naruto´s (7,5/10) 3rd act -Ninja War III- may have been a mess but was still readable with burst of interesting content so i will forever remain a fan. All the new spin-off crap can stay home though!

I stopped reading One Piece (6/10) last year and the manga stared to fall apart (it´s still ok-ish) after the time jump. DB (6/10) turned into a cliché driven mess that contradicted the first 17 Volumes with the introduction of Saiyajins. "SJ Kings" talk over and Kenshin / HxH are the magazine´s best series. Nor are they DB clones as the rest.

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I also read EU/US comics and am a librarian.
Manga-Masters, My ANN-Lists + Imdb

Why do i like them?

Naruto -- fascinating, well developed world with an interesting combat system + plenty of interesting characters /
-downside - it's often poorly written & developed /
-however - being invested in characters & a conflict makes me forgive enough problems to tune in every now & then /

Bleach -- soul society is fascinating, has one of the most attractive character designs for a battle -manga, their take on shinigami is fascinating + plenty of interesting characters /
-downside - none of the fights are memorable & they drag out way too long /
-however - attractive ideas, attractive art & attractive characters can make me forgive enough problems to tune in every now & then /

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Both Naruto and Bleach started out well, but the endings for each both sucked.

Bleach's fatal flaw was making Rukia such a useless side character and the final arc was pretty bad and rushed.

One of Naruto's biggest flaws was the end couples in my opinion. Characters ending up together who didn't have proper development at all. And this isn't me mad about my "shippings or anything". If you have to create a movie to shove in all the development 2 characters (Naruto & Hinata) didn't get in the main story, then they probably weren't a good pairing.

Also, if you have a character marry someone who never showed he liked her, tried to kill her on multiple occasions and even after they marry, neglects the shit out of her and their daughter. Again, probably not a good pairing. (Sasuke & Sakura)

And last, if you develop 2 character's (Naruto & Sakura) relationship throughout the entire story: His goal bring back the guy she loves so she will smile, him saving her MULTIPLE TIMES, once from the guy she loves, and even going as far as to make the pointless comparison of her to his mother and they don't end up together, then you are a bad writer.

If this was competently written and showed these characters have the proper development, I wouldn't be saying this.

Another huge one was that they didn't kill Sasuke. That is generally the biggest issue I had with the end. HE TRIED TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD. He didn't to deserve to live or be forgiven. That made the ending so much more pointless.

Last edited by SangMo at 12:27 pm, Jan 8 2017

Bleach started out so well but fell apart too fast. The moment soul society started the story was supposed to get better but it didn't. I still enjoyed the rest of that first arc but anything after that was just dribble. Stories are no longer interesting and I couldn't care less about the characters. In fact I started to hate most of them, including the main characters. I tried to pick it up again several time but got fed up with it again pretty quick. By the time it ended, I cared so little that I didn't even check the ending. I'd say it started as an 8/10, fell to a 4 by the end of second arc and doesn't even deserve a rating of any kind after that. One good thing about it was the art.

I tried to read Naruto but didn't make it pass the first few chapters. I thought the art was too messy and confusing. The foreground and background wasn't distinctive. If I was more patient with it, I might have liked it.

I loved One piece when I first started reading over 10 years ago. It was funny, light-hearted and had this sort of child-like but creative art. I liked the characters and above all I liked the sense of freedom it brought. It was too long and dragged out after a while so I stopped reading it. Started again recently and to my surprise it's still decent, a 7/10 for me. Now, I'm certain that no matter how dragged out it is, it will never be as bad as bleach. I do hope it finishes soon though.

I've only say 20 episodes of bleach so far, so I have no opinion of it.
Naruto on the other, was good at first but went downhill after pain arc.
Plus, most of the female cast sucks (Konan and Temari are exceptions) and they keep milking that cash cow.

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It's often the stuff you start out with. It seems miraculous and awesome when you're young and new and it tends to make you addicted and some people take that feeling with them later in life. I personally enjoyed many of these generic cliché manga when I was younger, bleach naruto and one piece. However, I now can't even stand the sight of them. Why is that? Well, mostly it's because it's a bundle of clichés and have a very childish feel to them when you've been through so much other stuff intended for adults.

But if I have to be honest, it's not solely this. A small part of it is also how people hype it up that I feel a natural distaste for it. I can't help it. This isn't about not wanting to read the same stuff as other people or feeling "unique and great" which is the case for some people out there. If I find a manga to be good, I'll read it no matter how popular it is without any prejudice. However, after having tried it, I don't really like them nowadays. That I read that stuff when I was a kid also enhances the feeling of it being childish and I can't stop nitpicking about things while reading.

It's good starter stuff though. I just can't handle it nowadays and might even say that I hate it a bit after hearing so much about it over the years.

Do you dislike Harry Potter....WITH NINJAS!!!? what do you have against...NINJAS!!!?

Naaah, dude, you're late for the Party. Naruto is the 11th iteration of the classic tale of "The Ninja Kid" that started with Rantaro (Rakudai Ninja Rantarō/ Failure Ninja Rantaro from 1986) Goemon mystical ninja, Sarutobi sasuke, shonen ninja Fujimaru. etc. It's not the most famous Ninja of all time. It's just pop now. In this decade. If you are over 23 and you dislike the story....You outgrown the hobby already.

Funny thing is I used to like Naruto and Bleach a lot, but as I kept watching/reading other series in the same genre I realized that both (mostly Naruto) don't live up to the hype. Naruto was good in Part 1 but went off the rails after Pain Invasion however even before said mentioned arc Part 2 is decent at best and nothing more. For Bleach I actually enjoyed it past Soul Society but I think it could have just ended after because what we got after that was average to decent (mainly pertaining to the Fullbring arc), Quincy Blood War despite it's flaws was also enjoyable until the ending.

In addition, when it comes to shounen manga neither of them are worthy of being in a top 5, let alone top 10 imo

Last edited by MemeYakuza2019 at 11:41 am, Jan 13 2022

A friend of mine and I got into an argument over this earlier today. My friend says that it's "unfair" for Bleach's final arc to get such good animation while Naruto's final arc got hit with filler hell.
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Last edited by dailyak77 at 8:48 am, Jan 4 2023

Well your friend should think of it this way, Naruto at least got a complete anime adaptation whereas Bleach had to wait 9 years for it's last arc to get animated, and since Bleach is a big series that's making a comeback of course it'll receive nice animation only reason Naruto didn't get the same attention to detail is because it was a long running anime just like Bleach was before it ended in 2012.

Disliking popular shounens is very hip if you're young. Or just hating popular things in general.

No, man, if there's one worst anime to choose from, it's Bleach and One Piece. But definitely not Naruto. This is my love

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Don’t believe in the me that believe in you, don’t believe in the you that believes in me, believe in yourself who believes in you!

As someone who loved Bleach, still writes fanfiction of it, but still knows it became a complete mess:

Bleach's issue was the author could never leave the 'rule of cool' alone. Screw consistency, screw plot, screw characterization: if it looks cool, do it. Thus, starting with the Fullbring arc, we ended up with one of the most plot-hole-ridden, character-assassinating, disrespectful to itself manga of all time.

The villains tended to be Mary-Sues (the laws of the universe bending to their whim while everyone else has to follow those rules).

Furthermore, The Thousand Year Blood War (quincy) arc was not only a near-identical structural repeat to Aizen (thus providing evidence the author can only write one kind of villain arc), it was some of the least believable action of any manga.

Aizen was one of the best villains, and his reveal was one of the best twists in all manga. There are plenty of great and memorable fights... before the Fullbring arc. But after that, it hurt to read.

There was still the occasional really cool and planned from the beginning event, like how Ichigo's parents got together, and the .

But as if to emphasize how much we shouldn't care for Ichigo or any of the good guys, the moment Ichigo unlocked his full capabilities, the author breaks the laws of the Bleach universe and has a significantly less powerful than Ichigo villain beat Ichigo effortlessly, completely ignoring the established laws of the universe that applied during the Kenpachi fight.

The author actually perma-killed characters and no one cared about the stakes.

There were no stakes because the author made sure no one had any suspension of disbelief. No one cared about how the fights were going to go in an action manga, because no one had stakes in the fights, because we all knew none of it made sense.

I stuck around for what happened between fights, and also just to finish the story.

And that ending... even that was undeserved. Orihime worshiped Ichigo, and Ichigo didn't show any more attraction to her than he did to Yoruichi or Rangiku (he showed more to them), and certainly the chemistry between he and Rukia was ten times better than between he and Orihime.

I agree with Renji and Rukia getting together. Fully. I didn't want Ichigo to get with Rukia because Renji was such an awesome character who redeemed himself and had this awesome backstory he shared with her.

But Ichigo and Orihime? Let me put it this way: I know of two IRL relationships where the guy didn't show any real love to a girl who wanted them so bad they got the marriage: it ended in amicable divorce after the kids got old enough.

That was never a happily ever after relationship. I was hoping the anime would do something to rectify this and make it more believable.

Honestly, Senna would have been a much better match. But she's technically not canon, or if she is, she's dead.

I would have believed it more if Ichigo got together with a background character or even a random nobody we had never seen.

As for Naruto, I tried so hard to stay interested, but between chapters 500-600, I just got tired of it. It's more consistent in its storytelling than Bleach, but I could finish Bleach and not Naruto. Not sure why.

One Piece had me to the 800s, then I just thought, "Maybe I'll pick it up when it ends." It hasn't ended yet, and it way too large for me to really consider a full read through.

As to why they were so popular: for all their flaws, they told big stories every week for well over a decade. They had extremely strong first arcs at a time when manga became widely available outside of Japan. And, most importantly, they were flawed.

I would like to point out that Naruto is only beaten out by Harry Potter in terms of number of fanfiction written for it. Bleach is the 9th largest fandom on fanfiction(dot)net.

One Piece isn't up there because it has less flaws. Flaws get people talking, and that's basically word of mouth. Even if it isn't entirely positive, it is recognition.

They're the big 3 because of time, chance, expansive worlds, a strong first arc, and being flawed in a way that makes people want better, not something else.

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I'm a jack of all trades but master of none. Too many jars and not enough hands.