Mixed Feelings
Bleach is a good choice for you if you're looking to observe the process of the mainstream anime of the 2000's and what they tried to pull off to sell and stay relevant. Outside of the popularity that it got, I see Bleach as a very stale and mediocre anime, which I'll go and detail in the review later, but I'd like to start with the cause and then the effects. You see, Bleach is a product of a time when a shounen reaches popularity to an extent that it can be milked, hinduism will then sue the studios and authors in question for treating theircattle with such disrespect, because those innocent cows have like four japanese businessmen attached to all ends of the udder, with them chugging the milk hard. The strategy was to sell it like it's crack-cocaine, because people will love it and people will buy it because it is something that fits their business strategy.
But how did the studios get the warm & sweet cow milk? Here, I'll guide you through it if you wanna do the same. First of all, the source material needs to have garnered some popularity from the target audience desired. Then, as your next step you make sure that it is gonna be a battle shounen and that it does feature some form of fanservice. Third, you make sure to influence the source material in a way that the show will keep its cast mostly out of mortal danger and will turn any of the cool villains into protagonists. And also make sure that nobody dies so you can milk the character popularity too. Fourth make sure you never take a break from airtime ever and air constantly, even if there is no content to adapt. Create filler arcs so the author has time to write content for the anime to adapt. They don't have to be memorable or interesting, you already hooked in the audience. They'll watch anything, so they don't deserve any quality. And then you are set for as long as the author complies. Some free advice on how to keep animating content and delay running out of source material: Make sure to rehash as much material as possible, showing as many flashbacks as possible whenever the character reminisce something important or just make a bullshit reason like trying to remind the audience what the characters are fighting for. It will help you plenty. Don't forget you think your audience is just filled with complete idiots. Very important.
What shows like Bleach aspired to be was the next Dragon Ball, because that for most was like crack-cocaine. Since the DB franchise did it first, we just have to do it and make sure we capitalize on all the things it did and make our shows as close in execution as possible, and not risk anything because it won't sell. This is kinda why shows like Bleach disgust me. They just don't aspire in any way to be artistically distinguishable and just try to be the same thing as their spiritual predecessors. They treat their audience like garbage and the only reason I came come up with for such a thing is the reward, which is the money. If this business scheme worked, why not use it? Each of these goliath shounen shows have some varying degree in certain aspects of sins in these departments, but they're all the same when boiled down. Another attempt at getting another Dragon Ball on the market. If you can't respect that, you can just stop reading the review, you read enough. If the show will have potential early, it will dissapoint you because it went nowhere with it. If it won't, you'll be dissapointed again because you had nothing to show for at all after spending some time through it. But if you still hold some interest for Bleach, keep reading, because now I'll get into the actual show itself.
But note that I'll spoil some things in the story for like the first 15 episodes of the show. The show has 366 episodes so it kinda is hard to not give you any specifics on the story's direction without giving you any specifics. I strongly advice reading despite that, I did my best to avoid it being plot specific and in a series like Bleach, having a little knowledge of what you'll watch, from where I'm standing, is strongly adviced.
The story of Bleach early seems to be about a high school student who gets super powers and has to fight and protect people from spirits that failed to pass away to the other world. And for the most part, he spends his time going through high school featuring some slapstick humor along the way and then, in his responsabilities as a shinigami, he has to fight gigantic monstrous beings with a big fucking sword. Sounds like nothing. As a matter of fact, for the most part, Bleach is mostly generic in terms of its action and story, but it does have a high point.
In its introduction arc the series does build itself up. First it does build up the main character, and his overall attitude towards saving people. He isn't unwilling to save people that he sees that do need help, but he isn't exactly accepting of the idea that he would go around and make a day out of it. The way he described it at the time that "Of course I'm gonna help someone if I see they need it. But I don't want to seek doing it." And for a while the series tries to convince him to get to do what he can to take care of everyone and Ichigo constantly does it reluctantly.
But that plays into a meaningful decision.
Another thing that was constantly built up in the series was the Spirit Society, a society governed by people with the same powers as Ichigo, responsible for the protection of spirits and fighting against corrupt ones. The character responsible for Ichigo having to fight these spirits leaves in order to protect him and not make him also suffer consequences as a result of her actions. He is unsatisfied with her decision and runs off to find her. And so he does, just to find another two people, of whom one proceeds to destroy him in battle, with him being a subordinate of the other. And then a meaningful thing happens. After this sore defeat, Ichigo decides to try and save her. To infiltrate Soul Society. After losing his powers. And after being overpowered. He made a decision about who he wants to protect and why, and goes in to save her despite all odds, in a world filled with an uncountable number of people who might be potentially much more powerful than him, willing to simply just go alone. It feels like an adventure with odds stacked against him with who knows what might come against him. The show is respectable at that point and the decision makes sense and feels meaningful.
The Soul Society Arc is pretty much where the non-fanatics of Bleach agree that the show was at its strongest. And I'm one of those people. Now don't worry, I'll stop with the spoilery stuff now, so you won't have to worry about what you'll read on ahead. All I will say that in the Soul Society arc, our characters will explore uncharted territory and have fights of their own. Most of the fights will focus on presenting the personality and motivations of the characters and show off the world. It's the most well executed arc out of the entirety of Bleach, because there's a sense of urgency because you don't know how events will play out and it does pretty much feel like a rescue mission.
But everything falls apart after this arc. Fillers with irrelevant events will start pilling up, which even the most thirsty of fans tend to skip. The fights just become a mess where the character who's strongest wins until the other character reveals a "final form". That will be the basic structure of all the fights for the series' remaining airtime and actual abilities and what they do won't matter, because ultimately, the strongest in raw power will win. All of the action of the series is stale and the character motivations just don't matter. Fuck, each character has different abilities and that plays so little into how fights go around, that they feel almost incompetently choreographed. They just seem to bank on pure hype alone.
While Ichigo has an interesting execution at the start, he's a very standard shounen protagonist who fights to protect his friends from harm, he's hot headed, has spikey hair and is fucking terrified of those things women have on their chest or between their legs. He is an archetype that even at the time was treading water. All the other character don't matter since the series removes all the tension and urgency by making everyone make peace amongst themselves and just introduce some new enemies so a constant clash of I'M STRONGER THAN YOU DIE will come. The overarching villain of the series is some dude thirsty for power for the sake of power. Otherwise known as a cartoon villain. Everything in Bleach is as generic as possible.
Bleach aired for 8 years. In these 8 years, the artstyle suffered some changes. From first having that choppy VHS aimed type animation with some degree of bad color balance it eventually ends up being one of those series that didn't figure out how to draw the outline of the characters without making them oversharpened, so everything is constantly looking blurry. Also the color balance often feels too strong when dark colors aren't involved. In the first few years it was introduced, it had some pretty interesting tracks that in all honesty, I can enjoy listening to these days. Then eventually transitioned to airing some harmonical/classical tracks in its wake. They're not bad, but the first aired tracks for the series have a very distinct feeling.
So if you decide to watch Bleach do it if one of the following descriptions apply to you. You're just looking for a long running action series and don't really care about the structure of the fighting and think that the raw power type drawn fights will entertain you. Or you're looking to look into the way the business strategy of selling off the next Dragon Ball failed and Bleach is a particularly strong choice because it's already kinda faded out of relevance. It doesn't really have really strong action and early it mostly was used to develop characters. Then it was just colored blasts or final forms. Or both. The humor is slapstick and well... you can find that type of humor pretty much anywhere. No need to find it in Bleach. And Bleach just is a very generic show that aired for a really long time. Ultimately, Bleach was passed off as milk. But most people know better than to drink Bleach.
