Bleach Mini Review (anime/manga)
September 19th, 2007 by Lianne
PG-13/16 for violence, maybe some nudity, and other standard shounen fare; official series website
Everyone’s read/watched/played video games for Bleach by now, so you can go seek out the opinion of someone who’s sampled more of this series than I have. If you like following a shounen about fighting and ghosts, join the legions of Bleach fans. If you like homoerotic undertones in your action comics, you can try and interpret that creepy guy with the glasses. And if you ever wondered what Sanzo from Saiyuki would look like in a shounen, you can tilt your eyes slightly upward to the picture posted above.
Initial impression: If you like shounen at all, absolutely check this out. (Lianne)
“…you can try and interpret that creepy guy with the glasses.”
Uryu? Did you just call Uryu creepy? And possibly gay?
Pfft, we all know he’s straight. It’s obvious that he’s completely in love with Orihime. to my fangirlish mind, that is
BAH! Orihime loves Ichigo… so… whatever… and Bleach is basic shounen except for the HUGE sexual tension between Ichigo and Orihime and the millions of pairings people can come up with from Bleach. The beginning isn’t the best and it may get repetetive, but I say it goes beyond normal shounen around the Heuco Mundo Arc. GAH! I guess I am a fanboy >.> but HEY! at least I don’t like Orihime just because of her figure… her personality is awesome *thumbs up*
okay, i’ve been watching it for a while, then i started reading it again yesterday, started from the beginning, and i just sat in my room for hours blocking everything out and just reading. i must say that its extremely interesting.
I bet it was..intersting and good. I was puched to read/wach it and everytime I did for some reason unknown to me I stop. I feels to me that Bleach is a manga centered around fighting. All the conflicts are resloved by fighting. I sometimes wach the Amv and over my brothers shoulder wach bits of Bleach and it seems quite amazing. I truly want to like it but I just can’t. The only reason I can come up with is I don’t like a manga full of fighting. If you like One peice and Naruto, etc then you will like Bleach. Also I bet its becuase its a Shounen and me being a girl.. BUT I know a few girls that exactly like it…and way too many people love bleach…I’m clueless on this.
I would advise anyone who likes shounen or manga in general to just stay away from Bleach. It is absolutely a bottom of the barrel comic.
It starts off promising, and after 60 semi-decent chapters it just gets sour. It has an extremely vapid and uninteresting main character and one of the worst antagonists I’ve ever read about in a manga. The story is FULL of plot holes and the fights are extremely boring (consisting of Ichigo just simply pullin a new power-up out of his ass every time he has to win)
Kubo doesn’t even know where he’s going with the manga. There is no sense of an overall coherence in terms of the plot. Kubo’s goal is simply this; to ‘shock’ the readers every week with some new and stupid plot twist. Ex. “Who said the Espada go from 1-10???” or Ichigo’s dad suddenly being revealed as a shinigami. These crrrrrazy plot twists aren’t entertaining, they simply serve to weaken the story as a whole.
The pacing is TERRIBLE. Following weekly will be nothing but a chore. Hardly anything takes place during one chapter, sometimes the most that will happen is a captain mentioning the name of their bankai. After the Soul Society arc, each chapter should take a max. 1-2 minutes to read, which is a shame.
Not to mention the art direction- which is just dull and bland. Kubo’s world has absolutely no notion of intrigue or wonder, it’s just a bunch of boring cityscapes and deserts. This is the weakest thing about Bleach, IMO. Compare Bleach to mangas like One Piece and Dragonball with their rich, diverse and incredibly imaginative worlds and Bleach will NOT leave a good impression.
The best thing Bleach has going for it are it’s character designs. They are generally excellent. However, the characters behind these designs are horrible and fail do anything interesting, in battle or otherwise. It’s a bit of a waste, really.
So there you have it. If you like other contemporary shounen mangas like One Piece, Toriko and Hunter x Hunter stay as far away as possible from Bleach.