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.