We follow a high school student known as Ichigo Kurosaki who can see dead spirits and if you think that’s interesting, don’t worry, the whole series completely forgets that he has this power. After meeting the soul reaper known as Rukia, he steals her powers and become a soul reaper as he kills the main enemy known as Hollows. Going from there, we follow Ichigo as he develops as a soul reaper. Now, that’s a really basic run down of it because I have a lot of complaints to make against the plot. Let’s begin with the fact that the first lot of chapters which I like because it’s just a very standard shounen set up of us following the main character as they develop and meet new characters and introduce new allies and villains. It goes off from that into Rukia getting captured and on wait to be executed for giving her soul reaper powers to someone else so Ichigo and his friends, Chad, Orihime and Ishida go save her from the other soul reapers and this is where it becomes a mess. It’s pretty much the four of them with an extra idiot declaring war on the soul society and while all this is going down, there is this other plot line happening and it just makes following the plot very confusing. It ends with them setting up the next big bad guy for the next arc and Ichigo gets accepted as a substitute soul reaper by the end of it so he gets forgiven for pretty declaring war against them. That’s just a very basic rundown of what I would consider to be the first two arcs and there is a total of five arcs in this whole series and I would consider one of them to be unnecessary and it should of ended after the third one. I do have some grips for the plot but that’s for later since I want to trash the storyline. I personally like the first arc because it’s pretty standard for a shounen manga and it doesn’t go on forever. Yes, I am criticising arc sizes again but this time, I am doing all the arcs because they take forever. The second arc was 100-150 chapters long which felt long then it should due to padding and I was already burned out by this point but then the next arc was just over 200 chapters long. I took breaks between reading each arc of a day so I could just recover and I was still feeling completely burned out because it just felt so boring to read through. One Piece also has ridiculously long chapters but I was having fun reading it so I wasn’t feeling as burnt out. You may bring up the argument of “If you aren’t enjoying, don’t read it” and I would say you are 100% right but I was somewhat enjoying it for some things but due to how dragged out these arcs are, the fun just become very minimal for me. Thankfully the fourth arc only lasted like 50 chapters despite being a waste of 50 chapters since it could of been compressed into 10 chapters at max but then the final arc is another 200 chapter slog. If all the chapters weren’t so drawn out, this would of been easily a 300-400 chapter manga and it would of been much better because of it but all the battles are strung out for no reason at all except padding it out because this was a weekly series so everything has take forever. I am going to criticise the plot a bit more but the characters deserve some attention or I guess in this case, a knife to gut themselves due to shear unlikability.
These characters, like every other shounen manga, are supposed to be simple and appealing to the biggest audience possible which is why when I say only found two of the many characters this series has to be likeable, you have done goof. For those wondering who I like, I like is Kenny and Chad and it’s not just because they look like bad asses but more because they are one of the visual appealing ones. Kenny stands out because of his stupid looking hair and Chad is interesting just because he kind of looks like a hot Latino but on top of that, I do like how they are depicted in the story. Ken is depicted as this strong person who pretty much wreaks anything and everything and this is before he unleashes his sword’s true form. It’s a shame that he is pretty much a 2D character like most shounen manga is like because if he was fleshed out, I think he alone could carry his own story in a different story but we don’t get that so shame. Chad is considered to be one of the “main characters” and while he does have some fights on the manga, it just feels like he is one of the “cheerleading squad”. You know, the type where the writer just makes them watch the fight between the actual main character and the current baddie of that arc and contribute very little or jack all to the current situation. It’s a problem with most of these shounen manga where they have other main characters standing around and watching the main fight but what makes these forgivable is the fact they make up for it. For example, in “History’s Strongest Disciple Kenichi”, most of the action is tournament related so the other mains have an excuse to stand around because they are spectators. If they can’t do this, they can always do the “One Piece” thing where each of the crew members have their own fights in an arc so it feels like they are contributing to the story’s progression. Bleach sort of does the second thing but it’s not done well enough to draw readers away from that fault which is why I bring it up. I should probably address the somewhat of a backhanded comment when I said I found Ken and Chad to be the most visual appealing ones and I say this because they all look plain and boring.
Apart from Chad and Ken, I can think of three other characters that looks interesting enough to be called colourful and they are considered support characters, maybe even minor characters if I was to backhand the character design a bit more. These guys are mainly based on one trait and that’s their character design and while this isn’t very offendable, these guys are very plain because of it. For example, our main character’s design trait is “he has orange hair and therefore, he looks like a delinquent” and that’s not appealing at all. A main character should look visually colourful while being its own unique design that you can spot from anywhere. Ichigo is just dull and plain looking and if I was to see him on anything, I would just think he is a guy with orange hair and this is bad. I don’t see how such a dull looking manga with such dull looking characters was able to be even considered popular enough to be published weekly in Jump of all things. I will dig into more of my thoughts on the success of dull characters when I do “World Trigger” but to end it now, I think the manga is bad in both a plot view and a character view which should of been the death sentence for this manga but it wasn’t so I don’t know what’s wrong with people these days. This manga was first published during 2001 so maybe it was just a bunch of emo kids/hipsters just liking these series because of the soul reaper theming. That’s all I want to complain about on the character side of things so let’s hope back over to the plot side of things because I am going to criticise a very important thing that I feel like is a important thing called pacing which is a concept that’s apparently obscure to most shounen manga writers since most of them never manages it properly.
Pacing is a very important tool when it comes to any form of media with a story element. You want to make sure things are not rushed or drag on too long as it can affect the audience’s enjoyment or understanding of the plot. This is something most weekly publications don’t get right since they somehow make most chapters feel not only extremely drawn out but also rushed which you would think would be impossible but they do it. Bleach is one of the biggest offenders of this because it make important plot elements just feel rushed and not very well explained and then make fights that should only last two-three chapters at most, last something ridiculous like ten-fifteen chapters. It because of this, the manga feels way too long at points and that’s why these arcs just drag on for no reason. There are cases where long arcs aren’t such a drag like for example, One Piece has hundred chapter long arcs as well but the difference between Bleach and One Piece is the fact that One Piece is constantly fun to read/watch on top of having great pacing through while Bleach is just depressing and boring. If Bleach has better pacing, I think Bleach would a little bit more tolerable and maybe actually fun to read but it isn’t. I will be constantly bring up pacing in most of my reviews for now on since as an aspiring writer, it’s important to take note of these sort of things and it bugs me when they don’t do it right.
Before ending this review, something I wanted to touch on how visually appealing this manga looks. While the character design is rather flat, I think the spreads in the series is just amazing. I have compiled my favourite ones from the entire series below this review to see them for yourself. I personally think these spreads are better than what One Piece produces so there is at least that going for it. Also, I haven’t watched the anime so I have nothing to say about it but I presume as boring as the manga.
To say I hate this manga would be a slight understatement. Do I hate it? Yes. Is it the worst thing I ever read? Definitely not. I have read worse than this for sure but this is very low on the spectrum for me. Why this was popular enough to run in Shounen Jump Weekly for nearly seven hundred chapters is beyond me but this is a solid 3/10 for me. This manga has a lot to improve on but it has ended now so what can the mangaka do for his next series? Well he can start by getting pacing right and improving his character designs and I think it would be a solid manga by then. I mean, it doesn’t mean great but being decent is a great start. Next week might be another game review but if not, we are talking “World Trigger” which won’t be as harsh as this review but I can’t say it’s going to be an outstanding one. If you want to see my other content, link to my YouTube channel where I post a weekly montage of my YuGiOh experience online for you like that sort of things.
Gallery:
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