Alternatives: English: Bleach
Japanese: BLEACH
Author: Kubo, Tite
Type: Manga
Volumes: 74
Chapters: 705
Status: Finished
Publish: 2001-08-07 to 2016-08-22
Serialization: Shounen Jump (Weekly)

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3.8
(108 Votes)
33.64%
24.30%
26.17%
14.95%
0.93%
0 Reading
0 Want to read
0 Read
Alternatives: English: Bleach
Japanese: BLEACH
Author: Kubo, Tite
Type: Manga
Volumes: 74
Chapters: 705
Status: Finished
Publish: 2001-08-07 to 2016-08-22
Serialization: Shounen Jump (Weekly)
Score
3.8
108 Votes
33.64%
24.30%
26.17%
14.95%
0.93%
0 Reading
0 Want to read
0 Read
Summary
For as long as he can remember, high school student Ichigo Kurosaki has been able to see the spirits of the dead, but that has not stopped him from leading an ordinary life. One day, Ichigo returns home to find an intruder in his room who introduces herself as Rukia Kuchiki, a Soul Reaper tasked with helping souls pass over. Suddenly, the two are jolted from their conversation when a Hollow—an evil spirit known for consuming souls—attacks. As Ichigo makes a brash attempt to stop the Hollow, Rukia steps in and shields him from a counterattack. Injured and unable to keep fighting, Rukia suggests a risky plan—transfer half of her Soul Reaper powers to Ichigo. He accepts and, to Rukia's surprise, ends up absorbing her powers entirely, allowing him to easily dispatch the Hollow.

Now a Soul Reaper himself, Ichigo must take up Rukia's duties of exterminating Hollows and protecting spirits, both living and dead. Along with his friends Orihime Inoue and Yasutora Sado—who later discover spiritual abilities of their own—Ichigo soon learns that the consequences of becoming a Soul Reaper and dealing with the world of spirits are far greater than he ever imagined.

Reviews (108)
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Bleach review
by
YesterdaysJoe9
Apr 04, 2021
Bleach (Manga) 9/10/10/10/10

First things first. My "reviews" system is explained on a blog entry. Which can be found through my profile.
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Oeh.. now that I've re-read Manga... figured to write a review about my all time favorite battle shounens. (I've seen Anime total of 4 times including the movies.. but re-read because... Anime final arc is still not animated and I wanted refresher of final arc)

✦Story
As it's extremely long running battle shounen, it would be too tedious to make more of "detailed" review. So to put it simply. It has a very battle, drama, tragedy rich storytelling that also has spice of character relationships and even romance to it. Like any story, there is certain pattern and the longer is series the more prominent those patterns are. Does it ruin enjoyment? No. Or well, depends on how you are watching something. As I'm more of a "live" viewer than "predictor", thus I got tons of joy out of this story.

✦Art
I got nothing to say. It was simply spot on to my tastes. It had rather sharp and clear style to it. Absolutely amazing character designs, power designs, world designs and godlike awakening/power-up designs.

Also plenty of waifus to choose from and plenty of amazing weapons.

✦Character
Once again.. character variation is amazing. So are the stereotypes and personalities variations.

Characters with more importance or value have more backstory to them and as well more roles in the story itself. Thus they get better development and backstory. Lot of interesting characters, interesting villains and even often likeable villains.

Ichigo, our MC is amazingly enjoyable tragic hero. Whenever it's his relations to characters or plot twists that get found out or his journey of combat and power-ups and awakenings. Are simply absolutely enjoyable.

As far as battle shounens go, style-wise it's my all time favorite.

✦Enjoyment & Overall
I would have more comments about Anime, but since it's manga I'll keep it shorter.

Long story short. It's one of the first "spot on" Anime that I fell love with. It has simply way too many elements that match my tastes and thus amplify the enjoyment to unreal amount. One of few series that I actively hope for final arc to be animated. On top of that I collect images, music, games, fanart, doujinshi and so on. (now and then)

In another words. I absolutely adore this series (and Anime adaption is simply my utmost favorite Anime of all times).

It has it's ups and downs but all things consider I find storytelling extremely pleasing that is filled with twists, surprises, changes, awakenings and extremely powerful emotions.

It even has rather complex story and especially abilities. On top of that there are plenty of story points that just twist your gut because of some characters master plans.

Probably the weakest point of the story would be last 2 arcs where their contrast was rather odd. Fullbring arc that felt the weakest and final arc that was a bit way too over the top with it's powers and characters. Especially with the very specific/niches that tons of characters had as their abilities.

Nevertheless it was wrapped up rather nicely. Sadly if it wouldn't started being pressurized to ending the story, we would gotten a lot of more explanations and prolonging chapters that would balance out the pacing of the story.

At least finale was great, which showed some insight into characters future and best of all. Love that bloomed.

As far as "perfection" goes. It's one of the closest ones to my enjoyment and tastes. Obviously it has it's duller moments and issues, but so does everything.

+TOPFAV
(might revise for clarity)
Bleach review
by
pikachu349
Apr 04, 2021
You know that feeling of wonder one might have when starting a book or a movie or anything else they heard plenty about, to find out for themselves what it's all about? Well then I'm sure you also know the feeling when all that excitement deflates into apathy as you find it to be just what you expected. That's Bleach, it's bad, not spectacularly bad but just bad in the least entertaining way possible, but let's go over it step by step.

Art:
If there's one aspect of Bleach that doesn't require shutting down perception organs to tolerate, it's art. Not to say it's great but for a weekly series it's not bad either. Bleach starts out a bit rough, angular and cartoony, very fitting for the time period when it got first published. Few volumes later it smoothes out and starts to look a bit more attractive as lines get cleaner, sharper and proportions become more realistic.
Character design quality varies wildly, at best they look stylish, fit character's personality to a tee and simply are nice to look at. While worst of them look like edgy teenagers OC they painstakingly polished for weeks to post on deviantart alongside their fanfic.
Architecture is worse off with absolutely nothing to show off. Over the course of the manga you'll see: modern Japanese suburbs; dense european city looking environments; desert full of nothing; large squares and cylinders with equally exciting interior and finally heian era looking areas.

Story
Characters: Hoo boy are they nothing, simply nothing. Their personality, goals and purpose can be exhaustively described in one short sentence or less cause many miss one or two of the aforementioned points. Thanks to genius way the plot is structured, many characters lose relevancy when their ark is done with and will mostly appear only when there's a need for an asspull of which there are many (sasuga Kubo sensei!). One of them is so amazingly useless I can't help but mention it for your amusement. Near the end the main baddy, Jewish nazi god Yhwach breaks Ichigo's sword to a point where even time and space denying healing power can't fix it. Out of nowhere comes a guy, stabs Ichigo in the back to implant him with the past where his sword isn't broken by Yhwach and that somehow allows them to fix the sword. Whole thing lasts only a few pages and has no point at all.
Last off I want to give Ichigo a special mention for being the most pathetic shonen hero. His entire adventure is nothing but getting beat up half dead by everyone until he gets a powerup and steamrolls their opponent.

Plot: there is one, I think? Each ark is kind of self contained and follows some basic plot that revolves around saving friends and beating a bad guy. Soul society is the only one with any buds of ambition as initial save a friend premise then out to be a plan of baddie's clever keikaku to fuck everything up but it still ends up to be dumb and simple. None of it matters, events, characters and new powers are quickly forgotten and don't have any effect on overall story.
Fights were outsourced to nearest kindergarten or at least they must be to explain why each one of them is the same. A fights B, A or B is getting clobbered until receiving a powerup, then positions are reverse until A or B wins. No clever planning, choreography or tricks like in JoJo or HxH, just mindless back and forth.

Fun factor: none, I can't even recommend it to people who love shonen, even Naruto at any point had more going for it, even Hero Academia which I dislike a lot is a better time than Bleach, there is no point to reading it unless you want to personally familiarize yourself with what somehow became one of the most popular shonen manga to date. If you have that desire you're probably deep into this hobby and need any reviews, otherwise avoid it.
Bleach review
by
Kagamihara-chan9
Apr 04, 2021
Now I'm not going to be doing a review about the entirety of the bleach manga, just a certain part. That part in particular is the thousand war blood war arc. To me every page of this saga was an absolute masterpiece. I'll try my best to not give any spoilers seeing as it'll be over a whole year until it's animated.

This saga starts off a bit slow in the first volume and doesn't really look that good. But Jesus Christ does it pick up...and quick too. By the second volume everything goes up to a hundred. A full on war in the soul society. The main enemies this time, the quincies. A group of hollow slayers that were mortal enemies to the soul reapers. They battled many years ago, but lost and were thought to be all slaughtered.

Unfortunately for the soul reapers though, they were just in hiding. They quickly reer their heads and show that they are a serious threat. I mean these guys are lettered from A to Z and have all sorts of crazy powers. One guy has flames, one has lightning, one even zombies. These guys have the deck absolutely stacked against the soul reapers. And you can really see that these foes drive them to their limit.

And if your like me and love the captains (and who doesn't) you'll see them in plenty of great battles. Battles that see them pulling out things like never before. Some of them even have to battle multiple times to defend their home. And you'll also see many welcome returns to the story, buy I don't wanna spoil that. Personally the characters this time around go through personal things that will truly change their lives forever. At the time of me reading this, the saga hadn't been announced yet to be animated. So there was no way I could've just waited on a miracle to happen; I made it my mission to buy every volume and finish bleach the way it was intended to be.

All in all this saga was amazing, surpassing everything that I had hoped for it. Many things happen, changes in both life and the world they live in. It's safe to say that the bleach world will never be the same again. And if your like me and can't wait for a year, then you should definitely give this a read...I guarantee that it'll change you. "BANKAII!!!!"


Bleach review
by
_thunder13
Apr 04, 2021
I'm well aware that I'm not saying anything groundbreaking here, but I felt like writing down my thoughts anyway. Finally reading this after being so engrossed with the DS game as a kid some 12-13 years ago was quite the trip. While it does contain several shounen tropes that hold it back, the Soul Society arc is genuinely engrossing and well done. It's an intricate but simple story with effective characterization that makes every fight feel important. The series is essentially diet Yu Yu Hakusho at the beginning, but during the SS arc it really comes in to its own and displays signs of the stellar ensemble storytelling that you'd see in something like FMA. As someone who dislikes the other two big 3 series (at least as of this writing; One Piece is so acclaimed that I'll have to go back and give it another try at some point), I have to say that this arc alone is enough to make Bleach my favourite of the 3.

Which is why it was genuinely shocking to me how quickly and dramatically it falls off the rails immediately afterwards. It basically switches up from the character based storytelling I mentioned before to an endless wave of incomprehensible and over indulgent battle scenes that pit the good guys against interchangeable jobbers who basically get introduced just to be defeated in quick fashion. I found it extremely difficult to care, or care to follow, anything that was going on from, like, volumes 23-45. The chaotic and messy fights, the excess of characters I had no reason to care about, the incredibly convoluted abilities, the pseudointellectual dialogue and the wonky power scaling just became to much for me to handle. And how the author thought it was a good idea to do ANOTHER massive rescue arc so soon after the Soul Society eludes me. Things pick up ever so slightly towards the end of the Arrancar Arc, but this is still mostly based on it being a direct continuation of the Soul Society stuff that I was invested in.

So yeah. Generous 5/10 all in all, and it seems that the consensus is things more or less stay the same or get even worse after this, so I so no reason to continue. It's a shame, I really think this could have been one of my favourite shounens if it maintained the same energy of the second arc throughout.
Bleach review
by
ichigokichii15
Apr 04, 2021
If it weren't for the ending, I would've given this manga 8 or even 9 out of 10 simply due to nostalgia and everything good this manga used to be once. Now it will go down in history as one of the stories with the worst possible ending everyone refuses to acknowledge (myself included). Given that I loved this manga (although the final arc in general was pretty weak plot-wise), it is very hard to be at least a bit objective.
I am afraid this review might sometimes turn into a rant from someone who was hoping for the best until the very end.

Story: 6/10.
It started off in a very typical shounen-esque fashion as we were introduced to the main two characters right away. One boy. One Shinigami. Oh, those words sum it up perfectly as our main character is no ordinary Japanese young man, oh no, no, no, he has a very important purpose to serve. For the sake of his family and friends, he becomes a Shinigami and so his adventures begin.
The first two arcs are the most solid ones and I've heard that Bleach was supposed to end with Aizen's defeat (which is chapter 423, correct me if I am wrong), so I consider said chapter the original ending while the rest is just WSJ's attempt to milk this cash cow like there was no tomorrow. And I believe most of us know what it led to. The sales began to drop along with the manga's popularity, too many unnecessary details were added and eventually this manga ended so badly people are still salty. We will never know if Kubo ended his manga that way out of spite or because he's a bad writer. If you ask me, - and it is just a speculation, - I believe the former is more likely, given that the final chapter is the exact opposite of everything he'd been working on for 15 years.

Art: 8/10.
I like Kubo's art style as it got better as years passed. I think it's one of Bleach's strongest qualities regardless of what it had become in the end. So thank you, Kubo, for a well-drawn manga.

Character: 7/10.
Here comes one of my biggest complaint because 15 years of decent development were flushed down the drain in a blink of an eye for reasons I will never know or understand. But oh boy, I am starting to get pretty salty, it's not good for my nerves, is it? So let's talk about the positive side of this coin.
Ichigo and Rukia are the main characters and they ARE Bleach. They were the very first pairing I shipped for real because their interactions and chemistry are amazing. Their relationship is based on partnership, strong friendship and equality. I still ship them because these two complement each other just the way they were supposed to from the beginning.
Bleach has a lot of supporting characters and mentioning all of them will take too long. So, if you'll excuse me, I will only tell you about my favorite minor characters: Chad and Ishida. Oh, these two deserved so much better. Being Ichigo's best friends, they play a big role in his life and development as a character, they have decent personalities and are very interesting on their own.
Unfortunately, Kubo created more characters than he could possibly manage. The fates of most of the cast members remain unknown and the destiny of those who are present in the ending make you wish you never laid your eyes on this weak parody of Bleach and its former glory.

Enjoyment: 7/10.
With the last arc and horrible ending this manga is hardly worth 4.5 out of 10. But without it, if you read it until it's supposed original ending, it's actually pretty decent.

If you ever decide to read this story, I recommend stopping at chapter 423 to save your nerve cells. If you do, you will get an interesting story full of action and awesome adventures.

I do not like open endings. But in Bleach's case, it would be the best possible option. Only Kubo knows why he stepped over what was left of his fanbase. Bleach used to be good. And I believe that this good part still deserves to be loved, although it could've been so much better. I hated the ending, but ignoring just one chapter is not that big of a deal and I thank Bleach for everything it gave me. What is one chapter (for it to be canon, the rest must be ignored, so it's not valid) worth in comparison to all the good things I've got?
Bleach review
by
Some1ridiculous11
Apr 04, 2021
This is my first review, I'll try my best not to spoil anything. I'll try to keep this short so that you won't have to read paragraph after paragraph.

Story: 6/10

The story is of a freshman in high school who becomes a Shinigami after trying to protect his friends. Cliche, but not bad cliche. Further into the story, battles become less interesting as they drag on to the point of having the urge to skim through the chapters. Like most mangas with overpowered characters, there are bound to be asspulls, such as in this manga. Quite a bit of plotholes and unanswered questions. If you're fine with those and just want to enjoy the series, you should be fine.

Art: 8/10

Not much to say about the art. The art was great. It added to the badassery of the fighting moments. You can notice how the art changes throughout the manga.

Characters: 6/10

Firstly, there are too many characters and complicated names. There were a high amount of times when I had to google search the characters mentioned. Second, lots of characters were dislikeable. There are noticeable characters that you'll see that are being dragged along for the purpose of the main character's power to grow. Other than that, they're utterly useless. It seems as if the author was trying hard to make the characters become somewhat close to the main character's power to try to fit them into the plot. I can say more, but it would include spoilers.

Enjoyment: 4/10

As mentioned before, there were many moments where I would skim through the chapters as fights were dragged along and plotholes were everywhere, not to mention the unanswered questions which leave the reader to their own imagination to answer themselves. There are some more problems with personal reasons on why I didn't enjoy the series, but it would include spoilers.

Overall: 6/10

Too many plotholes, unanswered questions, disliked characters, useless characters, and asspulls. If you're fine with those, you might as well read Bleach. Story was fairly great, but wasn't enough to keep me entirely focused on events such as battles as they were dragged along.

If you're looking to pass time, Bleach would be pretty good for you, but don't expect too much.


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