Bleach

Ichigo Kurosaki is an ordinary high schooler—until his family is attacked by a Hollow, a corrupt spirit that seeks to devour human souls. It is then that he meets a Soul Reaper named Rukia Kuchiki, who gets injured while protecting Ichigo's family from the assailant. To save his family, Ichigo accepts Rukia's offer of taking her powers and becomes a Soul Reaper as a result.

However, as Rukia is unable to regain her powers, Ichigo is given the daunting task of hunting down the Hollows that plague their town. However, he is not alone in his fight, as he is later joined by his friends—classmates Orihime Inoue, Yasutora Sado, and Uryuu Ishida—who each have their own unique abilities. As Ichigo and his comrades get used to their new duties and support each other on and off the battlefield, the young Soul Reaper soon learns that the Hollows are not the only real threat to the human world.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kurosaki, Ichigo Main

Morita, Masakazu Japanese

Kuchiki, Rukia Main

Orikasa, Fumiko Japanese

Inoue, Orihime Main

Matsuoka, Yuki Japanese

Abarai, Renji Main

Itou, Kentarou Japanese

Ishida, Uryuu Main

Sugiyama, Noriaki Japanese

Sado, Yasutora Main

Yasumoto, Hiroki Japanese

Urahara, Kisuke Supporting

Miki, Shinichiro Japanese

Zaraki, Kenpachi Supporting

Tachiki, Fumihiko Japanese

Aizen, Sousuke Supporting

Hayami, Show Japanese

Cifer, Ulquiorra Supporting

Namikawa, Daisuke Japanese

Simone, Jamie Producer

Nara, Hatsuo Producer

Sugiyama, Yutaka Producer

Aoki, Shunji Producer

Reviews

Aug 28, 2026

AltheGreat97

Recommended

Bleach is the story of teenager Ichigo Kurosaki, who has the ability to see ghosts and ends up becoming a soul reaper or shinigami by accident after meeting one called Rukia Kuchiki, thus starting a quest of hunting corrupted monster-like souls known as Hollows. Basically a japanese Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as my sister once described it when I told her the premise, lol.

At first I simply found it entertaining due to following a monster of the week formula, although I did love the soundtrack and the spanish dub had an amazing voice casting (for example, when you listen to Ichigo, Kon and Rukia ... together in spanish, you're imagining Legolas and Merry from LOTR arguing in front of Arwen lol). However by the time Rukia gets arrested back to Soul Society and Ichigo has to train with shopkeeper Urahara in order to rescue her, the series takes a new turn and gets you really hooked. In the following months of 2014 I binged episodes every morning through out the Soul Society arc. I loved this arc so much because, apart from avoiding spoilers, it put you on the edge of your seat, wondering what was going to happen to when confronting the Gotei 13, and the got the perfect balance of backstory, character development and action to make it a fantastic point for the series. Then the Arrancar saga focused on the main villain Aizen and the introduction of his subordinates, the arrancars and the Espada, some of which were beloved by the fans like king Barragan, Ulquiorra, Grimmjow, Harribel and Starrk.

-Bleach strongest points are definitely the sword fights carried by the Zampakutou's abilities of each fighter, and its great variety of characters, which goes from Ichigo and his gang, to people from different races such as humans, shinigami, quincy, arrancar and fullbringers. -When it comes to its MC, Ichigo at first felt very meh and bratty but as time went on he grew on me. The way he wanted to save Rukia to pay off his debt and how he constantly questioned his identity made him both very noble and human as a person. That and the fact that he isn't a massive idiot that eats lots of food which has become a current cliche in shonen. As for the main villain, the iconic Sosuke Aizen is definitely the backbone of the story since his maquinations have moved the story forward, while also giving one of the best plotwist that I've seen in a show.
-The designs and artstyle of the anime are on point and they evolve in parallel to Tite Kubo's amazing art, considered for many as one of the best among the works published in Shonen Jump. Each character design has an unique style with accesories that give an indictation of his personality without giving too much exposition. The animation takes a massive improvement as times goes on and the drawing barely appears inconsistent.
-The soundtrack of Shiro Sagisu is amazing and varied; going from the mysterious "Creeping Shadows"; to the sad melancholy of "Never Meant to Belong", the tense  "Battle Ignition"; the epic theme song for Ichigo in "Number One", and many more.

If I had to point its flaws, it would be:

-The obvious amount of fillers, such as whole arcs in between the canon material, which are kind of a burden and take like more than a quarter of the anime, mainly to give time for the manga to advance, even though some are quite entertaining.
-The cast of characters in both the anime and manga at times becomes so huge that many of them end up getting the short end of the stick by Kubo, in order to favor the more popular ones, or are forgotten for several arcs without a proper conclusion, such as Grimmjow and Nelliel.
-Also if you take it from a manga perspective, some scenes in the first arc that are important forshadowings later on are either cut or recontextualized in a less effective way such as the fight of Ichigo vs Grand Fisher, or the aftermath where said hollow evolves into an arrancar hundreds of chapters before the arc introduced them.
-The anime from time to time had an inconsistent pacing, especially around half the Hueco Mundo arc due to some secondary fights dragging out, but after that it gets better with the final battle against Aizen.

Bleach was, alongside Saint Seiya, the anime that got me into more series and made me the anime fan that I am now. It was a bit sad that for many years Bleach was never appreciated enough like its contemporaries Naruto or One Piece, and always getting criticized that it went downhill right after Soul Society which is false. After already a decade since the manga's rushed ending in 2016, its good to see that the series has been vindicated by a new generation of fans ever since the anime returned in 2022 to adapt the final arc of the manga.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Aug 29, 2026

Zuwalibe

Mixed Feelings

[ STORY ] 5/10

Bleach's concepts are definitely interesting, but most of it's just: a girl gets kidnapped > shit happens > another girl gets kidnapped > some even bigger shit happens. For the most part, I found it pretty stale and mediocre up until the last two arcs, not to mention the shit pacing paired with ~50% filler.

[ CHARACTERS ] 3/10

Most Bleach characters are either shallow, useless/unimportant or just look like absolute ass, there's very character development before The Thousand Year Blood war. Like someone else said, you'd also want to repeatedly hit yourself with a lead pipe after most moments of forced humour.

[ ... ANIMATION ] 3/10

Animation is mediocre at best and the characters are either 1 or 100, some look so bad that you'll most likely wonder if they were designed by a child. 90% of the fights are crazy bland, even the most important ones...

[ CONCLUSION ] 4.5/10

Overglazed and overhyped, Bleach didn't age well and definitely needs a remake. Most of its concepts are well-thought, but I found it below average as an anime. Definitely a hard watch, but some spoilers kept me going.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Jun 25, 2026

thecoolfish

Not Recommended

Like many others, I started watching Bleach so I could watch tybw. Altough tybw is pretty good, the first season of Bleach was nothing but dissapointing for me.

Bleach consists of your average shonen plot, where the main character slowly overpowers the villain. The show didnt go out of this format and kept it up for every non-filler arc. This type of plot is pretty bland in itself, but can work if done right. Bleach didnt do this right, and the only other "exciting" thing it did was occasional flashbacks of non-interesting characters and vague lore. The lore of the story is all around the place. ... They throw many abstracts ideas around, while never deeply exploring them, to the point it becomes overwhelming and too ambiguous.

Aside from the repetitive and bland plot, the characters were also horrible.
The show likes introducing a lot of different characters. This creates a problem of never fully exploring any of these characters, keeping them on a surface level. Even the main character, Ichigo, is extremely dull. Ichigo is a shell of a character without any development and a never-changing mindset throughout the entire series: "I have to get strong and defend my friends", Ive heard that one before. Following a series with such uninteresting characters is tedious.

All in all, Bleach is a boring show with a confusing, repetetive and undiscovered plot with extremely shallow characters. Despite the amazing character designs that create a cool vibe, I see no appeal in this show at all. I only finished Bleach to watch tybw, and altough tybw is pretty good, I wouldnt recommend Bleach to anyone.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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