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One thing I have always given Kubo is that he has an amazing talent for immediately presenting a case, so to speak, for a character when you meet them. Straight away you can get a vibe for the cast, from the biggest players to the most minor, and have an idea if you'll like them or not. It's like seeing a buffet spread in a new fighting game; the idle stances alone can sell you on someone, and Kubo manages that same kind of conveyance almost effortlessly.
I’d never really thought about it like that but when I think back on the cast and the story I mostly agree. And I think no character demonstrates that better for me then Gin. I liked something about him from the beginning, maybe the mischievous shit starting trickster aspect of him, that he seemed to be acting with knowledge other people didn’t. However the feeling I had about him didn’t match the going along with Aizen traitor type vibe. So I kept looking for angle sure there was one, and it was there. He’s a character that doesn’t get a lot of dialogue and what’s going on in his head is largely opaque even when he does speak, but still Kubo managed to communicate a lot about him. I like most of his characters and the way he expresses them. The one where I don’t think it works is Kaname Tosen, but then for me his betrayal was even more surprising then Aizen’s and I suppose it was meant to be that way. It still feels to me like his character got done dirty but then again he was made to be disliked. Oh and Ulquiorra…the Arranchar arc just would have been better without him, Grimjaw was a much better rival/antagonist for Ichigo, Ulquiorra was just bland.
Absolutely. The way characters are dressed and the way they’re posed has greatly contributed to which characters I feel attached to. There’s an instant connection the moment a character is introduced and it’s because everything about them oozes personality.
Kubo is absolutely among the best character desingers there is. While i think Bleach had too many new characters constantly cmoning out, especially at the final arc, almost everyone of them had great designs. I believe there were only 1 or 2 characters that felt like same character
I literally started watching this video, then stopped it halfway and read the entire manga and now three days later have come back to say that yes, I loved the worldbuilding of this show!!
…you read the entirety of Bleach in three days? How?😅 It took me a month or so, and that was using the Shonen Jump app (which has 100 chapter a day limits).
For me, it was the characters that caught my attention far more than the worldbuilding. I really got the sense that, whenever the author of the manga created a new character, he sat down and thought of everything about them, including things he intended to save for later.
Ichigo vs. Ulquiorra is still one of my favorite shounen fights to this day. Imagine fighting a Souls boss that has a phase 2 once their hp bar goes to 0 but if you take ages to actually get some decent damage in they just go "fuck it, I'll do it right now."
@@lovelimbs4lifeU say that yet Yusuke gets dunked on. From a writing point? Yusuke’s still fairly 2d from a writing style. That’s why most MCs that are that way are praised, because the audiences aren’t willing to research. Half-demon? Did that. Character development? Ichigo’s 4x both of those, literally. Don’t get it twisted, Yu Yu Hakusho’s definitely deserving of a GOAT status, but BLEACH has insanely more cultural and metaphysical depth compared to YYH when u compare the themes between both Aizen and Yhwach to Sensui.
I just came across one of those people that want a realistic, scientific, up, left, down, right, front, back and center indetail explanation down to the molecular level of how EVERY SINGLE LITTLE THING WORKS.
So the "problem" with Bleach... the world building, which was my main gripe... is not that it's shallow but actually the author was happy to go over our heads with it? I'm salty about that, but also really impressed.
The problem is the bloated cast. It's about death gods, they should have been killing off more characters to keep the story focused. Like why didn't the Vizard go to Hueco Mundo with Rukia/Renji to rescue Ichigo? could have killed some off so they didn't turn into background images for the rest of the story.
just watch a recap of bleach and watch the new seasons of bleach since those are 100% worth the watch. its like dragonballz came back but with swords and much better animation
@@paprikagames That's actually why I stopped reading/watching after Ichigo beat Aizen. I liked Dragonball and the adventure shonen. Hated Dragonball Z and how long the fights drag on. Bleach lost interest when the characters got too strong.
@@kyleellis1825 well its a lot different in that regard bcus the plot for fights are better and the talking has been reduced the fights are now 1 ep long for now atleast
@@kyleellis1825 Bleach's problems are multi-layered, but at its core, it's not *just* the cast bloat, but how the whole story got structured around it. Kubo himself admitted that the part he loved the most was designing new characters and powers for them. However, he barely ever killed off any characters (which isn't necessarily a bad thing) or let them completely fade into the background (which is). Now, we had a bunch of characters who needed their powers showcased, so he needed to design more enemy characters for them to fight, but now those characters had to demonstrate their abilities, so it led to long fights, and then if those characters returned in later arcs, they had to have their power-ups, which required more new characters they could fight to show off those powerups, rinse and repeat ad nauseum. This exponential bloat eventually consumed the series, and buried all the nuanced main characters and the twists of the core plot under a mountain of mostly meaningless duels between mostly meaningless characters with increasingly specific and nonsensical powers, culminating in the final arc, where we had literary gems like "You can't kill me, I'm literally a God!" -> "Oh, what a coincidence! I have a super-special-awesome sword that is useless against everything but can one-shot gods!" and, "This overpowered guy just tanked three consecutive super-moves from some of the strongest characters in the setting! Raw power doesn't work on him, so what kind of ingenious way are they going to use to take him down?" -> "Oh, wait. The main villain absorbed him and left the scene. There was no clever ploy or using already established powers in interesting ways; he just died because the plot had to move forward." As much as I love Bleach, it was one of the most terribly flawed series I'd ever seen, and that's *before* we take all the mind-numbing filler arcs into consideration.
My favorite mathematic aspect of Bleach lore is the SOUL BALANCE: human + shinigami + quincy + hollow = balance human + shinigami = no problem shinigami + quincy = opposite side of the spectrum quincy + hollow = soul suicide hollow + human = predator and prey human + quincy = no problem shinigami + hollow = executioner and to be executed / if mixed will cause soul suicide shinigami + hollow = quincy + human And that's how the Ichigo is still alive and kicking, his multi-breed is not only to make him op but to also make his whole being acceptable. If he's only a shinigami and hollow, then he's a mindless monster waiting for his soul to collapse, and so we needed that quincy blood plus human blood to balance out the collapse of his soul.
Contrived is what people call it Fullbringers? Substitute shinigamis? The story kicks off in a “by chance fashion” only to find out he's the prodigal son
@@JuanFlores-gs7uu him dying at the beginning AND Rukia breaking the rules is the definition of a by chance encounter If he really was this special his father or urahara or a full bringer or another substitute shinigami would've encountered him in SOME way We're led to believe him seeing dead people is a one a kind thing and he has no idea why Man you fanboys will be eat up any contrived plot development like it's gospel. Blech is decent up until aizen and would’ve been much more satisfying ending if he developed his relationship orihime more and came to grips with being back to reality The first arc is peak bleach and all kinda downhill from there Edit: 9/3/23: Waste of my time talking to you clowns. Bleach must’ve fallen off for no reason and it’s a really good show with 0 plot holes, great pacing, and a satisfying ending… 🤡
I was about to question how years could pass between you watching Ichigo vs Ulquiorra and your friend telling you about the round 2 of that, then it occurred to me just how many filler arcs there actually were
Me and my friend have been watching it together... for years.. Its hard for us to commit to more than a few episodes at a time when the filler is so exhausting.
Out of all the filler the only 2 I actually remember are the Bound/Vampire arc and the "Sword Wars"/Muramasa. Probably cause they were actually good. And actually do something for the story.
When you mentioned the mesoamerican influences in hollow's characterization, I really thought you would talk about how Aizen's whole deal with Hueco Mundo it's really just an animefication of Hernan Cortés and "The New World". I'm Mexican, so it was pretty obvious to me. Powerful guy from an imperialistic civilization sets foot in an "other worldly land"and suddenly decides he's the ruler. He builds his palace in the middle of the desert, finds the strongest native habitants of the place and through different schemes makes them his soldiers. Gives them new clothes, new habits, new hierarchies, all under his mand. "Educated man conquers the dessert and tames the savages that live in his new land", where have I heard that before? I think that is one of the reasons I found the Arrancar arc so fascinating. Aizen gave them "evolution", but took everything else. Hollows where no longer free, they became a sociopath's personal guerrilla. For me, it's too perfect for it to be just a coincidence. Arrancar is a Spanish word after all, and their powers are in Spanish too. All that "power" thanks to who? Exactly, Aizen. Not every Arrancar seems to be hispanic-coded or latino-coded, for example Grimmjow is very clearly a German name, but curiously enough, his powers (the representation of his very being) are not in a language that relates to HIS origin, they ended up having a Spanish Name: Pantera, because who gave that power to him? Aizen, again. Everything that Aizen conquers get homogenized under his very Spanish-coded empire. Even the music that represents them, Spanish flamenco. Notice how that's the only music we relate to Hueco Mundo? Because that's the music AFTER Aizen, after we actually engage with Hollows in a deeper level. What was Hueco Mundo's music before that? Maybe mesoamerican inspired music? We'll probably never know. EDIT: I now know that Grimmjow is not German, It's English and Swiss, but still, the point holds itself.
I'm inclined to believe that it's on purpose, at least most of what you said is. All factions in Bleach as well as Burn the Witch is based on a certain culture of people, kinda like the way Pokemon bases its regions on a particular real-life culture each game.
Why the hell had I never plugged the word arrancar into google translate? The mesoamerican influence and the use of spanish names in Hueco Mundo is so obvious, but I'd just never done it.
I've never watched Bleach, but I would 1000% love to watch a lore video about the magic system, whether it was 20 minutes or 3 hours long. I love that kind of stuff.
Believe me, bleach is excellent. I grow up on naruto. Bleach is really really good. I regret not looking at it all those years. Dont listen to negative people.
Im sorry but Bleach is one of three best anime of all time, between Naruto and One Piece. And thats only because Kubo stopped the anime several years ago. It is one of the best stories ever told.ALSO FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. ..... SUB! DO SUB! dont do DUB! ...you will otherwise miss the fanastic voice acting but also much much more.
THANK YOU for actually taking the time to read and understand BLEACH. This was a breath of fresh air! Kubo is so much more than just a good artist, his talent outshines the anime adaptation which I believe ruined most people's experience with Bleach. The filler arcs, the wrong characterisation of key characters. Kubo himself said that the anime frustrated him with how different it was to the source material. So safe to say read the manga with proper translations and you may just really enjoy BLEACH.
@@conordowd1861 the whole tybw arc is just embarrassing. Yuha is so powerful he could alter the future but chose one where he loses to ichigo? The quincy having the ultimate lore breaking ability of stealing bankai yet lost the war? The shingami brought knives to a gunfight and the quincy lost. What a joke of a story
Also, Karin. Karin actually pains me more than Tatsuki because with her heritage, she should be capable of way more than she shows ever, and it's odd that Ywach basically ignored her and Yuzu.
@@Hugm4lsecondaccount We have no proof of this because every other victim of the Aüschwälen that night either died or were brought to near death. I suppose Masaki might have lived had she not been facing Grand Fisher at that very moment, but still, we have no proof Karin or Yuzu were selected for the Aüschwälen.
@@MrGksarathy yes we do it was stated that EVERY impure quincy was targeted for the Aushwählen when Yhwach whole up except for Ichigo of course that Yhwach didnt target because he wanted to fight him in the future and the Aushwählen does not kill someone it just takes away their powers.
@@Hugm4lsecondaccount To be fair, what the Auschwallen does is very inconsistent, since it kills some people, but for others like some of the Sternritter, it just stole away their Vollstandig. That being said, it isn't even suggested that Karin or Yuzu were ever targeted. If so, we would have gotten some hint, either during Everything But the Rain, or even much earlier. Basically, we have no real proof either way, since this part of the story is still very mysterious.
I'm only 9 minutes in right now but I just need to say, getting into Bleach with streaming technology and the ability to skirt around the filler made the series infinitely enjoyable to watch the first time Edit: lol really thought nobody would ever see this comment
@@valleyking15 the filler can be enjoyable when viewed as entirely seperate from the manga canon. The main story from Kubo just makes more sense when it isn't interuppted by entire seasons of filler that Kubo didn't write. I would suggest to someone who wants to watch bleach for the first time to look up the filler list and only watch the canon (and maybe Hellverse) and go back for the filler after. I watched a lot of the filler my first time through but after watching 200 episodes in a row I felt like the filler only hurt the Kubo plot, and I skipped them thereafter
Speaking as someone who watched the show for the first time less than a month ago, I agree: being able to watch multiple episodes at once and skip the filler definitely made the show a lot better to watch than it would've been otherwise. It's one reason I was really frustrated with the anime's version of the arrancar arc repeatedly trying to insert stuff from the filler Bount arc. Thankfully, that stuff disappears from the anime once everyone goes to Hueco Mundo, but it was still annoying.
@@matthewmuir8884 yeah having the filler added in is one thing, but the first filler arc you add 3 new permanent mod soul characters and Ichigo has bount PTSD? Why???
Geoff as a fellow Canadian, thank you for bringing me back to a simpler time when I didn't know what sub vs dubs meant and "guy has a giant sword to slice up monsters" was a brand new concept to me
I'm also Canadian. I remember being a kid in the mid-2000s mainly watching animated shows through Teletoon (so most of the cartoons I watched were Canadian) and, beyond not knowing about sub vs dub, I didn't even know the difference between anime and cartoon (I was a kid and no one told me the difference). As a result, the only anime I saw as a kid was a partly-Canadian anime called _Spider Riders._ So, in my case, it wasn't "guy has giant sword to fight monsters", it was, "guy has a spear and a giant armoured spider to fight humanoid insects." I never heard of Bleach until years later.
*smiles contently* he gets it. he's gone on the bleach fan journey of loving bleach, hating it, and then realizing that there's actually a LOT to love about bleach after all. now time to become a sonic fan!
Im’a be honest I wish he’d laid some criticism of it too cause of course it has some real issues but overall an amazing series. (Like how some battles were handled, wasted potential of certain characters, relegation of others to the side, some inconsistencies) Seems like he’s riding the recency bias train but at least he debunked the “no good world building” to more like “show don’t tell world building”
@@StripedJacket mhm this just felt like the postive and positive kind of video , which will ofc make people happy but hmm yea could have done better , anyways atleast for the positive part it was a fairly well researched video which may ger new people into bleach , so hm yea alright
@@StripedJacket yea well do you feel like unohanas ending was bad I've seen some comments on it and i have different opinions Let's go from basic unohana is a main side character of bleach, role of side characters is either to develop plot or the main character/main side characters Unohana did that and died, and even the poetic and thematic aspect of the whole narrative of unohana kenpachi and even the title kenpachi was handled quite well , could it have been some better? Maybe But was it bad? No What do you think
@@adityajha689 I personally liked it. I think her being a side character who had a purpose in the plot and not just relegated to “healer lady” was good. Could it have been more fleshed out? Of course She wasn’t a main character though but I wish her ability was more explained in the manga. Not like exposition but even in the art to show us what her bankai was truly doing. (I think the anime at least does it well?)
Ok but as someone who goes full “no thoughts, head empty” when I’m really enjoying reading something, I would be 100% here for that 40-minute spoon-feeding session
That’s kinda my problem with bleach fights. The point of bleach is two fold, one of which is reading the fights. But if there’s enough people who can’t understand it (which they need to do if it’s the god damn point if it), then a problem is there. I’ve read the whole thing and loved almost all of it (full bring had great moments but was just eh) and I still don’t get most of the combat.
This video singlehandedly convinced me to give Bleach another shot after all these years. It also instilled me with a need for a Mother's Basement video about magical girls. I'm gonna go see if that's a thing now.
@@proudfatherofadeadweightso5715 Seriously haven't even thought about watching it the new bleach season or whatever it is until I watched this video. but think I'll read the manga first.
Kubo’s art style are on of the very few styles in Shonen manga that I could also follow without a single panel confusing me due to weird conveyances of illustrated fight scenes and abilities. There were several panels in several fights in the Naruto manga where I had to wait for the anime just to see what was going on during those particular fights. Never had this problem not once with Bleach.
Naruto is hardly confusing with its paneling. I think people default to the anine because seeing flashing colors and extended fight scenes hold attention more.
@vileluca How does it "make no sense"? And please don't use the "how are they in ge air that long" shit either, the speed of those attacks aren'tbeing accounted for when people try and play critic to the sequence of attacks.
I'm still convinced that Kubo Tite should have become a fashion designer. If he had used the Bleach cast as character models for his designs and created an entire brand around them, I am absolutely certain he could have become a mogul for street and youth fashion to rival expensive couture brands like Louis Vuitton or Gucci. Honestly he probably still could, if he wanted something new to do once he's done with Burn the Witch.
@@Gonzora I mean yes but no, this is a side project with a set deadline to simply animate the ending of a series that wrapped up years ago, it's not like he's doing a spin-off or something new. Burn the Witch is current and ongoing, they already announced that the next one is coming out.
With brands like hook ups and the prevalence of anime culture in the street fashion culture itself, I have no doubt a brand like supreme would be more than happy to collaborate with him and give whatever brand he decided to create an immediate boost and an insatiable market of consumers. He could do amazingly if he decided to go down that route.
I love Bleach but I can name a lot of them. Most of it comes down to Jump being greedy and the different model shounen anime used to stay on TV year round.
bleach is one of my big passions, and frankly its a huge, satisfying relief to finally see a youtuber who really seems to grasp the many reasons WHY its so good. It remains the biggest reason why I'll finish learning japanese someday, there's just so much to pick apart from the characters and the world that I probably will be doing it for the rest of my life. Comparing it to bloodborne is such a massive compliment, and you just sold me on finally giving Brando Sando's writing a shot if you never do a Vaati-style deep dive into Bleach I understand, but GODS i would fucking love to see it
@@MrGksarathyWho would be good to listen to? I just don’t find myself interested in watching or reading it so I’m just hearing about all the stuff I can’t pick up or don’t appeal to me
@@magmaspacer1967 My number one recommendation would probably be MrTommo2304. He does scripted Bleach video essays on camera, and he knows and presents the source material well and has more chill vibes. A couple of others are decent. For Bleach news, check out Simo Urahara and Jaymes Hanson, and DBZImran does make well-produced Bleach vids, but I feel his content goes too far into speculative territory and his comments on Giselle have sort of rubbed me the wrong way. It is important to note, but all of them except Simo Urahara are Britbongers. Take that as you will.
@@magmaspacer1967 mrtommo2304, tekking101 and dbzimran are a few good ones. There are lots of other smaller ones too, but those do the best job without overloading you. I remember one guy who made a 7 hour video about Ichigo... Too much for me, even if i love Bleach. Andto the "copy" guy, EVERY Manga is inspired by something that came before. With almost no exception. Just like a lot of current Manga where inspired by Bleach, like JJK. The author even stated Bleach as his biggest inspiration and you can see it pretty good if you know about it. But it's still it's own thing. Just like Bleach itself. If it were a copy, Geoff would have mentioned it and this video wouldn't exist. Did you even watch the video?
I think bleach would have benefited a lot from being sold as a seinen, not a shounen. I think people, me included, expect a certain level of simplicity and spoon-feeding from a shounen series, and having to do homework to understand the intricacies, or even figuring out that's a thing you'd need to do might be beyond the casual observer.
Idk lol. It's still very much a shounen battle series, sure it's more subtle than your average but still. Either way it's in the top 15 when it comes to manga sales so I think it did pretty well.
tbh I never really considered Bleach a particularly intricate series. It was always a pretty straightforward show, the narrative was simple to follow, character actions were always understandable and the power system was very fun but easy to comprehend. This isn't to knock it, I love Bleach, I just don't envisage it as being a complex piece of work, narratively or thematically. 100% agree with you that it would have benefitted as a seinen though, artistically speaking. Kubo was restrained visually sometimes when it came to depicting certain events, and even when it came to thematic exploration I felt the need to adhere to the shounen format meant he had to change things at times.
You can really feel Kubo's massive burnout during the Vizard/Arancar arcs. Even in the Manga, the way the Anime is just generally worse at everything combined with the slightly weaker story especially makes it hard. Just like you can really feel his return to form during Fullbring/TYBW. It's almost poetic the way that Pierrot is animating TYBW after taking a huge break, and they are absolutely on top of their form.
The only weak or “burnout” sections of the Arrancar Saga was when they got to Hueco Mundo up until just before Ulquiorra confronts Ichigo before his fight with Grimmjow and the beginning of FKT. Everything else besides that was up to par, if not the absolute true peak of the manga (besides EBTR & TBIM) arguably even the anime originally if you skipped all the filler. More people need to come to realize this.
@truthcrusader360 my main problem with the Arrancar arc (and this kinda extends to Bleach when we're not in Karakura Town) is how much of it is just fighting. Yeah, it's a shonen battle manga, but I wish less of it was spent on fights I didn't necessarily care about. This issue really hurts the Gotei (except Kenpachi, who has a character perfectly built for this fight-centric storytelling) because they get characterization in the context of fighting 95% of the time. While this works great for, say, Kenpachi, it doesn't work so well for other characters because I genuinely can't tell you what the Gotei outside of Mayuri's division does in their downtime other than training.
@@samt3412 In that case it’s best to re-read the manga and anything that you didn’t understand, specifically that saga being chapters 183 to 423. All of the fighting, at least for the most part, has had meaning, nuance, depth and complexity. Even I find new things from time to time that I didn’t catch when I first read it.
@@samt3412 Novels & databooks tell you what many individual shinigamis like to do in their spare time/non work/duty related activities or interests. if you really would like to know well the material is out there & readily available is all I'm saying
The Arrancarc arc did not feel like the work of a man burning out, especially since the manga's pacing was actually really tight, every revelation built on every other revelation, and the character development for Ichigo, Orihime, and even Aizen was great. EDIT: I forgot about Ulquiorra. Shame on me.
I will never not love bleach despite its many, many problems. It was the first Anime I ever watched. The atmosphere of the show was different than anything I'd ever seen. It blew my mind, and channeled such a distinct sense of style. It was also so good at expressing the character and angst of being a teenager, and I will always be so, so grateful for it.
I complained so much about all of bleaches problems over the years, but all the garbage out now makes me appreciate the good things about it all the more. I miss having anime at that level. (More so)
all style, no substance. having a large, developed, and diverse cast means nothing without a story to tell. a lot of anime/manga could have been art for the ages if they'd stuck to doing the design and let someone else worry about the story.
Becoming a fan of Bleach is a fun experience. I loved it, hated it, then became addicted as i knew grew older and understood more of how deep the lore is. Kubos style is a very show, dont tell where you really have to read between the lines to fully appreciate the story. He doesnt want to spoonfeed the audience instead he lets the audience engage into conversations and analyze his work. Its really sad that the anime caused the story to have a bad rep to the anicommunity due to its fillers and unfaithful direction. Its not the best but its really good. Also how the storytelling quality fluctuates as he slowly suffered to some health issues due to how brutal a weekly release is that he hated so much thats why he said hell continue the Hell Arc if no one pesters him to do so.
Even Sanderson said that Show Dont Tell is sometimes treated as a maxim and actually is a guide, you can tell some things bcs most people like to actually know what to do, is like playing a game, you know there are rules and things you cannot do, Chess is the perfect example, it has depth besides having not that much pieces if you consider how much characters some shonens have (MHA, Bleach, One piece, etc), sadly Bleach sometimes required too much head like Aot or too little like MHA where there is no nuance and all is on your face, sometimes having that character that explains, that give you foundations works best, Reiatsu is too complex unlike alchemy in FMA, also the format hurts some works, FMA is much shorter than Bleach, there is a say that you can fool everybody for a moment, or fool a group of people forever, there is no inbetween, longer series are subject to much analisis and scrutiny, for every Bleach rant there is like 5 or 10 of Naruto and DBZ, but i can see the influence in Bleach and in some departments is unmatched, in panelling and pure design is a masterclass, and you can say Chainsaw man took the philosphy of fears to worldbuilding, and JJK too. Hxh is a weird example bcs sometimes is like class, when i was a teenager i thought Bleach was insane for all the hype, but it was boring after bcs ichigo should have lost more fights or have even more training, and when i was 19 i finally gave a shot to hxh and was surprised but also sometimes is really tough to watch, too much talk and infodump, but it pays off, and thats the thing, sometimes you dont know what will happen in Bleach in the bad sense, not of surprise but like anticlimatic, sorry for the rant as a lifelong bleach fan
I’m so glad Bleach is finally getting it’s flowers. It was the punching bag of the community for years. Even I got swept up in the hate until I finally read it. It’s fantastic
19:32: "Kubo can actually write women" is the kind of low-bar compliment that feels like it must be aimed at a specific one of Kubo's peers, but there are a lot of mangaka who are egregiously bad at it in Shonen Jump publications alone. So...good work on standing out from the pack, Tite Kubo.
It’s not even that he can write women, it’s just that he can great interactions as a whole. Not to kick Naruto but character interactions often feel quite basic and one note when put next to bleach for almost every character. It just feels like he wrote 3 traits at most for most of them, put no consideration into how they interact with each other and other people and have them bluntly show their traits, then the women are just constantly ovulating at the sight of sasuke or occasionally someone else. Kubo tend to actually put thought into the personality of these characters which actually makes them feel like people, female or otherwise.
Some of his characters are inspired by his real life friends including the girls like Rukia and Rangiku I think, so I'd imagine he had a level of respect to his characters when writing them
My son grew up watching Bleach, and as an involved dad that is also a huge anime fan going back to the days of speed racer and battle of the planets, I was right there with him. What you described about the anime when you first started watching it was 100% my son. In fact, I would hazard a guess that you two are around the same age and seemingly have similar tastes in anime. That said. Him and I saw the story telling in bleach from completely different ends of the spectrum. For me, I saw right from the outset, what you described having realized only after reading the manga, many years later. I too read the manga, but I read it as it was unfolding after a catch up binge about halfway though the first arc. To this day, he calls me from half way around the world to discuss the latest episode in TYBW and has by his own admission said that I have a much deeper understanding of the source material than he ever did and he's just now starting to see what I have always seem. The point I'm making here is that I think Bleach was sold to the wrong audience. much of it flies right over the heads of its target, much as how you described Ghost in the Shell. That was a superb series, but was a bit more cerebral than many were willing to deal with. We here in the west often forget the fact the anime and manga is an accepted form of entertainment to a very broad audience, including adults. So many times we jump into these stories not fully understanding who they were actually written for and the depth that exist beyond just getting ready for the next action sequence to happen.
You got a good point there. I was only able to truly understand the Bleach world upon rereading the manga in 2021, at age 23, as opposed to when I read it in 2016, at age 18. By that point, I had grown up a fair bit and was a more savvy anime and manga consumer.
@@MrGksarathy Anime only diets make for poor digestion of the source material. this has always been the case. Its also no secret that as we get older and more world wise, we tend to pick up on the nuances that we often miss in our youth. Anime can be a much more high tone medium for story telling that it is often given credit for here in the west were its often viewed as "cartoons for kids". This is a great time for Anime and manga fans alike with the availability of of properties and most of it being unmolested by US distributors that repackaged into something unrecognizable for these markets. I remember watching Battle of the Planets and G-force as a kid, and then stumbling across the original Japanese source material Gatchaman a few years after the run ended here in the states. It was like it was like finding out your parents had lied to you about why your dog disappeared and never came back home. Back then any anime/manga properties were near impossible to get access to, so it was a treat to get anything at all since the stories and quality of the are were so far beyond anything the US studios were putting out. now a days, the biggest complaints I see are localizers butchering dialog. Meanwhile you have multiple streaming platforms to watch just about anything as as often as you care to. If I personally had a single complaint about anime/manga today vs back when I was younger, I think that is that in many ways the art quality has gone backwards. I thinks much of the older stuff ( especially form the 80s/90s ) had a tendency to be much more detail oriented as to how it was drawn as about to the new "cute" art style that has saturated everything. but that just my opinion.
@@Treacherous_One I'm honestly not a fan older cell-shaded art for anime, nor am I a huge fan of some of the character designs, but that's probably because I got into anime in the mid-2010s.
@@MrGksarathy don't get me wrong, a good bit of the newer stuff looks fantastic. but there are certain levels of detail that just don't get fleshed out anymore and make much of the artwork seem flat.
The manga had the slickest, most clearly readable art ever. I remember being in awe at every page turn, it was mostly what kept me engaged after the Soul Society Arc (I can't remember when I stopped but it was somewhere after the Hueco Mundo arc was finished and they introduced a bunch of new characters and systems). FMA was my jam at the time but Arakawa's fights were pretty underwhelming so Bleach managed to scratch a very particular itch for me. Glad to see it being re-evaluated and even tho I probably won't watch/read it again, you made me nostalgic of picking it up every month and getting lost in those drawings.
Kenpachi is a great example of a character mis-explaining reiatsu because the way he understands it is purely in the context of fighting but he ends up over-generalizing its use and properties as a result. In Kenpachi's eyes, it's a power level, plain and simple. But it's made clear that someone with weaker Reiatsu can beat someone with stronger if its' formed and shaped properly, or used in particular moments of vulnerability.
From what I understand Kubo had... problems with the company. A combination of backstage drama and building stress led to Bleach suffering for it. I also get the feeling that the editorial staff had not yet made the necessary reforms towards themselves, namely when it's the time to stay out of the way and let the authors do something a little differently.
From what I recall their was a porn actor who got surgery to sort of look like Kubo and the staff at the company smeerd him with it, he even took the issue up with the porn company personally.
@@gidi3250 yeah... thats a japanese thing. if someone looks like you and are doing something inappropriate it can get out of hand very quickly over there. japanese social culture is the prudish asshole kind.
I read bleach chapter to chapter. That's been a ride! But! At some point, Ichigo was off screen for _several years_ imagine that! I loved the hype that built up from reveal to reveal and chapter to chapter. But it could be really frustrating to "wait" for the main character to show up again when he's gone for over 80 chapters/weeks
@@architchaudhary1285 No it's for the audience it's being said to the enemies that the only reasons it's actually being said is for us the audience just imagine if the bleach characters just activated their powers and did not explain anything verbally
@@yami122 No I meant the in-universe reason. What the video was getting was that it doesn't suspend your disbelief with explanations like say Naruto does when it places a third character in nearly every fight to explain abilities with the character mostly talking to himself
I have never had someone put together my own feelings about this show and its impact on my childhood so accurately. Its like the hardest punch of nostalgia I've ever received from a video essay. Nobody is doing what you do on the scale that you do it. Never stop.
Some try to do video essays only to contradict themselves and share out flawed and hypocritical logic without even realizing they are actively contradicting themselves in the very same video. There is a lot of cringe out there. Some just need not try, but this guy has been consistent in his quality for years and years and regardless of what people think, I 100% agree with his take on Goblin Slayer.
@@willsdavediogenes "Doing what you do, on the scale that you do it" means high quality AND quantity. Dbzimran is nowhere near this guys writing. Like.. at all. Thats just my opinion though 🤷
@@eattoast6378 also i waited 10 years for anime, never look on manga TYBW, he is making differences videos, very helpfull for me too to get maximum content.
my favorite detail in the manga that i completely missed until it was pointed out by TotallyNotMark is that most of the main characters has a song assigned to them, with the general theme and the tone of it completely changing the way that you interpret those characters, with even Byakuya being less of an ass and more a lonely ass from the beginning
Hmmmm still skeptical here. I only ever read the Manga, and I distinctly remember the sense of disappointment as I read different moments where it felt like the author just wasn't sure where to go next and had to change the system to keep things rolling. It's been a while, but I remember Ishida sacrificing his powers to win a battle in what was an incredibly dramatic moment, only for us to learn a short time later that he could in fact get them right back with a weird training session. I can give the series another try, but I remember the sense of it turning into a slog.
You can't keep threatening to talk about deep Bleach lore and metaphysics and then not actually talk about it. You gotta make that video, man. Also as a fellow Brando Sando fan who didn't know you read those, I'm glad you're enjoying them, and am glad you appreciate how anime the whole thing is.
the implication of Ichigo is a magical girl with talking maskot after talking about cardcaptor sakura is somehow struck like me a lightning, i never think of that before, and i never felt anything like this until this very moment and dont know what it is
Tatsuki was my favorite human in the series. Princess and Dragon was my favorite series of chapters. The little pics on the otherwise blank page with Princess Orihime hiding behind Dragon Tatsuki was perfect for what was happening, but when the roles switched and wounded Dragon Tatsuki was being shielded by Princess Orihime, it got to me. Tatsuki's drive to protect Orihime at all costs, even her own life, was awesome, and when that tentacle monster took over Tatsuki, I worried for her. But when Orihime's power awoke and she declared she would protect Tatsuki, I cheered. Seriously people, if you haven't, read the damn manga. It's great. I was a little meh on the Thousand Year Blood War arc, but at the time I was reading an unofficial translation (I've bought all the manga as they came out), so the wait between each chapter coupled with some of the Sternritter fights taking multiple chapters, I think it was mostly due to the time sink.
Even the 3 flavors of high speed movement have distinct characteristics. Hirenkyaku was stated by Uryu to be the fastest and it also seems to allow the user to surf on reishi. Sonido apparently causes the users reiatsu to vanish when used. Ichigo displayed this against Ulqiorra, and when he first arrived to save Soul Society from the 1st Quincy invasion. Shunpo seems to be a completely physical techinique like Sonido but requires training and mostly only lets you move fast with its extra utility coming from a variety of trained sub-techniques.
One thing that really impressed me was in early Bleach how Senbonzakura Kageyoshi looked like a prison, which represented the rules and traditions of the Kuchiki family, holding them back, in the form of a weapon, and how the cherry blossoms were mature, intelligent wisdom only gained through hard work and experience.
As someone who wrote a term paper about how the Fon family's position might line up with ways in which Chinese immigrant families were treated in the shogunate and how Omaeda carries with him a lot of the traits negatively associated with those immigrants. And as someone who has been talking at length about the Buddhist philosophy of Bleach and how it's this wonderful dialogue between the many different approaches towards Enlightenment. Thank you for making this. Bleach is a lot smarter than many give it credit and there is a lot of analysis one can do of the work. Ichigo in particular I am really happy you pointed out. I'm so used to him being torn down as bad because he's not an active protagonist but like. Given his life and his actual motivations why would he be? And like I dunno. As a mixed kid who learned later in her life that her family, part of it, were the survivors of a genocide...Ichigo's ultimate powerup being a full embracing of his heritage is just really fucking cool. The coolest even. Yeah I guess he gets to be the most specialest boy ever because he was born a particular way but like...It's scary and hard being mixed and eventually you reach a point where you realize that your strengths come from your mixed nature. And Ichigo's entire journey I feel carries that.
While I agree that Ichigo is not the worst, I cant come to agree hes that deep. Did Kubo *really* plan for Ichigos mom to be a Quincy this whole time? As an anime only, cant say I believe it. Not to mention every powerup, while earned in some way, is also executed very similary (dire situation calls for drastic measures to obtain next tier powerup similar to the villain that needs to be defeated)
@@Kronman590 Yes he absolutely did. Ichigo basically used Blüt Vene during his fight with Kenpachi, his bedsheets have a Quincy cross pattern, he took way more of Rukia's reiryoku than either of them intended, likely due to the Quincies' innate ability to absorb and subordinate reishi, and he also could easily visualize reiatsu as ribbons of energy, something very Quincy-like. Furthermore, Old Man Zangetsu literally took Ichigo into the shadows to help him escape Kenpachi, something only trueborn Quincy could do.
@Gautam Sarathy A bunch of these were kind of explained bc he has god tier reishi affinity. I guess zangetsu shadow is a little iffy but its not like they established Uryu could do that. And cross on the bed is a little....bit of a stretch lol
@@Kronman590 Uryuu never had a reason to escape into the shadows, and admittedly, that's more of a Wandenreich thing. Also, he did use Blüt Vene, or at least a proto-Blüt Vene, to survive Kenpachi's strikes.
@Gautam Sarathy I mean a similar argument could be made for a lot of characters who tank hits on their skin. I feel like good foreshadowing is Unohana, who always had an aura of mystery and fear connected to her, which pays off. The Quincy heritage feels out of nowhere to me because these bits of foreshadowing are kind of explained in other means at the time.
One of my favorite things about Bleach is how the characters interact with each other even when they're NOT talking to each other. The stupid looks they give each other one one of em says something stupid, the laughs or giggles, that moment when Orihime opened the window in Ichigo's room so he wouldn't break it when kicking the traitor Arrancar out right before the Blood War started. It's something you barely see in Naruto or even Dragon Ball.
I've never thought of Bleach as The Worst anything, but I read the manga after giving up on the anime after only a few episodes, and... I mean, it's good? The art's great, the fights are hype, the characters are distinct and fun almost across the board, but it does still suffer from that sense of repetitious structure, fights dragging on longer the farther you get into it (though not EVERY fight, thank god)*, and villain motivations that just don't feel like they have substance to them. "Ass pull" is going too far, but some of those moments do feel like they're veering close to deus ex machina or are set up from the start to be ridiculous plot manipulation tools ("Oh yeah, he had everyone hypnotized the whole time, of course."). It's weighed down by the trappings of the shonen power creep fantasy, basically. I don't think it's bad-it's got a lot to like! But I totally understand why anyone might be turned off of it, too. Personally, I enjoy basically any one arc of Bleach...but that's enough for me. I get tired of it after that. *worth clarification: it's less individual fights dragging on and more the combined quantity of fights increasing as more and more of the cast gets involved in increasingly large brawls; they all start to blur together into one long "I'm the fastest" "No I'M" the fastest" "Well I'm the most magical" "No I'm more magical" "Aha, but in reality, I'M the most magical!" fight scene with the characters involved going through a rotating door of one-upsmanship.
This is probably the best explaination I couldn't have said it better. And I do think the same It's good,it has good stuff,but it's not great because it has bad stuff as well that ruined it
Never read or seen a single episode of Bleach but here I'm watching a 40 minute video about it. This was so well done and made me want to give the manga a shot.
I'd say give the anime a shot too, but hot damn there's so. much. filler. Feels like even more than Naruto. But! The nonfiller stuff is pretty good and the TYBW anime so far is five thousand percent hype.
You probably have to go very deep with it. I read it when it was serialized and when you read it at the superficial level, it peaked at the first arc, dropped a bit in Arancar arc, and plummeted soooo bad after that, sped up exponentially almost to a free fall at terminal velocity in 1000 years war arc. That's why people firmly believed Shonen Jump forced the author to stretch his story out after the first arc or two for the money, because it looked like a cycle of repetition after that and things always looked like an ass-pulled moves. I also was very skeptical through this video until he started pointing out various clues that I came to pause and thought that maybe, just maybe, I might have missed something big time. Alas, I won't have the time to go back and revisit them all again, or at least no where in the mid and near future.
I recommend Bleach. It's deeper and more planned out than other manga/anime. A lot goes over people's heads or isn't picked up on, I guess. So, those people love to loudly bitch about it being bad. I personally think it's superior than other shonen manga/anime. I mean, once you get to the final arc, you'll get to learn that Ichigo's blanket on his bead has a deep meaning, and you may cry.
Bleach was always my favorite of the "big 3" shonen anime, even after I had long since given up on them. This makes me want to go and check out the newest thing.
When you said you would go deep on the power systems i actually got excited about it, because like dark souls i just dont have the time to get good in my daily life. I mean if you make those videos, ill watch them
As a fan of Hunter x Hunter, the whole Cosmere universe, and someone that broke and read One Piece after several friends and this channel managed to finally convince me it was worth doing, I am really going to have to ask you to stop opening my eyes to new extremely long running series that will take me weeks, or even months, to read.
Well you're in luck, because I hate to be that guy but, "it really ISN'T that deep bro". I know, because I read it every week as it came out. I reread most of the last chapters a few months ago. I say 'most' because I didn't bother finishing it since I was shocked at how little I remembered and even more shocked at how little I cared. It's not good. Skip it. Do not consume Bleach (the manga or the anime). Find and consume better media that is worth your time. I suggest The Horizon by Jeong Ji-Hoon (it's only 21 chapters).
I got goosebumps when the Bleach OP played. Jesus it's been like 20 years and it still hits me... Bleach has issues, I know, but it's still so special.
The Bleach anime has TONS of issues. The music isn’t one of them. It says a lot that it can have such a strong reaction on us 20 years later. Hell, the series introduced me to so many artists that I still listen to today (UVERworld for one).
Soul Society & Hueco Mundo : Kubo's Perfect Narrative Inversion One of the most common criticism Bleach has received during it's run is that both the Soul Society arc and Hueco Mundo arc are one and the same. This is not only a very surface level observation of the story but a lack of understanding as to why Kubo decided to give these two arc similarities in the first place. The underlying theme of both of these arcs is very different from the one another. The Soul Society arc is mainly about questioning a flawed system and their sense of Justice, gaining powers and changing their view. Where as the Hueco Mundo arc has "understanding one's self" ,the struggle with one's inner demon and coming to realize the consequences of failing to control them while also accepting those demons(The latter comes into the narrative during the Fake Karakura Town arc but since it's connected I thought it should be mentioned). Human reasoning plays a pivotal part in the conflict associated with the Soul Society arc where as the animal instinct within oneself is an important aspect when it comes to the Hueco Mundo arc as the conflict with one's inner demon is based on them(White's speech to Ichigo during the Vizord training) To have the characters in these two arcs play along these themes, Kubo differenciates the espadas from the shinigami since their origins by associating them with different animals/insects. Like Grimmjow with Panther, Harribel with Shark, Nnoitora with Mantis, Nel as horse/goat, Ulquiorra with a mixture of Bat and mammel(since his resurrection also has a tail), Stark's ceros being in the forms of wolves and so on. Where as in the Soul Society arc, the powers of the Shinigami have a certain grace to them and they are very much in line with the human ego rather than the animal insticts represented in the resurrection forms of the espada. Byakuya's bankai is sakura flowers representing beauty but also the fact that people are buried under the Sakura tree as well(Hisana), Tousen's Bankai rids the opponent off all their senses except for Touch just like how Tousen's blind, Komamura's bankai is a Japanese soldier clad in complete armor, just like Komamura who's face was always hidden within an armor, Yamamoto's shikai is fire showing power and strict governance over the system, Gin's bankai is a poisonous long blade snake like his nature, Aizen's shikai is pure hyponis and making illusions just like how his whole outword personality was a lie. Even though Renji's zanpakuto has the form of a Monkey/snake it's more in line with his personal arc of standing up against the nobles and the system despite being a rat on the street as shown by Kubo's doodles at the end of the chapter. Throughout the Soul Society arc Ichigo's shown to be achieving powers through his training for becoming a Shinigami and later on achieving Bankai with his Zanpakuto(Old man) helping him in doing so. Where as in the Hueco Mundo arc those very powers(White) serve as a conflict for him to overcome, not just physically but later on by coming to an understanding with them. Uryu's fight with Mayuri is about his pride as a quincy with also a theme of fatherhood playing a bigh role. Nemu despite being abused by Mayuri has a certain level of understanding of him while Uryu is completely disconnected from Ryuuken. Both "fathers" being rather cruel but rather seen through a different perpective through their artificial and human children. Uryu even apologises to Souken saying he doesn't understand his father and still has to use the ultimate technique. Although Mayuri escapes he is defeated by Uryu who in the end is saved by Nemu who gave him the vaccine to stop the poisoning. Uryu's fight with Szayel starts as him basically assisting Renji in defeating him and despite all of his new techniques both of them fail in defeating Szayel and are ultimately saved by Mayuri who gives his famous speech on perfection and why he loates it, completely in contrast with Szayel's desire to become a perfect being. But Mayuri's very hatred of perfection later on comes to haunt him in the last arc as he also feels despair at the loss of Nemu who he came to subconsciously believe to be a perfect artifical soul with their own beliefs and desire, finally breaking the boundries with which she was created. Ultimately coming to an understanding of how much Nemu means to him. While Szayel comes to taunt him in his mind that he achieved the very pergection(creating a perfect human soul) that he loathed. Kubo shows the contradiction in Mayuri's thinking and his actions. Same with Uryu who finally understands what Ryuuken wanted to protect all along, his reasons and following the path of his father by becoming a doctor(something which he disdained after watching Ryuuken disect his mother). I went a little to far here basically towards the end of the manga but that's because this narrative of fatherhood is very much linked to Mayuri and Uryu till the end and isn't resolved until then. Kubo masterfully inverts these arcs by showing the contradiction between the understanding of human compassion when it comes to a shinigami and a hollow aka a pure soul that was saved and a corrupted one that was left to rot consumed by his negative desires. Hanataro comes to recognize Rukia as a good individual through their conversations and the kindness she shows to him where as Loly and Menoly look at Orihime as a monster for showing them kindness and compassion. Even in the end while Hanataro actively helps Ichigo to save Rukia, Loly protecting Orihime was more about self preservation against Yami.
Ichigo's fight with Renji is more about Renji finally coming to an understanding with what he wants to do when it comes to Rukia. His fight against Ichigo serves to change his personal view on the conflict, following his heart rather than the system even if he is no match for that system. His views are changed through Ichigo's resolve. The flashback given to Renji here highlights his reason for abandoning Rukia all those years ago due to his own powerlessness in front of the system in contrast with Ichigo's resolve. Ichigo's fight with Grimmjow has more to do with Ichigo finally accepting his animal instincts and overcoming his guilt of having to fight with the hollow powers that makes his eyes look like Sora's which makes Orihime fearful of him. Here Orihime's acceptance of his struggles and disregard of his method of protecting her as long as it's him is what helps him overcome Grimmjow. Here it's Grimmjow who helps Ichigo in accepting his animal instinct while it's Orihime's emotional support that finally helps him in overcoming his subconscious fear of his inner demon. The flashback given to Grimmjow also helps in highlighting the contrast in his journey compared to Ichigo. As Grimmjow was asked to eat his own comrades to keep evolving, leaving them behind and not even feeling any remorse when they were killed during his invasion of the Karakura town compared to Ichigo's resolve to save Orihime and bring all of his frinends back to their home while defeating Grimmjow, Ulquiorra and Aizen. Another interesting way which Kubo uses to invert the narrative in these two arcs is through Yoruichi and Nel and how the personal narrative of these two characters with others(Soi fon and Nnoitora) differ completely by the end. The emotional comflict Soi-fon has with Yoruichi is about her feeling betrayed by being left behind and finally reconciling with Yoruichi where as Nnoitora's conflict with Nel is about his hatred for being looked upon as the Inferior and mocked as one by Nel in her own way(The reason she follows him is being she likes to look down upon him and remind him of his inferiority) and it ends with Nnoitora staying true to this hatred while getting the death he always wanted from Kenpachi. And finally Kubo basically makes his intention of inverting these two arcs very clear by contrasting the Ichigo vs Byakuya and Ichigo vs Ulquiorra fight in the most obvious way possible. Ichigo wins his fight against Byakuya not just in a physical way but he also wins the ideological conflict , and wins it by overcoming the demon within him and winning as himself. Byakuya finally accepts being in the wrong and respects Ichigo and his resolve. He is changed by ichigo's resolve. Ichigo win his fight against Ulquiorra in name only as it's won at the very expense of the ideals he upheld against Byakuya. Here Ichigo finally gives in to his inner demon(against his choice as he was basically dead) which he was able to overcome against Byakuya, becomes a monster, slaughters an enemy, almost kills a friend with said friend ironically being saved by the enemy he was fighting against. After his fight with Byakuya Ichigo screams his victory with Joy but here he only screams in shame of the victory he achieved. Here Ulquiorra's nihilistic outlook is changed not through Ichigo's win but rather his fall and Orihime. In conclusion Kubo wanted to give these two arcs some similarities on the surface while giving the character completely different personal narratives with the protagonist reaching two completely different conclusions by end of the final major fights in these two respective arcs, and he achieved it masterfully in my opinion. There is also the aspect of "The heart" conveyed through Rukia's fight against Aaroenaro and Ulquiorra's against Ichigo. Where Rukia finally comes to the realization that even though she is facing Kaien in body and mind(AA has his memories as well) his heart will belong to her, while Ulquiorra realizes in his last moments that even after all the suffering he had Orihime go through, she wasn't afraid of him and understood him, the thing he was holding in his hand was the very thing Kaien talked about people having in their palm when it comes to their understanding of others. Kubo Masterfully connects this theme of "The heart" from Rukia (someone who assists Ichigo)to Ulquiorra(who stands against Ichigo) brilliantly.
Even as someone who was a fan of the anime, I have to acknowledge the unbelievable superiority of the Manga. The Fullbringer arc is largely mocked but frankly, in the Manga, was chilling and amazing to read. Also. Dear Anime Pope. Please do a super in depth analysis of bleach power systems. Even the short snipets were amazing.
@@MrGksarathy okay, but the Fullbringer powers we do get to see are, on average, cooler than the average Bankai or Schrift. Though, that might just be my love for Stands speaking.
Love how you gave it a chance and learned about all the things that make the bleach manga so well written and special. You never disappoint with the genuine and gripping video essays you make.
32:53 I actually think the lack of a hard magic system in MHA helps set it apart from the other shonen and grants the abilities an immediacy that isn’t possible with chakra, nen, or spiritual pressure. Quirks function as extensions of the body and develop/deteriorate as such, so you only really need to watch a character in a few conflicts before you get a sense of their limits and preferred use of their quirks. Trying to explain why and how quirks first manifested feels like trying to give an origin to mutants in X-Men comics in that I don’t really understand what we as readers would gain from that info. Even in-universe scientists are way more interested in the future of quirks than the past.
I watched Bleach up until the Bount Arc and fell out of love with it. When I heard the 1000 year blood war arc was being animated, it motivated me to catch up so I continued at the Arrancar arc and it was tough to really get into it again. So I started reading the manga instead at when they got to Hueco Mundo and I couldn't stop. The difference in the anime and the Manga are day and night to me. Everything you said in the section about Kubo's artistical genius was spot on. I felt so much more connected to certain characters while reading as opposed to watching it.
Now that you mention it, the thought never crossed my mind that the power of Ichibei's Ichimonji was actually a parallel for how the author (as in, the author of the manga itself) manifests the world through "black" (that is, "black" is what the mangaka adds to the "white" that is a blank page).
@@poenpotzu2865 I don't think so. Ichibei is, uh, a huge asshole and possibly the world's first sociopath. Though yes his power is similar to a real world mangaka. Nice catch on that one, OP.
I believed Kubo-sensei was always a huge underdog. His art is one of the best in the business, characters designs are simple yet SO effective. His dynamic action shots walked so Hero Aca could run. What really had Kubo s art work stand out is the line work, thin, clean like a dynamic brush strokes. Loved your video Geoff! You definitely hit my experience growing up and falling out of love with Bleach. Cannot wait to watch TYBW!!!
Thank god someone put together a 'Bleach is good actually' video because more people need to come around to the gospel that it was always the second best of the Big Three.
Yeah I gotta say, while I watched random episodes of bleach as a kid in the early or mid 2000s, watching it straight through after it had completed a few years ago made it a completely different watching experience. In a good way. I can't imagine all that waiting through the arcs.
I really appreciate this video honestly, as someone who picked up the bleach manga in middle school, figured out how to find translations online once the library ran out of volumes, and proceeded to read the manga weekly all the way until the thousand year war started and I got a little burnt out trying to wrap my head around the Quincy powers on top of college. I haven’t returned in over four years but you’re seriously making me reconsider picking it back up and taking the thousand year war arc more seriously. I would benefit from a reread anyway, since reading a manga weekly for like five years really makes it hard to string those tiny and intricate details together 😅
Hey Geoff, you totally convinced me to get back into watching Bleach and no it’s not because of the world building or the fight scenes. It’s because of the shoujo influences which finally explains why Ichigo is still the hottest and coolest protagonist in shounen anime till date. Thank you for giving me a new perspective on this anime 😊
I absolutely loved bleach as a 13 year old kid so I always found it weird how when I got older I just randomly found people hating on it it’s crazy how bad ran anime can ruin a series reputation
I loved it, finisehd the anime (at the time) up until halfway through the Hueco Mundo arc. Read the Manga and it was in the Fullbringer era already and I lost interest in the whole series for years. Fullbring arc is worse than any of the filler.
For me it was the fact that Bleach shamelessly copied Yu Yu Hakusho. I gave Bleach a chance 2 - 3 eps in I dropped it because of how much it reminded me of my childhood anime..
I never really understood why everyone either absolutely loves or absolutely hates Bleach, so thanks for making this video. You are the go-to anime commentator.
I'm one of the people that thinks Bleach is just ok, Great character designs and fashion. but everything else is just kinda...mid? Idk I hate the word, but I don't know how else to describe it.
Bleach had so much potential and I fucking loved it. I watch 60 episodes of that show in a matter of 4 days. And then I got to that sakura petal dude and I was so fucking sick of the soul society arc. Characters would spend entire EPISODES dedicated to ONLY bragging about how strong they are. It got to the point where I would literally just scrub through the episodes to see when the fight starts. I was so sick of the shows stupid pacing and how seemingly endless the soul society arc felt. I just dropped despite how obsessive I got when I started.
A reason for why some may dislike bleach is because of how much of it goes over people's head which causes to misread the depth of the character's and story
It was popular really. So people attached themselves to it, for better or worse. Like as a Bleach fan I distinctly remember a time saying you liked Bleach was the nerd way of getting bullied by other nerds, and the sheer amount of straight out lies told about Bleach. So if you hated it you could just get brownie points for being an idiot, while if you liked it you had to defend yourself for the opinion.
@@nahte123456 that applies to almost every anime, it’s not fair to use that as an excuse for people disliking bleach. I mean the video literally spent 40 minutes talking shit about the anime and telling us to go read the manga for a reason
I first discovered bleach at 13 years old in my school library. My high-school had a very small (like 15 books) manga section. 4 of those books were the first 4 bleach books. I read through them all in 4 days, only because I could only borrow one book at a time. After I finished them, I looked up bleach online to see where to buy the next books only to find out they had been made into an anime. Not only that, but all the episodes were on youtube for free. However, I didn't have Internet at my house, so it would be another 2 years before I finally got to watch bleach. I watched it on my Samsung galaxy young with its tiny 3-inch screen. I absolutely loved it. It was the most epic thing I had ever seen. Then the first soul society arch happened and I watched the whole thing, by the last few episodes I just wanted it to end. Then the bount arch happened and I was invested again until that also dragged on for 2 whole seasons. By the time I reached the hollow soul reapers arch I just gave up. Archs that could have been 5 episodes were dragged out for entire seasons. The only reason I watched until episode 150 was because there would be the occasional moment where things would be cool again, it would draw me back in only to plummet my expectations an episode later. I have a love hate relationship with bleach now. The first season will forever be one of my favourite seasons of anime ever. It holds a special place in my heart for being my introduction to anime. But it will always be the anime that destroyed any expectations for a good 5 years. Any anime with a consistent storyline after I watched bleach would be considered the best anime ever. I remember watch wolves rain after bleach and thinking it was the best thing ever only because it was more consistent than bleach.
I think if you watch Bleach now, with the option of just binging it without the fillers, it is honestly one of the best philosophical shounen anime tbh. There is such a huge cast of characters and Kubo honestly deals every one of them with a lot of care and thought.
Orihime is the perfect example of the anime vs manga in terms of Bleach. The differences are subtle, but overtime it’s like FUUUUUCK they really misrepresented these characters.
I hope Kubo somehow manages to incorporate the Narita novels a bit into the anime. No way the backstory of the Soul King, Juha's motivation, Ichibei's intentions towards Ichigo, Aizen's motivation towards dethroning the Soul Kind etc just get lost to a book...
@kamamara2567 yeah, but it's only mentioned at the very end of the manga, and only right as Ywhach is getting defeated, effectively making that motivation only a factor in the final battle's writing in retrospect
I rewatched it like a year ago, and I must say, I still love it. I love the growing up metaphore, where first he finds out he can change something, then learns to accept his dark side, deals with feeling lost and to lean on his friends and then accepts his legacy and inheritance. In my experience, that IS the way you grow up as a person
Bleach is one of the few series from my baby anime fan days that I revisit on the regular. It's one of the few series that I keep picking up on tiny details I've missed on a previous read through and Kubo's art is just a joy to look at. Honestly, as artist myself, his composition is something I aspire to. With how striking it is while still being able to understand what's happening on the page is a huge goal that I don't think many action manga can hit.
As someone who's written serial fiction, I'm still dead sure that, particularly in earlier portions of Bleach, the reason that the majority of exposition/explanation/worldbuilding is given by non-experts, experts who're nutcases and bad at explaining things, and people who are straight-up lying (Bleach has a couple of particularly great "I lied about how these powers actually work" moments) isn't as much because Kubo had a grand cohesive vision, but to give himself enough slack to avoid writing himself into a corner later down the line. Worldbuilding and exposition is a very difficult beast when working at a weekly serial pace: you don't get to go back and change the initial explanations (as you'd be able to when writing at novel length), which makes delivering explanations through unreliable or partially-reliable in-universe sources very attractive, since it gives you enough wiggle room to change things a bit later down the line. That's part of the reason "it just works" do-anything power systems are more popular with authors in that format.
@@chasinghaze0962 It's not necessarily a bad thing - leave stuff like that open-ended enough, and as you go on and add more and more detail to it over time, you can often come up with something that looks like it was planned all along.
@@justaway6901 strange, it adds to it for me. We don't even understand our own universe, why would any one character have a clear understanding of their FAR MORE convoluted world? Makes me feel like a theorist trying to solve things alongside characters (much like Jojo characters) when confronted with something new. It also keeps readers questioning things well after a story's conclusion.
The fact that Bleach (manga) is what it is, considering the frequency of releases in it's run, is damn impressive. Not enough deference is given to mangaka. What they are able to create in such limited time, and most of the time alone. Being able to keep to the weekly Jump schedule is a feat not appreciated as fully it deserves.
Seriously the sheer number of stuff Jeff managed to touch upon in this single video reveals to me a chasm of mad mad lore, research and wiki fodder that rivals a fictional world, established by me and my friends, over *_literal years_* of work and worldbuilding (which is still ongoing) interspersed with decisions, lore bits and characterization that can only truly make sense if you know the real-life drama surrounding them. This man managed to match all that shit without the severe personal entanglement for a teen boy Japanese comic magazine whose readers want only to see cool dudes blasting less cool dudes to pieces while on a weekly installment schedule and got it popular enough that forum wars over it persist to this day, almost entirely on his own. _To call that impressive is an understatement._
My experience with Bleach: >Watched the first arc about saving Rukia >Loved it >Watched the Bount arc next >Didn't know it was filler >Dropped it >Have never gone back
The whole "Ichigo is a magical girl" thing at the beginning of the video reminded me of a crossover fanfic I once read that meshed together the world of Bleach and Madoka, and by god, it works _perfectly_ and now I realize exactly why. You're right. Ichigo is a magical girl. Edit: I am an idiot. I can't believe I completely skipped over the fic name. *As N Approaches Infinity* by *Corisanna* on AO3, as both @jurifengshui7426 and @aidanhayes3571 mentioned.
Here in Brazil, we're still fighting against the same mindset you presented at the beginning of the video. People can't see or understand something, therefore they scream to the internet that there is nothing there.
@@za-ir5ni apparently not for some readers. People can't still tell why Ichigo protects the others so they are like "eh,whatever" But there is indeed something
@@marcomilillo2001 there are legitimate issues here & there too, let’s not brush it off as perfect and we people are blind to “it” But at least he goes into detail and debunks some bs
@@StripedJacket mhm i donot think anyone who loves bleach or even the most diehard bleach creator like jaymes and tekking will deny the problems with bleach , he was just adressing the issue regarding misunderstanding for ichigo as a character
2:30 - You brought me back man talking about how you first watched Bleach and that intro. 2006, didnt have any friends, moved to a new country and I went to a local anime event and they had three anime DVDs, Naruto, One Piece and Bleach, kind of like IRL Shonen Pokémon starters. Needless to say I choose Bleach. What a ride that has been. I regret nothing
As a former MASSIVE Bleach fan, this video may actually convince me to resurrect the love for it that I've lost over the last ten years. So many videos about Bleach's so-called downfall have made me hesitant to give it another chance, but this video may just be my sign to just feckin do it.
@@ambatuBUHSURK?? So you just didn't watch cour 2. That or you have serious comprehension issues considering what we saw ONE squad zero member do by themselves..
I literally cannot help but be excited every time I hear *Asterisk. I love it so much that I actually hate hearing it when I'm not watching Bleach because it preys on my attention until I go watch an episode. My God, the style of that first intro will never be beaten in my mind.
What built the hype up in Bleach for me was the animation and most importantly the music. Shiro Sagisu created one of the greatest anime OSTs imo for this show. It fits the vibe of the series so well and creates a TON of tension. the track "Precipice of Defeat" being my go to for explaining this. On top of that the anime showing lines over the screen to represent spiritual pressure was absolute genius. It truly amplifies a character's feeling of power at a massive scale.
It has been years since I watched Bleach. From what I remember, what burned me out of Bleach was what burned me out of Dragonball Z some time after the Soul Society Arc. The side characters would get powered up. Yet when they came up to an antagonist, they would lose. Only the MC could actually beat the antagonists. On top of this, I was seeing victory coming from powering up more than out thinking the opponents. So once I could consistantly predict what was going to happen, everything that wasn't the MC fighting felt like stalling.
at least in the final arc , there are just tons of other characters who win/lose relevant side fights , and the same occurs at the end of arrancar arc , all except for aizen/ywach don't require Ichigo to take down , & for those 2 although only Ichigo was capable of directly fighting them they are also in part defeated due to others , by Urahara sealing the immortal before it can evolve again in Aizens' case & by spoiler both Aizen's illusion & Tsukishima's time/memory alteration creating blindspots in Ywach's otherwise perfect perception and Uryu's arrow making Ywach vulnerable in the last fight , Ichigo's powerup has almost no bearing on the final outcome & even in the Aizen fight it's debatable what would have happened without Urahara
@@Marcusjnmc some people find this trait as a sign of Ichigo being bad as MC & even the show being bad in general. But it just feel refreshing to me that Ichigo wasn't the only character to defeat the villains, typically like so many other shounen protagonists. It shows to me that despite Ichigo is a "special" being & character in Bleach, team work with his friends & allies is what makes the difference.
I disagree to an extent. Yes; only Ichigo could beat the major villains, but there were a ton of side antagonists that were beaten by the side characters. Let's not forget that, with the exception of Ulquiorra and Grimmjow, the espada were defeated not by Ichigo, but by soul reapers, and in the fullbringer arc, it's Byakuya that fights and defeats Tsukishima while Ichigo fights Ginjo. It was annoying when Ichigo's friends would show up only to lose, but that was actually surprisingly rare, and in the case of the Hueco Mundo arc, it was justified by a major plot point: attrition. Aizen set it up so that they would all win against relatively weaker opponents and then be exhausted by the time they were up against more major threats as he wanted them to be bait for the soul reapers to show up in Hueco Mundo. As for winning via power-ups rather than something more nuanced, yes; that did happen sometimes, but I'd say it was often far more nuanced than that. Again, the fights against the espada were definitely not won through raw power, and the Tsukishima vs Byakuya fight had Tsukishima: a relatively weak human, put up an extremely close fight against Byakuya through _clever_ use of his Book of the End ability.
@@matthewmuir8884 like I said, I stopped some time after the Soul Society arc. Most of your counter points are content I never watched because I dropped the series. I made it through like two to three arcs. I believe it more than fair to drop anything if you do not like what you were seeing at that point.
You are an imaginative guy who is able to articulate how your mind interprets and fills in the gaps of stories. I'm not sure if you genuinely fail to realize how personal these interpretations are, or if you are being disingeneous for the sake of rage bait though. You brought up some of the most widely shared criticisms about Bleach in the beginning: repetitive arcs, shallow world building, inconsistent power scaling and asspulls, then failed to counter any of these for the rest of the video. The repetitive and formulaic story telling of Soul Society arc and Hueco Mundo arc wasn't there in the manga? Does the manga somehow give you more information about the poorly constructed worlds of Bleach? Does the manga not have the exact same powers and how they increasingly get ridiculously strong and complex as the story progresses? Does the manga somehow explain how certain training like being taught by zero division for a short amount of time, or learning the final Getsuga gives characters insane power ups that conveniently make them strong enough to move the plot forward? By far the point I disagree the most is that Bleach uses the "show, not tell" strategy effectively. That is simply your brain filling in the gaps with fanfics not because your perspective is more "complete" now, but because your perspective has changed to wanting to praise and like Bleach as much as possible for some reason. Most powers from the earlier phase of the story didn't need verbal explanations because it's either a huge chunk of sword that fires blue slash projectiles, or a sword that transforms into many petals. Just like you acknowledged with the fullbringers, these powers get so complex and alien to its own series that by the point in TYBW arc nearly ALL characters explain their powers to the detriment of the involved characters and fights. Famous example being Rose getting smoked by Masked de Masculine. As for the world building, I completely lost it when you suggested that the ratio of time dilation between the physical world in Bleach and Soul Society is 2:1 because Jesus died 2000 years ago, and the Tokugawa Christian Persecution happened 400 years ago in OUR world. Are you saying that the Bleach's physical world also had these two events, or are you just equating the physical world of Bleach to our world? You recognized that Yhwach is an analog for Yahweh, they aren't literally the same being in Bleach universe. Just like how neither Yamamoto nor Ichibei were a shogun in the physical world of Bleach during the Edo period. Surely you are not making this point in good faith. There are many things to love about the Bleach manga, I quite like it myself. You definitely pointed out some of them like how engaging Kubo's art, design and paneling can be. But not acknowledging, or properly engaging with the criticisms that you literally opened up the video with comes off incredibly disingeneous and even opportunistic given that this video came out when the tides were turning more favourably for Bleach.
@@user-qh4ij7ip1u That's some laughably low reading comprehension if that's actually what you took away from my comment. Pay attention in school, you really shouldn't stay this dumb for much longer.
@@whdgk95I don't think you can judge anyone's reading comprehension when you consider having media literacy and knowing how to look past the surface level as "being imaginative and filling the gaps with fanfic". Kubo literally said that his biggest regret is being too cryptic with bleach.
Loved this, if you ever did another bleach video about how masterful the world building is, you should mention the sounds of things in bleach. I noticed that the different techniques in bleach all have different sounds. I can only base this off the anime since I can’t read kanji, but listen to the differences in sound between shunpo, sonido and hirenkyaku.
I really appreciate the depth of analysis you gave to this series. While I most definitely did not spot all of this, much of your explanation gives voice to the reasons why Bleach has always stuck with me. I'm a huge fan of the character designs and power system, and I agree that the manga is by far the better experience. I think the bigger problems I've had with this series have always been in the narrative direction (i.e. it's plot and how it chose to wrap up certain arcs and, most unfortunately, the series as a whole), rather than how individual fights went or the worldbuilding. I understand why you didn't go into the specific narrative choices since your goal here was to address some deep seeded prejudices against the series that have prevented many from either picking up Bleach or revisiting it, so I respect the choice to go this direction with it.
As someone who doesn't have the time or patience to go through all of Bleach after I dropped it but still very curious, I would love a full in-depth explanation of how everything in Bleach works. It was cool from what I remembered, and what you started explaining is so interesting! I LOVE lore and worldbuilding. Please do that video I would love the ramble
Below is an explanation of the history of the Bleach verse and a brief like very brief explanation of the how the cosmology and power system of bleach relates to Buddhism. I decided not to go into depth about how the power system works nor how each race interacts with it as that would be several youtube comments about as long as this one for each race. So essentially the whole power system boils down to the Buddhist concept of enlightenment of course it is an over simplification as this doesn't account for the intricate ways as to how each race/magician uses the reishi around them and how their personality affects it. Now as for the cosmology... well that is it's own 40 minute video on it's own but it essentially boils down to the different Buddhist realms being represented by the Bleach realms, it has been a while since I dove deep into the topic so I can't give an in depth explanation as to what realm relates to which. How it works boils down to 3 realms which need to maintain the same number of souls in each or risk loosing balance and destroying everything. Now I do want to mentioned that it is implied by the story and that many of us fans theories that there aren't only three realms but many more and each represents a realm in Buddhism. Also hell is an outlier which has existed since before the Soul King (I will talk about this guy later) and does need balance but rather than splitting the balance between three realms it is split between that which is hell and that which is not hell. If hell gains to many souls then the doors to hell will break open. In essence the realms of soul society, World of the Living and Hueco Mundo all work as a counter balance to hell. Then there is the history of Bleach to dive into which extends millions of years and is hinted at by Aizen, who by the way was only wrong in the execution of his ideals and his own view of himself rather than in what he wanted to do, and Yhwach then later expanded upon by the canon light novels of Cant Fear Your Own World. In essence the soul king who was truly alive millions of years ago helped the soul society (which was not exactly the soul society at the time) protect themselves from hollow for inexplicable reasons, as this is going on the 5 great noble clans which consist of Shihon, Shiba, Kuchiki, Tsunayashiro and a a fifth undisclosed/forgotten one have recently been created with their founders still running around and ruling this world. Now it is important to note that at this point in time there was not such thing as the world of the living or the dead as well as hueco mundo (not too sure about hueco mundo I might be remembering that wrong) they only came into fruition when the five founders of the great noble clans got together with the Soul King to discuss the increasing hollow problem and how to solve it at which point the Soul King created the bleach cosmology by dividing what is implied to be a singular universe into at least 2 if not 3 or more unique universe which created what we know as the world of the dead, the world of the living and hueco mundo. At this point in time the five great noble family leaders become fear full of the Soul King and now needing a linch pin for their new cosmology plan to butcher and seal the soul king as said linch pin all save one, the leader of the Shibas who offers themselves as the linch pin in place of the Soul King but is vetoed by the other heads. This sets up the conflict the Shibas have throughout history with the other four great noble houses and the reason why they are eventually pushed out of the position of one of the great noble houses by the other three as well as the entirety of the conflict between the Quincies and the soul reapers as well as Aizen but I digress. In the end they do end up sealing the Soul King and butchering him but not because he was over powered by the five leaders but because he allowed himself to be done in as such. At this point I should mention that the origins of the Soul King are unknown, his motivation for doing what he does and for allowing himself to be sealed and butchered are unknown, all that is known are two things that he outclassed all of the five leaders/founders in power by so much they were terrified of him and this is saying a lot since there has not been any person as powerful as the five founders in the history of the SS since the five founders the entirety of current soul society would lose in power to just one of the founders by a large margin. The other thing that is know is that he, like Ichigo, is a hybrid of every race that exist in bleach as such large parallels are drawn between the Soul King and Ichigo to the point where their fates are almost the same. I mentioned before about Bleach having more than 3 reals and talked about hell well now after having actually talked about the soul King I want to mention his origins, or more accurately what we know of them. We know that the soul king does not originate from the original Bleach world/universe but from outside of it. We also know that he does not come from hell. What we do know is that he is implied to have come from a real which exist outside of what is now known as the soul society, hueco mundo and WoT. A realm with more beings like him and well that is all we know. So in total that makes at least 5 different realms in bleach. Now this brings us to a post Soul King era and pre Gotei 13 era which spans millions of years. All that we know is that at different point during this time period the different body parts of the Soul King became sentient and deties to the people of the soul society and that the hierarchy of the soul society was established with the Five great Noble Clans at the top. The royal guard was also established at this point which most likely only included Ichibe (has grated the names to pretty much everything in the bleach cosmology and has the power to erase something via erasing the concept of their names) who is the one of the if not the oldest being still alive in bleach and later expanding to add Nimaya (created the zanpakuto as we know them today) and maybe one other person or two. Now there is one event which I am not sure of if it happened before or after the gotei 13 were founded. You may have noticed that I said that only three of the five of the five great noble clans agreed to expulse the Shiba family from their great clan status and that I didn't mention the name of one of the five great noble clans because it is unknown. Well that is because at some point either before or after the founding of the gotei 13 the fifth, unknown member of the the five great noble clans did something so horrific that the other four of the five great noble clans decided that they should not only be stripped of their noble status but also completely expelled for both the world of the living and the soul society into the space in between realms which is also the space in which all the realms exist called Garganta. Now this place is pretty much empty save for the ocational spontaneous real that pops up aside from hueco mundo, Wot and SS, so you can imagine how horrible what they did must have been to get this type of treatment. And not only did they get banished to a void, essentially, the other five great noble clans decided they weren't event worthy of having their name remembered in history so they erased all records of it so all we know is that they existed and did something that got them expelled into the Garganta. This brings us to the foundation of the Gotei 13 which can be summed up as a violent gang who fought the quincies to nigh extinction then later pacified into the militaristic government it is in the present day. At some point they decided to completely exterminate the Quincy due to the danger they posed to the bleach cosmology. Later Aizen comes into the picture causing several captains including Kisuke to seek refuge in the WoT which later also had Ichigo's dad, who was the current head of the Shibas, to leave his life as a soul reaper behind to save Ichigo's mom which directly leads into Ichigo being born as besically a second soul king as him mom was a Quincy who had been infected and partially hollowfied by a hollow and his dad was a human who had become a soul reaper and to top it all off he had a small piece of the original Soul King in him. Ofc Ichigo being of the same race as the Soul King would come back to bite both Aizen and Yuha in the ass as by definition Ichigo just has way higher base stats than anyone who has been alive for the las several thousand to several million years in the bleach cosmology, as such he has much higher innate potential than anyone in the bleach verse which in turn leads to the defeats of both Aizen and Yhwach
same. I dont wanna read something when I already know whats gonna happen, it just wont be interesting. I really wish I read bleach BEFORE watching the anime tho
@@williamwoolf8072 Technically, you don't know what's gonna happen tho because the anime never finished the story. It's only now covering the last arc.
A "reboot" of the older bleach series would do so much magic, like it helped dragonball with DB Kai. Even more so with the new arc currently running, a shortend and refreshed bleach serie would be amazing.
As someone whole only ever read the manga and never watched the anime in more than bits and pieces, I can absolutely see how anime pacing would have made a lot of the arcs and fights unbearable to sit through. And while I'd never given much thought to the why behind it, you're absolutely right about how strikingly beautiful many of Kubo's panels are thanks to his skillful use of the black and white palette, and sadly some of that inevitably just gets lost when it's colored and animated. You're also spot on about the wealth of complex and interesting characters. In a way it's a double-edged sword because it's so easy to get attached to a minor character during their brief time in the spotlight, and then spend the rest of the series sad that they're relegated to the background again.
It’s funny how a bias can change someone’s outlook on something done terribly. I like bleach but the way you explain it, you’d think it was AOT. It’s not. It’s cool and it’s half assed.
While I agree with you on almost everything you said, there are a few things that made me abandon bleach (spoilers ahead) : - IEP or the Ichigo's Endless Powerups... While everything can be explained, some of the powerups and power scales feels really frustrating. While I understand how and why Ichigo can tap into every power type and become as strong as he is, it is always reaaaaaally convenient that he can do this when he does this (ie, losing to the unstopable opponent of the moment). This simply destroys any tension, when you just know that Ichigo will have some kind of new power the moment he must win... - Ichigo is uninteresting. Well... he is interesting, but much less than anyone else, really, which makes him uninteresting by contrast. This is made worse by the fact that for all his powers, he makes nothing of it, except being faster and stronger... which, in turn, makes the more original powers much less impactful : in the end, the winner is the strongest... in the most basic way possible. - Aizen is a villain sue. This one irks me the most. The guy is smarter and stronger than everyone else. All. The. Time. Presented as a master planer and manipulator, he orchestrated events centuries old (Arrancar flashback and exile of Urahara), the birth of the hero, the events of most of the manga... yet, for all his devious plans, being twarthed is a minor setback at worse : his plan was to have Rukia executed ins such a way that he could get the Hougyoku back but when that doesn't happen, he still gets it back because of course he could get it back however he wanted... After that, he uses the Hougyoku to build his own Arrancar army to invade god's palace, as this is taxing for the Hougyoku itself, he kidnaps Orihime to use her power and restore it, presumably to make more Arrancars. But in doing so he invited opponents in his realm... opponents who were able to reduce his 10 super soldier to a measly 4 elite and some cannon fodders, all the while not achieving what he wanted with the Hougyoku. But it turns out he didn't need to build more super soldiers anyway and decide to invade with his weakened army. Of course, said weakened army gets completely destroyed, but it still doesn't matter, since he always was strong enough to do everything alone anyway ! And when he looses, it's not because the hero was stronger than him, but because, deep down, he didn't really want to win... which kind of explain how his plans aren't that bright and always fails, despite him being treated as some kind of genius... Anyway... The moment Aizen was all : "Meh, I don't need yall loosers, Imma go curbstomb those weaklings by myself" I knew Bleach was lost to me...
The poems at the beginning of every volume, the bankais connected to the journies of the characters, themes being explored through poetic writing and on top of that being cool while doing so is what makes Bleach stand out from other shounen.
No matter what anyone says the inner world moments with zangetsu, and Bankai, are some of the most wonder things to come out of bleach, and anime quality otherwise aside from the continuation the fucking music.
my problem with bleach? count how many times someone has said "if i use blank ability ill lose all my powers", proceeds to use that ability, then loses their powers just to get them back later but stronger.
![Tee Grizzley - Detroit (Feat. 42 Dugg) [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/aeKfTtt0x14/mqdefault.jpg)
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I'm learning Hatian Creole right now using duolingo, and when I'm done with that I'll hop on Rosetta stone. Preciate ya. A Christmas gift to myself.
stfu you boku no pico lover
Card captors english intro is almost great as pokemons, shaman kings, yuyus, beyblade. And dbz.. I've thought about this ALOT IF YEARS
You promise eureka right
Any chance you'll check out The Breaker? The art-style can be incredible and the action is artistically mesmerizing.
One thing I have always given Kubo is that he has an amazing talent for immediately presenting a case, so to speak, for a character when you meet them. Straight away you can get a vibe for the cast, from the biggest players to the most minor, and have an idea if you'll like them or not. It's like seeing a buffet spread in a new fighting game; the idle stances alone can sell you on someone, and Kubo manages that same kind of conveyance almost effortlessly.
I’d never really thought about it like that but when I think back on the cast and the story I mostly agree. And I think no character demonstrates that better for me then Gin. I liked something about him from the beginning, maybe the mischievous shit starting trickster aspect of him, that he seemed to be acting with knowledge other people didn’t. However the feeling I had about him didn’t match the going along with Aizen traitor type vibe. So I kept looking for angle sure there was one, and it was there. He’s a character that doesn’t get a lot of dialogue and what’s going on in his head is largely opaque even when he does speak, but still Kubo managed to communicate a lot about him.
I like most of his characters and the way he expresses them. The one where I don’t think it works is Kaname Tosen, but then for me his betrayal was even more surprising then Aizen’s and I suppose it was meant to be that way. It still feels to me like his character got done dirty but then again he was made to be disliked. Oh and Ulquiorra…the Arranchar arc just would have been better without him, Grimjaw was a much better rival/antagonist for Ichigo, Ulquiorra was just bland.
As a guy who hates what bleach has become over time, I will always lead with how sick kubos character designs are.
Absolutely. The way characters are dressed and the way they’re posed has greatly contributed to which characters I feel attached to. There’s an instant connection the moment a character is introduced and it’s because everything about them oozes personality.
Did you read the bleach novels, cause tbh kaname backstory is peak
Kubo is absolutely among the best character desingers there is. While i think Bleach had too many new characters constantly cmoning out, especially at the final arc, almost everyone of them had great designs. I believe there were only 1 or 2 characters that felt like same character
Ichigo is a magical girl in an isekai story. I have never been more delightfully horrified to contemplate such a self-evident fact.
@loveless131 Me: "And he's voiced by, a former Power Ranger."
I think if bleach leaned more into the magical girl tropes instead of the shonen ones it’d have more staying power.
Does that make Kisuke Kyuubei?
@@jesterjaded73 Rukia actually. She used her magic sword to give him powers and a new outfit.
One of the old school isekai, where hopping back and forth between worlds was the thing, rather than transmigrating
I literally started watching this video, then stopped it halfway and read the entire manga and now three days later have come back to say that yes, I loved the worldbuilding of this show!!
…you read the entirety of Bleach in three days? How?😅
It took me a month or so, and that was using the Shonen Jump app (which has 100 chapter a day limits).
I read it in 3 days too. The manga focused on the main arcs, and if you read at a extremely fast paced, the whole manga goes by way too fast.
For me, it was the characters that caught my attention far more than the worldbuilding. I really got the sense that, whenever the author of the manga created a new character, he sat down and thought of everything about them, including things he intended to save for later.
@@pattongilbert i read tybw arc again in about 6 hours so it's not out of the question at all.
@@pattongilbert I mean I read all of Chainsawman in about 2 hours, you could easily read it in 3 to 4 days if you have enough free time
Ichigo vs. Ulquiorra is still one of my favorite shounen fights to this day. Imagine fighting a Souls boss that has a phase 2 once their hp bar goes to 0 but if you take ages to actually get some decent damage in they just go "fuck it, I'll do it right now."
But then the boss activates a 3rd phase just to dunk on you even more
Hello Malenia?
Fume Knight Ulquiorra.
Yusuke >>>>>>>> Ichigo. Ichigo is bargonbin Yusuke Urameshi
@@lovelimbs4lifeU say that yet Yusuke gets dunked on. From a writing point? Yusuke’s still fairly 2d from a writing style. That’s why most MCs that are that way are praised, because the audiences aren’t willing to research. Half-demon? Did that. Character development? Ichigo’s 4x both of those, literally.
Don’t get it twisted, Yu Yu Hakusho’s definitely deserving of a GOAT status, but BLEACH has insanely more cultural and metaphysical depth compared to YYH when u compare the themes between both Aizen and Yhwach to Sensui.
Rukia's poor drawing ability always was hilarious, must have been a fun addition for the artists!
I think people would actually appreciate a deep dive in Bleach's power systems and lore
I certainly would. I'm no good at subtext and stuff. I'd love to see if there's stuff that's gone totally over my head all these years.
I would to have stuff I don't understand or don't know cleared up. Its been a LONG time since I've read Bleach.
I just came across one of those people that want a realistic, scientific, up, left, down, right, front, back and center indetail explanation down to the molecular level of how EVERY SINGLE LITTLE THING WORKS.
I always felt like watching Bleach was like watching an RPG without being able to see a HP/MP bar.
@@alexcoffey8804lol I thought somewhat the same
So the "problem" with Bleach... the world building, which was my main gripe... is not that it's shallow but actually the author was happy to go over our heads with it? I'm salty about that, but also really impressed.
The problem is the bloated cast. It's about death gods, they should have been killing off more characters to keep the story focused. Like why didn't the Vizard go to Hueco Mundo with Rukia/Renji to rescue Ichigo? could have killed some off so they didn't turn into background images for the rest of the story.
just watch a recap of bleach and watch the new seasons of bleach since those are 100% worth the watch. its like dragonballz came back but with swords and much better animation
@@paprikagames That's actually why I stopped reading/watching after Ichigo beat Aizen. I liked Dragonball and the adventure shonen. Hated Dragonball Z and how long the fights drag on.
Bleach lost interest when the characters got too strong.
@@kyleellis1825 well its a lot different in that regard bcus the plot for fights are better and the talking has been reduced the fights are now 1 ep long for now atleast
@@kyleellis1825 Bleach's problems are multi-layered, but at its core, it's not *just* the cast bloat, but how the whole story got structured around it.
Kubo himself admitted that the part he loved the most was designing new characters and powers for them. However, he barely ever killed off any characters (which isn't necessarily a bad thing) or let them completely fade into the background (which is). Now, we had a bunch of characters who needed their powers showcased, so he needed to design more enemy characters for them to fight, but now those characters had to demonstrate their abilities, so it led to long fights, and then if those characters returned in later arcs, they had to have their power-ups, which required more new characters they could fight to show off those powerups, rinse and repeat ad nauseum.
This exponential bloat eventually consumed the series, and buried all the nuanced main characters and the twists of the core plot under a mountain of mostly meaningless duels between mostly meaningless characters with increasingly specific and nonsensical powers, culminating in the final arc, where we had literary gems like "You can't kill me, I'm literally a God!" -> "Oh, what a coincidence! I have a super-special-awesome sword that is useless against everything but can one-shot gods!" and, "This overpowered guy just tanked three consecutive super-moves from some of the strongest characters in the setting! Raw power doesn't work on him, so what kind of ingenious way are they going to use to take him down?" -> "Oh, wait. The main villain absorbed him and left the scene. There was no clever ploy or using already established powers in interesting ways; he just died because the plot had to move forward."
As much as I love Bleach, it was one of the most terribly flawed series I'd ever seen, and that's *before* we take all the mind-numbing filler arcs into consideration.
My favorite mathematic aspect of Bleach lore is the SOUL BALANCE:
human + shinigami + quincy + hollow = balance
human + shinigami = no problem
shinigami + quincy = opposite side of the spectrum
quincy + hollow = soul suicide
hollow + human = predator and prey
human + quincy = no problem
shinigami + hollow = executioner and to be executed / if mixed will cause soul suicide
shinigami + hollow = quincy + human
And that's how the Ichigo is still alive and kicking, his multi-breed is not only to make him op but to also make his whole being acceptable. If he's only a shinigami and hollow, then he's a mindless monster waiting for his soul to collapse, and so we needed that quincy blood plus human blood to balance out the collapse of his soul.
You cooked 🙏🏼
That's so true
I love the concept of hybrids in Bleach
Contrived is what people call it
Fullbringers? Substitute shinigamis?
The story kicks off in a “by chance fashion” only to find out he's the prodigal son
@@CIII__ he was set up as special literally the first chapter. Those people don't have the ability to read
@@JuanFlores-gs7uu him dying at the beginning AND Rukia breaking the rules is the definition of a by chance encounter
If he really was this special his father or urahara or a full bringer or another substitute shinigami would've encountered him in SOME way
We're led to believe him seeing dead people is a one a kind thing and he has no idea why
Man you fanboys will be eat up any contrived plot development like it's gospel.
Blech is decent up until aizen and would’ve been much more satisfying ending if he developed his relationship orihime more and came to grips with being back to reality
The first arc is peak bleach and all kinda downhill from there
Edit: 9/3/23: Waste of my time talking to you clowns. Bleach must’ve fallen off for no reason and it’s a really good show with 0 plot holes, great pacing, and a satisfying ending… 🤡
I was about to question how years could pass between you watching Ichigo vs Ulquiorra and your friend telling you about the round 2 of that, then it occurred to me just how many filler arcs there actually were
I'm a person who usually actually likes filler arcs in anime and I think the Bleach anime has too much of it. lmao
Me and my friend have been watching it together... for years.. Its hard for us to commit to more than a few episodes at a time when the filler is so exhausting.
Out of all the filler the only 2 I actually remember are the Bound/Vampire arc and the "Sword Wars"/Muramasa. Probably cause they were actually good. And actually do something for the story.
I had to look up a skip list to watch bleach lol for me it’s less about the amount of filler. The placement of the filler was what pained me😭
@@jach6393 more than half of the community would disagree with you, the bount arc is considered as one of the worst filler arcs ever made
When you mentioned the mesoamerican influences in hollow's characterization, I really thought you would talk about how Aizen's whole deal with Hueco Mundo it's really just an animefication of Hernan Cortés and "The New World". I'm Mexican, so it was pretty obvious to me. Powerful guy from an imperialistic civilization sets foot in an "other worldly land"and suddenly decides he's the ruler. He builds his palace in the middle of the desert, finds the strongest native habitants of the place and through different schemes makes them his soldiers. Gives them new clothes, new habits, new hierarchies, all under his mand. "Educated man conquers the dessert and tames the savages that live in his new land", where have I heard that before? I think that is one of the reasons I found the Arrancar arc so fascinating. Aizen gave them "evolution", but took everything else. Hollows where no longer free, they became a sociopath's personal guerrilla. For me, it's too perfect for it to be just a coincidence. Arrancar is a Spanish word after all, and their powers are in Spanish too. All that "power" thanks to who? Exactly, Aizen. Not every Arrancar seems to be hispanic-coded or latino-coded, for example Grimmjow is very clearly a German name, but curiously enough, his powers (the representation of his very being) are not in a language that relates to HIS origin, they ended up having a Spanish Name: Pantera, because who gave that power to him? Aizen, again. Everything that Aizen conquers get homogenized under his very Spanish-coded empire. Even the music that represents them, Spanish flamenco. Notice how that's the only music we relate to Hueco Mundo? Because that's the music AFTER Aizen, after we actually engage with Hollows in a deeper level. What was Hueco Mundo's music before that? Maybe mesoamerican inspired music? We'll probably never know.
EDIT: I now know that Grimmjow is not German, It's English and Swiss, but still, the point holds itself.
Just to add, if Kubo did all of that BY ACCIDENT, holy fuck, my dude got the jack pot of subtext without moving a finger
I'm inclined to believe that it's on purpose, at least most of what you said is. All factions in Bleach as well as Burn the Witch is based on a certain culture of people, kinda like the way Pokemon bases its regions on a particular real-life culture each game.
Phenomenal perspective! I didn't pick up on this so thank you for sharing!!
Beautiful and informative insight, I really enjoyed reading this.
Why the hell had I never plugged the word arrancar into google translate? The mesoamerican influence and the use of spanish names in Hueco Mundo is so obvious, but I'd just never done it.
I've never watched Bleach, but I would 1000% love to watch a lore video about the magic system, whether it was 20 minutes or 3 hours long. I love that kind of stuff.
Believe me, bleach is excellent. I grow up on naruto. Bleach is really really good. I regret not looking at it all those years. Dont listen to negative people.
Im sorry but Bleach is one of three best anime of all time, between Naruto and One Piece. And thats only because Kubo stopped the anime several years ago. It is one of the best stories ever told.ALSO FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. ..... SUB! DO SUB! dont do DUB! ...you will otherwise miss the fanastic voice acting but also much much more.
@@paradiseonheavencan’t read the captions from the couch so no
get glasses my boy.@@PorkmanFridge
@@kelvinallen9327You devalued your own Opinion lmao. "I grew up on Naruto." Trash taste all around.
THANK YOU for actually taking the time to read and understand BLEACH. This was a breath of fresh air!
Kubo is so much more than just a good artist, his talent outshines the anime adaptation which I believe ruined most people's experience with Bleach. The filler arcs, the wrong characterisation of key characters. Kubo himself said that the anime frustrated him with how different it was to the source material. So safe to say read the manga with proper translations and you may just really enjoy BLEACH.
Watch DBZimran's channel if you want deeper insights into the characters and the world building of Bleach. He does really great videos.
I've done both and neither are really THAT good. Just another decent shounen that should've ended wayyy earlier than it did
@@oxfordbambooshootify no thanks. It ended at the right point
I understood but still had issues
@@conordowd1861 the whole tybw arc is just embarrassing. Yuha is so powerful he could alter the future but chose one where he loses to ichigo? The quincy having the ultimate lore breaking ability of stealing bankai yet lost the war? The shingami brought knives to a gunfight and the quincy lost. What a joke of a story
"...anyone who's a fan of Tatsuki can attest to that"
Hahahaha, I am in great pain
Also, Karin. Karin actually pains me more than Tatsuki because with her heritage, she should be capable of way more than she shows ever, and it's odd that Ywach basically ignored her and Yuzu.
@@MrGksarathy they lost their quincy powers to the aushwählen so they only have shinigami fullbring
@@Hugm4lsecondaccount We have no proof of this because every other victim of the Aüschwälen that night either died or were brought to near death. I suppose Masaki might have lived had she not been facing Grand Fisher at that very moment, but still, we have no proof Karin or Yuzu were selected for the Aüschwälen.
@@MrGksarathy yes we do it was stated that EVERY impure quincy was targeted for the Aushwählen when Yhwach whole up except for Ichigo of course that Yhwach didnt target because he wanted to fight him in the future and the Aushwählen does not kill someone it just takes away their powers.
@@Hugm4lsecondaccount To be fair, what the Auschwallen does is very inconsistent, since it kills some people, but for others like some of the Sternritter, it just stole away their Vollstandig. That being said, it isn't even suggested that Karin or Yuzu were ever targeted. If so, we would have gotten some hint, either during Everything But the Rain, or even much earlier.
Basically, we have no real proof either way, since this part of the story is still very mysterious.
I'm only 9 minutes in right now but I just need to say, getting into Bleach with streaming technology and the ability to skirt around the filler made the series infinitely enjoyable to watch the first time
Edit: lol really thought nobody would ever see this comment
This is facs it’s why it’s my favorite prolly lol
The filler is not that bad
@@valleyking15 the filler can be enjoyable when viewed as entirely seperate from the manga canon. The main story from Kubo just makes more sense when it isn't interuppted by entire seasons of filler that Kubo didn't write.
I would suggest to someone who wants to watch bleach for the first time to look up the filler list and only watch the canon (and maybe Hellverse) and go back for the filler after.
I watched a lot of the filler my first time through but after watching 200 episodes in a row I felt like the filler only hurt the Kubo plot, and I skipped them thereafter
Speaking as someone who watched the show for the first time less than a month ago, I agree: being able to watch multiple episodes at once and skip the filler definitely made the show a lot better to watch than it would've been otherwise.
It's one reason I was really frustrated with the anime's version of the arrancar arc repeatedly trying to insert stuff from the filler Bount arc. Thankfully, that stuff disappears from the anime once everyone goes to Hueco Mundo, but it was still annoying.
@@matthewmuir8884 yeah having the filler added in is one thing, but the first filler arc you add 3 new permanent mod soul characters and Ichigo has bount PTSD? Why???
Geoff as a fellow Canadian, thank you for bringing me back to a simpler time when I didn't know what sub vs dubs meant and "guy has a giant sword to slice up monsters" was a brand new concept to me
It was genuinely the craziest concept I had ever heard of when I was 8. Better days, truly.
I'm also Canadian. I remember being a kid in the mid-2000s mainly watching animated shows through Teletoon (so most of the cartoons I watched were Canadian) and, beyond not knowing about sub vs dub, I didn't even know the difference between anime and cartoon (I was a kid and no one told me the difference). As a result, the only anime I saw as a kid was a partly-Canadian anime called _Spider Riders._ So, in my case, it wasn't "guy has giant sword to fight monsters", it was, "guy has a spear and a giant armoured spider to fight humanoid insects." I never heard of Bleach until years later.
@@rorank I've been watching anime since I could remember so the name was the only thing that was new for me lol
@@matthewmuir8884 Back when American cartoons were equally consistent with good content like Japan
*smiles contently*
he gets it.
he's gone on the bleach fan journey of loving bleach, hating it, and then realizing that there's actually a LOT to love about bleach after all.
now time to become a sonic fan!
Im’a be honest I wish he’d laid some criticism of it too cause of course it has some real issues but overall an amazing series. (Like how some battles were handled, wasted potential of certain characters, relegation of others to the side, some inconsistencies)
Seems like he’s riding the recency bias train but at least he debunked the “no good world building” to more like “show don’t tell world building”
@@StripedJacket mhm this just felt like the postive and positive kind of video , which will ofc make people happy but hmm yea could have done better , anyways atleast for the positive part it was a fairly well researched video which may ger new people into bleach , so hm yea alright
@@adityajha689 true, it was good overall just afraid it might set some high expectations for people getting into it just for them to be confused😂
@@StripedJacket yea well do you feel like unohanas ending was bad
I've seen some comments on it and i have different opinions
Let's go from basic unohana is a main side character of bleach, role of side characters is either to develop plot or the main character/main side characters
Unohana did that and died, and even the poetic and thematic aspect of the whole narrative of unohana kenpachi and even the title kenpachi was handled quite well , could it have been some better? Maybe
But was it bad? No
What do you think
@@adityajha689 I personally liked it. I think her being a side character who had a purpose in the plot and not just relegated to “healer lady” was good. Could it have been more fleshed out? Of course
She wasn’t a main character though but I wish her ability was more explained in the manga. Not like exposition but even in the art to show us what her bankai was truly doing. (I think the anime at least does it well?)
Ok but as someone who goes full “no thoughts, head empty” when I’m really enjoying reading something, I would be 100% here for that 40-minute spoon-feeding session
TRASH
You took the words right out of my head.
I mean there are people who analyse it on youtube, I personally like DBZimran
That’s kinda my problem with bleach fights. The point of bleach is two fold, one of which is reading the fights. But if there’s enough people who can’t understand it (which they need to do if it’s the god damn point if it), then a problem is there. I’ve read the whole thing and loved almost all of it (full bring had great moments but was just eh) and I still don’t get most of the combat.
This video singlehandedly convinced me to give Bleach another shot after all these years. It also instilled me with a need for a Mother's Basement video about magical girls. I'm gonna go see if that's a thing now.
The last arc currently being animated right now is fire
Can't believe there's an anime fan not watching tybw currently lol
@@proudfatherofadeadweightso5715 Seriously haven't even thought about watching it the new bleach season or whatever it is until I watched this video. but think I'll read the manga first.
Yu Yu Hakusho is the backbone of Bleach. Bleach just copied Yu Yu Hakusho.
@@lovelimbs4life fr and bleach is trash
Kubo’s art style are on of the very few styles in Shonen manga that I could also follow without a single panel confusing me due to weird conveyances of illustrated fight scenes and abilities.
There were several panels in several fights in the Naruto manga where I had to wait for the anime just to see what was going on during those particular fights.
Never had this problem not once with Bleach.
Naruto is hardly confusing with its paneling. I think people default to the anine because seeing flashing colors and extended fight scenes hold attention more.
@@D-Havoc no, he's right. Sasuke's Lion's Barrage makes no sense in the manga.
@vileluca How does it "make no sense"? And please don't use the "how are they in ge air that long" shit either, the speed of those attacks aren'tbeing accounted for when people try and play critic to the sequence of attacks.
Thank you, the only thing that was sometimes hard to tell was who parried who and that's useally perfectly clear in the anime
I'm still convinced that Kubo Tite should have become a fashion designer. If he had used the Bleach cast as character models for his designs and created an entire brand around them, I am absolutely certain he could have become a mogul for street and youth fashion to rival expensive couture brands like Louis Vuitton or Gucci. Honestly he probably still could, if he wanted something new to do once he's done with Burn the Witch.
Burn the witch is already more or less finished for the moment since his next project is to relaunch Bleach with the Hell arc.
@@Gonzora I mean yes but no, this is a side project with a set deadline to simply animate the ending of a series that wrapped up years ago, it's not like he's doing a spin-off or something new. Burn the Witch is current and ongoing, they already announced that the next one is coming out.
I believe that is what he originally wanted to do in life hes
Bleach has the best drip no doubt
With brands like hook ups and the prevalence of anime culture in the street fashion culture itself, I have no doubt a brand like supreme would be more than happy to collaborate with him and give whatever brand he decided to create an immediate boost and an insatiable market of consumers. He could do amazingly if he decided to go down that route.
I read “Problem with Bleach” and ready to blindly reject out of pure nostalgia. I’m ready Mother’s Basement
Santenkesshun, I REJECT
lmao exactly same
Fuckin same.
Same he is gonna say that it’s false advertising as it was supposed to be about drinking bleach
I love Bleach but I can name a lot of them. Most of it comes down to Jump being greedy and the different model shounen anime used to stay on TV year round.
bleach is one of my big passions, and frankly its a huge, satisfying relief to finally see a youtuber who really seems to grasp the many reasons WHY its so good. It remains the biggest reason why I'll finish learning japanese someday, there's just so much to pick apart from the characters and the world that I probably will be doing it for the rest of my life. Comparing it to bloodborne is such a massive compliment, and you just sold me on finally giving Brando Sando's writing a shot
if you never do a Vaati-style deep dive into Bleach I understand, but GODS i would fucking love to see it
Have you watched dedicated Bleachtubers? They're out there and will absolutely deliver your fix for in-depth Bleach content if you want it.
If you're so passionate about it you should know that it's a copy of Yu Yu Hakusho =/
@@MrGksarathyWho would be good to listen to? I just don’t find myself interested in watching or reading it so I’m just hearing about all the stuff I can’t pick up or don’t appeal to me
@@magmaspacer1967 My number one recommendation would probably be MrTommo2304. He does scripted Bleach video essays on camera, and he knows and presents the source material well and has more chill vibes.
A couple of others are decent. For Bleach news, check out Simo Urahara and Jaymes Hanson, and DBZImran does make well-produced Bleach vids, but I feel his content goes too far into speculative territory and his comments on Giselle have sort of rubbed me the wrong way.
It is important to note, but all of them except Simo Urahara are Britbongers. Take that as you will.
@@magmaspacer1967
mrtommo2304, tekking101 and dbzimran are a few good ones. There are lots of other smaller ones too, but those do the best job without overloading you. I remember one guy who made a 7 hour video about Ichigo... Too much for me, even if i love Bleach.
Andto the "copy" guy, EVERY Manga is inspired by something that came before. With almost no exception. Just like a lot of current Manga where inspired by Bleach, like JJK. The author even stated Bleach as his biggest inspiration and you can see it pretty good if you know about it. But it's still it's own thing. Just like Bleach itself. If it were a copy, Geoff would have mentioned it and this video wouldn't exist. Did you even watch the video?
I think bleach would have benefited a lot from being sold as a seinen, not a shounen. I think people, me included, expect a certain level of simplicity and spoon-feeding from a shounen series, and having to do homework to understand the intricacies, or even figuring out that's a thing you'd need to do might be beyond the casual observer.
Idk lol. It's still very much a shounen battle series, sure it's more subtle than your average but still. Either way it's in the top 15 when it comes to manga sales so I think it did pretty well.
tbh I never really considered Bleach a particularly intricate series. It was always a pretty straightforward show, the narrative was simple to follow, character actions were always understandable and the power system was very fun but easy to comprehend. This isn't to knock it, I love Bleach, I just don't envisage it as being a complex piece of work, narratively or thematically.
100% agree with you that it would have benefitted as a seinen though, artistically speaking. Kubo was restrained visually sometimes when it came to depicting certain events, and even when it came to thematic exploration I felt the need to adhere to the shounen format meant he had to change things at times.
@@S.pilgrim no no no u got it wrong it is VERY complex 💀
Only if you would have made it more serious
Then it would have worked as a seinen
@@s_purp1739 it's actually pretty simple when you watch it carefully from the start. What are some complex things you can think of??
You can really feel Kubo's massive burnout during the Vizard/Arancar arcs. Even in the Manga, the way the Anime is just generally worse at everything combined with the slightly weaker story especially makes it hard. Just like you can really feel his return to form during Fullbring/TYBW. It's almost poetic the way that Pierrot is animating TYBW after taking a huge break, and they are absolutely on top of their form.
The only weak or “burnout” sections of the Arrancar Saga was when they got to Hueco Mundo up until just before Ulquiorra confronts Ichigo before his fight with Grimmjow and the beginning of FKT. Everything else besides that was up to par, if not the absolute true peak of the manga (besides EBTR & TBIM) arguably even the anime originally if you skipped all the filler. More people need to come to realize this.
@truthcrusader360 my main problem with the Arrancar arc (and this kinda extends to Bleach when we're not in Karakura Town) is how much of it is just fighting. Yeah, it's a shonen battle manga, but I wish less of it was spent on fights I didn't necessarily care about. This issue really hurts the Gotei (except Kenpachi, who has a character perfectly built for this fight-centric storytelling) because they get characterization in the context of fighting 95% of the time. While this works great for, say, Kenpachi, it doesn't work so well for other characters because I genuinely can't tell you what the Gotei outside of Mayuri's division does in their downtime other than training.
@@samt3412
In that case it’s best to re-read the manga and anything that you didn’t understand, specifically that saga being chapters 183 to 423.
All of the fighting, at least for the most part, has had meaning, nuance, depth and complexity. Even I find new things from time to time that I didn’t catch when I first read it.
@@samt3412 Novels & databooks tell you what many individual shinigamis like to do in their spare time/non work/duty related activities or interests. if you really would like to know well the material is out there & readily available is all I'm saying
The Arrancarc arc did not feel like the work of a man burning out, especially since the manga's pacing was actually really tight, every revelation built on every other revelation, and the character development for Ichigo, Orihime, and even Aizen was great.
EDIT: I forgot about Ulquiorra. Shame on me.
I will never not love bleach despite its many, many problems. It was the first Anime I ever watched. The atmosphere of the show was different than anything I'd ever seen. It blew my mind, and channeled such a distinct sense of style. It was also so good at expressing the character and angst of being a teenager, and I will always be so, so grateful for it.
I complained so much about all of bleaches problems over the years, but all the garbage out now makes me appreciate the good things about it all the more. I miss having anime at that level. (More so)
Bleach's // Tite Kubo's sheer design sense remains unparalleled to this day I swear
@@cuckfucius I agree entirely
bleach is perfect
what problem does it have? nothing
all style, no substance. having a large, developed, and diverse cast means nothing without a story to tell. a lot of anime/manga could have been art for the ages if they'd stuck to doing the design and let someone else worry about the story.
Becoming a fan of Bleach is a fun experience. I loved it, hated it, then became addicted as i knew grew older and understood more of how deep the lore is. Kubos style is a very show, dont tell where you really have to read between the lines to fully appreciate the story. He doesnt want to spoonfeed the audience instead he lets the audience engage into conversations and analyze his work. Its really sad that the anime caused the story to have a bad rep to the anicommunity due to its fillers and unfaithful direction. Its not the best but its really good. Also how the storytelling quality fluctuates as he slowly suffered to some health issues due to how brutal a weekly release is that he hated so much thats why he said hell continue the Hell Arc if no one pesters him to do so.
Even Sanderson said that Show Dont Tell is sometimes treated as a maxim and actually is a guide, you can tell some things bcs most people like to actually know what to do, is like playing a game, you know there are rules and things you cannot do, Chess is the perfect example, it has depth besides having not that much pieces if you consider how much characters some shonens have (MHA, Bleach, One piece, etc), sadly Bleach sometimes required too much head like Aot or too little like MHA where there is no nuance and all is on your face, sometimes having that character that explains, that give you foundations works best, Reiatsu is too complex unlike alchemy in FMA, also the format hurts some works, FMA is much shorter than Bleach, there is a say that you can fool everybody for a moment, or fool a group of people forever, there is no inbetween, longer series are subject to much analisis and scrutiny, for every Bleach rant there is like 5 or 10 of Naruto and DBZ, but i can see the influence in Bleach and in some departments is unmatched, in panelling and pure design is a masterclass, and you can say Chainsaw man took the philosphy of fears to worldbuilding, and JJK too. Hxh is a weird example bcs sometimes is like class, when i was a teenager i thought Bleach was insane for all the hype, but it was boring after bcs ichigo should have lost more fights or have even more training, and when i was 19 i finally gave a shot to hxh and was surprised but also sometimes is really tough to watch, too much talk and infodump, but it pays off, and thats the thing, sometimes you dont know what will happen in Bleach in the bad sense, not of surprise but like anticlimatic, sorry for the rant as a lifelong bleach fan
I’m so glad Bleach is finally getting it’s flowers. It was the punching bag of the community for years. Even I got swept up in the hate until I finally read it. It’s fantastic
Welcome aboard
Glad to have you
One Piece and every other manga and anime ever is here when this filler garbo torture exhausts you.
@@applejones1697 k
@@applejones1697eally the only filler problem Bleach has is the bounty arc
Edit: Plus Naruto is horrid with its filler
lol Yu Yu Hakusho >>>>>> Bleach
Bleach copied Yu Yu Hakusho. Or tried
19:32: "Kubo can actually write women" is the kind of low-bar compliment that feels like it must be aimed at a specific one of Kubo's peers, but there are a lot of mangaka who are egregiously bad at it in Shonen Jump publications alone. So...good work on standing out from the pack, Tite Kubo.
It’s not even that he can write women, it’s just that he can great interactions as a whole.
Not to kick Naruto but character interactions often feel quite basic and one note when put next to bleach for almost every character. It just feels like he wrote 3 traits at most for most of them, put no consideration into how they interact with each other and other people and have them bluntly show their traits, then the women are just constantly ovulating at the sight of sasuke or occasionally someone else.
Kubo tend to actually put thought into the personality of these characters which actually makes them feel like people, female or otherwise.
Until he sidelines them and refuses to give them development. It's why I dropped the show
Some of his characters are inspired by his real life friends including the girls like Rukia and Rangiku I think, so I'd imagine he had a level of respect to his characters when writing them
@@melteddali8000 we don’t care.
@@melteddali8000
Give some examples.
My son grew up watching Bleach, and as an involved dad that is also a huge anime fan going back to the days of speed racer and battle of the planets, I was right there with him. What you described about the anime when you first started watching it was 100% my son. In fact, I would hazard a guess that you two are around the same age and seemingly have similar tastes in anime. That said. Him and I saw the story telling in bleach from completely different ends of the spectrum. For me, I saw right from the outset, what you described having realized only after reading the manga, many years later. I too read the manga, but I read it as it was unfolding after a catch up binge about halfway though the first arc. To this day, he calls me from half way around the world to discuss the latest episode in TYBW and has by his own admission said that I have a much deeper understanding of the source material than he ever did and he's just now starting to see what I have always seem. The point I'm making here is that I think Bleach was sold to the wrong audience. much of it flies right over the heads of its target, much as how you described Ghost in the Shell. That was a superb series, but was a bit more cerebral than many were willing to deal with. We here in the west often forget the fact the anime and manga is an accepted form of entertainment to a very broad audience, including adults. So many times we jump into these stories not fully understanding who they were actually written for and the depth that exist beyond just getting ready for the next action sequence to happen.
You got a good point there. I was only able to truly understand the Bleach world upon rereading the manga in 2021, at age 23, as opposed to when I read it in 2016, at age 18. By that point, I had grown up a fair bit and was a more savvy anime and manga consumer.
@@MrGksarathy Anime only diets make for poor digestion of the source material. this has always been the case. Its also no secret that as we get older and more world wise, we tend to pick up on the nuances that we often miss in our youth. Anime can be a much more high tone medium for story telling that it is often given credit for here in the west were its often viewed as "cartoons for kids". This is a great time for Anime and manga fans alike with the availability of of properties and most of it being unmolested by US distributors that repackaged into something unrecognizable for these markets. I remember watching Battle of the Planets and G-force as a kid, and then stumbling across the original Japanese source material Gatchaman a few years after the run ended here in the states. It was like it was like finding out your parents had lied to you about why your dog disappeared and never came back home. Back then any anime/manga properties were near impossible to get access to, so it was a treat to get anything at all since the stories and quality of the are were so far beyond anything the US studios were putting out. now a days, the biggest complaints I see are localizers butchering dialog. Meanwhile you have multiple streaming platforms to watch just about anything as as often as you care to. If I personally had a single complaint about anime/manga today vs back when I was younger, I think that is that in many ways the art quality has gone backwards. I thinks much of the older stuff ( especially form the 80s/90s ) had a tendency to be much more detail oriented as to how it was drawn as about to the new "cute" art style that has saturated everything. but that just my opinion.
@@Treacherous_One I'm honestly not a fan older cell-shaded art for anime, nor am I a huge fan of some of the character designs, but that's probably because I got into anime in the mid-2010s.
@@MrGksarathy don't get me wrong, a good bit of the newer stuff looks fantastic. but there are certain levels of detail that just don't get fleshed out anymore and make much of the artwork seem flat.
@@Treacherous_One I'd say that's half-true.
The manga had the slickest, most clearly readable art ever. I remember being in awe at every page turn, it was mostly what kept me engaged after the Soul Society Arc (I can't remember when I stopped but it was somewhere after the Hueco Mundo arc was finished and they introduced a bunch of new characters and systems). FMA was my jam at the time but Arakawa's fights were pretty underwhelming so Bleach managed to scratch a very particular itch for me.
Glad to see it being re-evaluated and even tho I probably won't watch/read it again, you made me nostalgic of picking it up every month and getting lost in those drawings.
Kenpachi is a great example of a character mis-explaining reiatsu because the way he understands it is purely in the context of fighting but he ends up over-generalizing its use and properties as a result. In Kenpachi's eyes, it's a power level, plain and simple. But it's made clear that someone with weaker Reiatsu can beat someone with stronger if its' formed and shaped properly, or used in particular moments of vulnerability.
From what I understand Kubo had... problems with the company. A combination of backstage drama and building stress led to Bleach suffering for it. I also get the feeling that the editorial staff had not yet made the necessary reforms towards themselves, namely when it's the time to stay out of the way and let the authors do something a little differently.
From what I recall their was a porn actor who got surgery to sort of look like Kubo and the staff at the company smeerd him with it, he even took the issue up with the porn company personally.
@@gidi3250 yeah... thats a japanese thing. if someone looks like you and are doing something inappropriate it can get out of hand very quickly over there.
japanese social culture is the prudish asshole kind.
@@gidi3250 bruh
When this man said, "Anyone who is a fan of Tasuki can attest to that," - I legitimately almost cried 😭
seems unhealthy
that one sentence mademe stop and watch the whole thing
whos satsuki 😂
We are the small comment section that comprises all of the Tasuki fandom
I definitely love me some Tatsuki
I read bleach chapter to chapter. That's been a ride! But! At some point, Ichigo was off screen for _several years_ imagine that!
I loved the hype that built up from reveal to reveal and chapter to chapter. But it could be really frustrating to "wait" for the main character to show up again when he's gone for over 80 chapters/weeks
Hahaha yea😅
"nobody in bleach says anything for the sake of the audience"..except when they explain their abilities to their enemies
That's for the enemy.
@@architchaudhary1285 No it's for the audience it's being said to the enemies that the only reasons it's actually being said is for us the audience
just imagine if the bleach characters just activated their powers and did not explain anything verbally
@@yami122 No I meant the in-universe reason. What the video was getting was that it doesn't suspend your disbelief with explanations like say Naruto does when it places a third character in nearly every fight to explain abilities with the character mostly talking to himself
@@architchaudhary1285 Ohh yeah you're right The one I always think of is the itachi versus sasuke fight with Zetzu
@@yami122 that's the one i had in mind too. Danzo vs Sasuke is another
I have never had someone put together my own feelings about this show and its impact on my childhood so accurately. Its like the hardest punch of nostalgia I've ever received from a video essay. Nobody is doing what you do on the scale that you do it. Never stop.
Some try to do video essays only to contradict themselves and share out flawed and hypocritical logic without even realizing they are actively contradicting themselves in the very same video. There is a lot of cringe out there. Some just need not try, but this guy has been consistent in his quality for years and years and regardless of what people think, I 100% agree with his take on Goblin Slayer.
Not true, DBZimran makes even more
@@willsdavediogenes "Doing what you do, on the scale that you do it" means high quality AND quantity. Dbzimran is nowhere near this guys writing. Like.. at all. Thats just my opinion though 🤷
@@eattoast6378 sure, this guy is good, but did you seen DBZimran movies 1h+? Or character and plot analysis? They are just amazing.
@@eattoast6378 also i waited 10 years for anime, never look on manga TYBW, he is making differences videos, very helpfull for me too to get maximum content.
I may not share all of this opinions, but "Ichigo is a magical girl" is one of the truest truths to ever truth.
my favorite detail in the manga that i completely missed until it was pointed out by TotallyNotMark is that most of the main characters has a song assigned to them, with the general theme and the tone of it completely changing the way that you interpret those characters, with even Byakuya being less of an ass and more a lonely ass from the beginning
Not a main character,but that's what Aizen theme is,pretty much
How would you notice this in a manga?
@@marthvader14 there are bio pages at the end of the volumes, dedicated to each character, and it has a ton of useless info and their theme song
Hmmmm still skeptical here. I only ever read the Manga, and I distinctly remember the sense of disappointment as I read different moments where it felt like the author just wasn't sure where to go next and had to change the system to keep things rolling. It's been a while, but I remember Ishida sacrificing his powers to win a battle in what was an incredibly dramatic moment, only for us to learn a short time later that he could in fact get them right back with a weird training session. I can give the series another try, but I remember the sense of it turning into a slog.
You can't keep threatening to talk about deep Bleach lore and metaphysics and then not actually talk about it. You gotta make that video, man.
Also as a fellow Brando Sando fan who didn't know you read those, I'm glad you're enjoying them, and am glad you appreciate how anime the whole thing is.
the implication of Ichigo is a magical girl with talking maskot after talking about cardcaptor sakura is somehow struck like me a lightning, i never think of that before, and i never felt anything like this until this very moment and dont know what it is
Tatsuki was my favorite human in the series. Princess and Dragon was my favorite series of chapters. The little pics on the otherwise blank page with Princess Orihime hiding behind Dragon Tatsuki was perfect for what was happening, but when the roles switched and wounded Dragon Tatsuki was being shielded by Princess Orihime, it got to me. Tatsuki's drive to protect Orihime at all costs, even her own life, was awesome, and when that tentacle monster took over Tatsuki, I worried for her. But when Orihime's power awoke and she declared she would protect Tatsuki, I cheered. Seriously people, if you haven't, read the damn manga. It's great. I was a little meh on the Thousand Year Blood War arc, but at the time I was reading an unofficial translation (I've bought all the manga as they came out), so the wait between each chapter coupled with some of the Sternritter fights taking multiple chapters, I think it was mostly due to the time sink.
Even the 3 flavors of high speed movement have distinct characteristics. Hirenkyaku was stated by Uryu to be the fastest and it also seems to allow the user to surf on reishi. Sonido apparently causes the users reiatsu to vanish when used. Ichigo displayed this against Ulqiorra, and when he first arrived to save Soul Society from the 1st Quincy invasion. Shunpo seems to be a completely physical techinique like Sonido but requires training and mostly only lets you move fast with its extra utility coming from a variety of trained sub-techniques.
One thing that really impressed me was in early Bleach how Senbonzakura Kageyoshi looked like a prison, which represented the rules and traditions of the Kuchiki family, holding them back, in the form of a weapon, and how the cherry blossoms were mature, intelligent wisdom only gained through hard work and experience.
As someone who wrote a term paper about how the Fon family's position might line up with ways in which Chinese immigrant families were treated in the shogunate and how Omaeda carries with him a lot of the traits negatively associated with those immigrants. And as someone who has been talking at length about the Buddhist philosophy of Bleach and how it's this wonderful dialogue between the many different approaches towards Enlightenment. Thank you for making this. Bleach is a lot smarter than many give it credit and there is a lot of analysis one can do of the work.
Ichigo in particular I am really happy you pointed out. I'm so used to him being torn down as bad because he's not an active protagonist but like. Given his life and his actual motivations why would he be? And like I dunno. As a mixed kid who learned later in her life that her family, part of it, were the survivors of a genocide...Ichigo's ultimate powerup being a full embracing of his heritage is just really fucking cool. The coolest even. Yeah I guess he gets to be the most specialest boy ever because he was born a particular way but like...It's scary and hard being mixed and eventually you reach a point where you realize that your strengths come from your mixed nature. And Ichigo's entire journey I feel carries that.
While I agree that Ichigo is not the worst, I cant come to agree hes that deep. Did Kubo *really* plan for Ichigos mom to be a Quincy this whole time? As an anime only, cant say I believe it. Not to mention every powerup, while earned in some way, is also executed very similary (dire situation calls for drastic measures to obtain next tier powerup similar to the villain that needs to be defeated)
@@Kronman590 Yes he absolutely did. Ichigo basically used Blüt Vene during his fight with Kenpachi, his bedsheets have a Quincy cross pattern, he took way more of Rukia's reiryoku than either of them intended, likely due to the Quincies' innate ability to absorb and subordinate reishi, and he also could easily visualize reiatsu as ribbons of energy, something very Quincy-like. Furthermore, Old Man Zangetsu literally took Ichigo into the shadows to help him escape Kenpachi, something only trueborn Quincy could do.
@Gautam Sarathy
A bunch of these were kind of explained bc he has god tier reishi affinity. I guess zangetsu shadow is a little iffy but its not like they established Uryu could do that. And cross on the bed is a little....bit of a stretch lol
@@Kronman590 Uryuu never had a reason to escape into the shadows, and admittedly, that's more of a Wandenreich thing.
Also, he did use Blüt Vene, or at least a proto-Blüt Vene, to survive Kenpachi's strikes.
@Gautam Sarathy I mean a similar argument could be made for a lot of characters who tank hits on their skin.
I feel like good foreshadowing is Unohana, who always had an aura of mystery and fear connected to her, which pays off. The Quincy heritage feels out of nowhere to me because these bits of foreshadowing are kind of explained in other means at the time.
One of my favorite things about Bleach is how the characters interact with each other even when they're NOT talking to each other. The stupid looks they give each other one one of em says something stupid, the laughs or giggles, that moment when Orihime opened the window in Ichigo's room so he wouldn't break it when kicking the traitor Arrancar out right before the Blood War started. It's something you barely see in Naruto or even Dragon Ball.
I've never thought of Bleach as The Worst anything, but I read the manga after giving up on the anime after only a few episodes, and...
I mean, it's good? The art's great, the fights are hype, the characters are distinct and fun almost across the board, but it does still suffer from that sense of repetitious structure, fights dragging on longer the farther you get into it (though not EVERY fight, thank god)*, and villain motivations that just don't feel like they have substance to them. "Ass pull" is going too far, but some of those moments do feel like they're veering close to deus ex machina or are set up from the start to be ridiculous plot manipulation tools ("Oh yeah, he had everyone hypnotized the whole time, of course."). It's weighed down by the trappings of the shonen power creep fantasy, basically.
I don't think it's bad-it's got a lot to like! But I totally understand why anyone might be turned off of it, too. Personally, I enjoy basically any one arc of Bleach...but that's enough for me. I get tired of it after that.
*worth clarification: it's less individual fights dragging on and more the combined quantity of fights increasing as more and more of the cast gets involved in increasingly large brawls; they all start to blur together into one long "I'm the fastest" "No I'M" the fastest" "Well I'm the most magical" "No I'm more magical" "Aha, but in reality, I'M the most magical!" fight scene with the characters involved going through a rotating door of one-upsmanship.
This is probably the best explaination
I couldn't have said it better. And I do think the same
It's good,it has good stuff,but it's not great because it has bad stuff as well that ruined it
Never read or seen a single episode of Bleach but here I'm watching a 40 minute video about it. This was so well done and made me want to give the manga a shot.
I'd say give the anime a shot too, but hot damn there's so. much. filler. Feels like even more than Naruto. But! The nonfiller stuff is pretty good and the TYBW anime so far is five thousand percent hype.
@@SinHurr 10 years in the makingggggg, and theres burn the witch
You probably have to go very deep with it. I read it when it was serialized and when you read it at the superficial level, it peaked at the first arc, dropped a bit in Arancar arc, and plummeted soooo bad after that, sped up exponentially almost to a free fall at terminal velocity in 1000 years war arc. That's why people firmly believed Shonen Jump forced the author to stretch his story out after the first arc or two for the money, because it looked like a cycle of repetition after that and things always looked like an ass-pulled moves. I also was very skeptical through this video until he started pointing out various clues that I came to pause and thought that maybe, just maybe, I might have missed something big time. Alas, I won't have the time to go back and revisit them all again, or at least no where in the mid and near future.
I recommend Bleach. It's deeper and more planned out than other manga/anime. A lot goes over people's heads or isn't picked up on, I guess. So, those people love to loudly bitch about it being bad. I personally think it's superior than other shonen manga/anime. I mean, once you get to the final arc, you'll get to learn that Ichigo's blanket on his bead has a deep meaning, and you may cry.
The anime was good all the way through the soul society arc... Watch that, read the menga, and if you can stomach it, watch the rest.
Bleach was always my favorite of the "big 3" shonen anime, even after I had long since given up on them. This makes me want to go and check out the newest thing.
When you said you would go deep on the power systems i actually got excited about it, because like dark souls i just dont have the time to get good in my daily life. I mean if you make those videos, ill watch them
As a fan of Hunter x Hunter, the whole Cosmere universe, and someone that broke and read One Piece after several friends and this channel managed to finally convince me it was worth doing, I am really going to have to ask you to stop opening my eyes to new extremely long running series that will take me weeks, or even months, to read.
Bleach wouldn't take you that long, thankfully because the art gets space to breathe, and it's not dialog-heavy.
Bleach only takes a few days to read if you have the time. I've binged it in 3 days or less.
Well you're in luck, because I hate to be that guy but, "it really ISN'T that deep bro". I know, because I read it every week as it came out. I reread most of the last chapters a few months ago. I say 'most' because I didn't bother finishing it since I was shocked at how little I remembered and even more shocked at how little I cared. It's not good. Skip it. Do not consume Bleach (the manga or the anime). Find and consume better media that is worth your time. I suggest The Horizon by Jeong Ji-Hoon (it's only 21 chapters).
@@spiffythealien You need a hug?
@@spiffythealien me when I spread misinformation.
I got goosebumps when the Bleach OP played. Jesus it's been like 20 years and it still hits me...
Bleach has issues, I know, but it's still so special.
_sings along in gibberish_
MIAGETA YOZORANO HOSHITACHI NO HIKARI
Oh yeah, I checked out every Orange Range CD from my local library at the time!
The Bleach anime has TONS of issues. The music isn’t one of them. It says a lot that it can have such a strong reaction on us 20 years later. Hell, the series introduced me to so many artists that I still listen to today (UVERworld for one).
I have now read 600 chapters of Bleach because of this video, I’ve almost read the whole series and it’s just as good as you said it would be
Same!!
Must have been painful
@@jtmassecure4488 the manga is good, no cap
It is😊
Bleach isn't original they stole story elements and characters from Yu Yu Hakusho. Ichigo is shamelessly Yusuke Urameshi
Soul Society & Hueco Mundo : Kubo's Perfect Narrative Inversion
One of the most common criticism Bleach has received during it's run is that both the Soul Society arc and Hueco Mundo arc are one and the same. This is not only a very surface level observation of the story but a lack of understanding as to why Kubo decided to give these two arc similarities in the first place.
The underlying theme of both of these arcs is very different from the one another. The Soul Society arc is mainly about questioning a flawed system and their sense of Justice, gaining powers and changing their view. Where as the Hueco Mundo arc has "understanding one's self" ,the struggle with one's inner demon and coming to realize the consequences of failing to control them while also accepting those demons(The latter comes into the narrative during the Fake Karakura Town arc but since it's connected I thought it should be mentioned).
Human reasoning plays a pivotal part in the conflict associated with the Soul Society arc where as the animal instinct within oneself is an important aspect when it comes to the Hueco Mundo arc as the conflict with one's inner demon is based on them(White's speech to Ichigo during the Vizord training)
To have the characters in these two arcs play along these themes, Kubo differenciates the espadas from the shinigami since their origins by associating them with different animals/insects. Like Grimmjow with Panther, Harribel with Shark, Nnoitora with Mantis, Nel as horse/goat, Ulquiorra with a mixture of Bat and mammel(since his resurrection also has a tail), Stark's ceros being in the forms of wolves and so on.
Where as in the Soul Society arc, the powers of the Shinigami have a certain grace to them and they are very much in line with the human ego rather than the animal insticts represented in the resurrection forms of the espada. Byakuya's bankai is sakura flowers representing beauty but also the fact that people are buried under the Sakura tree as well(Hisana), Tousen's Bankai rids the opponent off all their senses except for Touch just like how Tousen's blind, Komamura's bankai is a Japanese soldier clad in complete armor, just like Komamura who's face was always hidden within an armor, Yamamoto's shikai is fire showing power and strict governance over the system, Gin's bankai is a poisonous long blade snake like his nature, Aizen's shikai is pure hyponis and making illusions just like how his whole outword personality was a lie. Even though Renji's zanpakuto has the form of a Monkey/snake it's more in line with his personal arc of standing up against the nobles and the system despite being a rat on the street as shown by Kubo's doodles at the end of the chapter.
Throughout the Soul Society arc Ichigo's shown to be achieving powers through his training for becoming a Shinigami and later on achieving Bankai with his Zanpakuto(Old man) helping him in doing so. Where as in the Hueco Mundo arc those very powers(White) serve as a conflict for him to overcome, not just physically but later on by coming to an understanding with them. Uryu's fight with Mayuri is about his pride as a quincy with also a theme of fatherhood playing a bigh role. Nemu despite being abused by Mayuri has a certain level of understanding of him while Uryu is completely disconnected from Ryuuken. Both "fathers" being rather cruel but rather seen through a different perpective through their artificial and human children. Uryu even apologises to Souken saying he doesn't understand his father and still has to use the ultimate technique. Although Mayuri escapes he is defeated by Uryu who in the end is saved by Nemu who gave him the vaccine to stop the poisoning.
Uryu's fight with Szayel starts as him basically assisting Renji in defeating him and despite all of his new techniques both of them fail in defeating Szayel and are ultimately saved by Mayuri who gives his famous speech on perfection and why he loates it, completely in contrast with Szayel's desire to become a perfect being. But Mayuri's very hatred of perfection later on comes to haunt him in the last arc as he also feels despair at the loss of Nemu who he came to subconsciously believe to be a perfect artifical soul with their own beliefs and desire, finally breaking the boundries with which she was created. Ultimately coming to an understanding of how much Nemu means to him. While Szayel comes to taunt him in his mind that he achieved the very pergection(creating a perfect human soul) that he loathed. Kubo shows the contradiction in Mayuri's thinking and his actions. Same with Uryu who finally understands what Ryuuken wanted to protect all along, his reasons and following the path of his father by becoming a doctor(something which he disdained after watching Ryuuken disect his mother). I went a little to far here basically towards the end of the manga but that's because this narrative of fatherhood is very much linked to Mayuri and Uryu till the end and isn't resolved until then.
Kubo masterfully inverts these arcs by showing the contradiction between the understanding of human compassion when it comes to a shinigami and a hollow aka a pure soul that was saved and a corrupted one that was left to rot consumed by his negative desires. Hanataro comes to recognize Rukia as a good individual through their conversations and the kindness she shows to him where as Loly and Menoly look at Orihime as a monster for showing them kindness and compassion. Even in the end while Hanataro actively helps Ichigo to save Rukia, Loly protecting Orihime was more about self preservation against Yami.
Ichigo's fight with Renji is more about Renji finally coming to an understanding with what he wants to do when it comes to Rukia. His fight against Ichigo serves to change his personal view on the conflict, following his heart rather than the system even if he is no match for that system. His views are changed through Ichigo's resolve. The flashback given to Renji here highlights his reason for abandoning Rukia all those years ago due to his own powerlessness in front of the system in contrast with Ichigo's resolve.
Ichigo's fight with Grimmjow has more to do with Ichigo finally accepting his animal instincts and overcoming his guilt of having to fight with the hollow powers that makes his eyes look like Sora's which makes Orihime fearful of him. Here Orihime's acceptance of his struggles and disregard of his method of protecting her as long as it's him is what helps him overcome Grimmjow. Here it's Grimmjow who helps Ichigo in accepting his animal instinct while it's Orihime's emotional support that finally helps him in overcoming his subconscious fear of his inner demon. The flashback given to Grimmjow also helps in highlighting the contrast in his journey compared to Ichigo. As Grimmjow was asked to eat his own comrades to keep evolving, leaving them behind and not even feeling any remorse when they were killed during his invasion of the Karakura town compared to Ichigo's resolve to save Orihime and bring all of his frinends back to their home while defeating Grimmjow, Ulquiorra and Aizen.
Another interesting way which Kubo uses to invert the narrative in these two arcs is through Yoruichi and Nel and how the personal narrative of these two characters with others(Soi fon and Nnoitora) differ completely by the end. The emotional comflict Soi-fon has with Yoruichi is about her feeling betrayed by being left behind and finally reconciling with Yoruichi where as Nnoitora's conflict with Nel is about his hatred for being looked upon as the Inferior and mocked as one by Nel in her own way(The reason she follows him is being she likes to look down upon him and remind him of his inferiority) and it ends with Nnoitora staying true to this hatred while getting the death he always wanted from Kenpachi.
And finally Kubo basically makes his intention of inverting these two arcs very clear by contrasting the Ichigo vs Byakuya and Ichigo vs Ulquiorra fight in the most obvious way possible.
Ichigo wins his fight against Byakuya not just in a physical way but he also wins the ideological conflict , and wins it by overcoming the demon within him and winning as himself. Byakuya finally accepts being in the wrong and respects Ichigo and his resolve. He is changed by ichigo's resolve.
Ichigo win his fight against Ulquiorra in name only as it's won at the very expense of the ideals he upheld against Byakuya. Here Ichigo finally gives in to his inner demon(against his choice as he was basically dead) which he was able to overcome against Byakuya, becomes a monster, slaughters an enemy, almost kills a friend with said friend ironically being saved by the enemy he was fighting against. After his fight with Byakuya Ichigo screams his victory with Joy but here he only screams in shame of the victory he achieved. Here Ulquiorra's nihilistic outlook is changed not through Ichigo's win but rather his fall and Orihime.
In conclusion Kubo wanted to give these two arcs some similarities on the surface while giving the character completely different personal narratives with the protagonist reaching two completely different conclusions by end of the final major fights in these two respective arcs, and he achieved it masterfully in my opinion.
There is also the aspect of "The heart" conveyed through Rukia's fight against Aaroenaro and Ulquiorra's against Ichigo. Where Rukia finally comes to the realization that even though she is facing Kaien in body and mind(AA has his memories as well) his heart will belong to her, while Ulquiorra realizes in his last moments that even after all the suffering he had Orihime go through, she wasn't afraid of him and understood him, the thing he was holding in his hand was the very thing Kaien talked about people having in their palm when it comes to their understanding of others. Kubo Masterfully connects this theme of "The heart" from Rukia (someone who assists Ichigo)to Ulquiorra(who stands against Ichigo) brilliantly.
It's too bad no one will probably see this but well some
Even as someone who was a fan of the anime, I have to acknowledge the unbelievable superiority of the Manga. The Fullbringer arc is largely mocked but frankly, in the Manga, was chilling and amazing to read.
Also. Dear Anime Pope. Please do a super in depth analysis of bleach power systems. Even the short snipets were amazing.
Fullbringer is the best Bleach power system and I will not elaborate
@@samt3412 That's cap. The best power system to me is either the Shinigami or Quincy.
@@MrGksarathy okay, but the Fullbringer powers we do get to see are, on average, cooler than the average Bankai or Schrift. Though, that might just be my love for Stands speaking.
@@samt3412 For me, the Schrift are the true love letter to Stands. The Fullbring were just baby steps.
@@MrGksarathy Book of the End is the most Jojo's type ability in the whole series
Love how you gave it a chance and learned about all the things that make the bleach manga so well written and special. You never disappoint with the genuine and gripping video essays you make.
32:53 I actually think the lack of a hard magic system in MHA helps set it apart from the other shonen and grants the abilities an immediacy that isn’t possible with chakra, nen, or spiritual pressure. Quirks function as extensions of the body and develop/deteriorate as such, so you only really need to watch a character in a few conflicts before you get a sense of their limits and preferred use of their quirks. Trying to explain why and how quirks first manifested feels like trying to give an origin to mutants in X-Men comics in that I don’t really understand what we as readers would gain from that info. Even in-universe scientists are way more interested in the future of quirks than the past.
I watched Bleach up until the Bount Arc and fell out of love with it. When I heard the 1000 year blood war arc was being animated, it motivated me to catch up so I continued at the Arrancar arc and it was tough to really get into it again. So I started reading the manga instead at when they got to Hueco Mundo and I couldn't stop.
The difference in the anime and the Manga are day and night to me. Everything you said in the section about Kubo's artistical genius was spot on. I felt so much more connected to certain characters while reading as opposed to watching it.
Now that you mention it, the thought never crossed my mind that the power of Ichibei's Ichimonji was actually a parallel for how the author (as in, the author of the manga itself) manifests the world through "black" (that is, "black" is what the mangaka adds to the "white" that is a blank page).
So ichibei is a Kubo self insert?
@@poenpotzu2865 I don't think so. Ichibei is, uh, a huge asshole and possibly the world's first sociopath. Though yes his power is similar to a real world mangaka. Nice catch on that one, OP.
@@SinHurryeah Ichibei is secretly pretty messed up
@@fleamarketsnack3280 Secretly? He doesn't even care enough to hide that aspect of himself, at least not in person.
@@poenpotzu2865 i mean, it's the joke
I believed Kubo-sensei was always a huge underdog. His art is one of the best in the business, characters designs are simple yet SO effective. His dynamic action shots walked so Hero Aca could run. What really had Kubo s art work stand out is the line work, thin, clean like a dynamic brush strokes.
Loved your video Geoff! You definitely hit my experience growing up and falling out of love with Bleach. Cannot wait to watch TYBW!!!
be quiet this video is garbage
LMAO
Say psyche right now
@@applejones1697 ? calling him sensei is kinda odd but otherwise whats the problem? the art is good
@@wesleywyndam-pryce5305 yea the art is good but that’s about it bleach kinda sucks
Thank god someone put together a 'Bleach is good actually' video because more people need to come around to the gospel that it was always the second best of the Big Three.
Yeah I gotta say, while I watched random episodes of bleach as a kid in the early or mid 2000s, watching it straight through after it had completed a few years ago made it a completely different watching experience. In a good way. I can't imagine all that waiting through the arcs.
The problem of Bleach is that Kubo created a character that's just too powerful for the story:
Nobody can put a scratch on chair-sama.
[laughs in early P5 ad memes]
Sorry, just remembered something…
I really appreciate this video honestly, as someone who picked up the bleach manga in middle school, figured out how to find translations online once the library ran out of volumes, and proceeded to read the manga weekly all the way until the thousand year war started and I got a little burnt out trying to wrap my head around the Quincy powers on top of college. I haven’t returned in over four years but you’re seriously making me reconsider picking it back up and taking the thousand year war arc more seriously. I would benefit from a reread anyway, since reading a manga weekly for like five years really makes it hard to string those tiny and intricate details together 😅
Hey Geoff, you totally convinced me to get back into watching Bleach and no it’s not because of the world building or the fight scenes. It’s because of the shoujo influences which finally explains why Ichigo is still the hottest and coolest protagonist in shounen anime till date. Thank you for giving me a new perspective on this anime 😊
I absolutely loved bleach as a 13 year old kid so I always found it weird how when I got older I just randomly found people hating on it it’s crazy how bad ran anime can ruin a series reputation
I loved it, finisehd the anime (at the time) up until halfway through the Hueco Mundo arc. Read the Manga and it was in the Fullbringer era already and I lost interest in the whole series for years.
Fullbring arc is worse than any of the filler.
For me it was the fact that Bleach shamelessly copied Yu Yu Hakusho. I gave Bleach a chance 2 - 3 eps in I dropped it because of how much it reminded me of my childhood anime..
It's genuinely one of thr greatest manga I've ever experienced. 10/10
I never really understood why everyone either absolutely loves or absolutely hates Bleach, so thanks for making this video. You are the go-to anime commentator.
I'm one of the people that thinks Bleach is just ok, Great character designs and fashion. but everything else is just kinda...mid? Idk I hate the word, but I don't know how else to describe it.
Bleach had so much potential and I fucking loved it. I watch 60 episodes of that show in a matter of 4 days. And then I got to that sakura petal dude and I was so fucking sick of the soul society arc.
Characters would spend entire EPISODES dedicated to ONLY bragging about how strong they are. It got to the point where I would literally just scrub through the episodes to see when the fight starts.
I was so sick of the shows stupid pacing and how seemingly endless the soul society arc felt. I just dropped despite how obsessive I got when I started.
A reason for why some may dislike bleach is because of how much of it goes over people's head which causes to misread the depth of the character's and story
It was popular really. So people attached themselves to it, for better or worse. Like as a Bleach fan I distinctly remember a time saying you liked Bleach was the nerd way of getting bullied by other nerds, and the sheer amount of straight out lies told about Bleach. So if you hated it you could just get brownie points for being an idiot, while if you liked it you had to defend yourself for the opinion.
@@nahte123456 that applies to almost every anime, it’s not fair to use that as an excuse for people disliking bleach. I mean the video literally spent 40 minutes talking shit about the anime and telling us to go read the manga for a reason
First time I’ve actually gotten a notification from this channel in months and it’s for Bleach? It must be fate
No, it's Bleach. Fate is another series entirely. Lol
@@ElectricBookWormi was 40 seconds too late to the joke damnit
@@ElectricBookWormnice joke lol
@@ElectricBookWorm lol I see what you did there
@@ElectricBookWorm I love this 😂
I first discovered bleach at 13 years old in my school library. My high-school had a very small (like 15 books) manga section. 4 of those books were the first 4 bleach books. I read through them all in 4 days, only because I could only borrow one book at a time. After I finished them, I looked up bleach online to see where to buy the next books only to find out they had been made into an anime. Not only that, but all the episodes were on youtube for free. However, I didn't have Internet at my house, so it would be another 2 years before I finally got to watch bleach. I watched it on my Samsung galaxy young with its tiny 3-inch screen. I absolutely loved it. It was the most epic thing I had ever seen. Then the first soul society arch happened and I watched the whole thing, by the last few episodes I just wanted it to end. Then the bount arch happened and I was invested again until that also dragged on for 2 whole seasons. By the time I reached the hollow soul reapers arch I just gave up. Archs that could have been 5 episodes were dragged out for entire seasons. The only reason I watched until episode 150 was because there would be the occasional moment where things would be cool again, it would draw me back in only to plummet my expectations an episode later. I have a love hate relationship with bleach now. The first season will forever be one of my favourite seasons of anime ever. It holds a special place in my heart for being my introduction to anime. But it will always be the anime that destroyed any expectations for a good 5 years. Any anime with a consistent storyline after I watched bleach would be considered the best anime ever. I remember watch wolves rain after bleach and thinking it was the best thing ever only because it was more consistent than bleach.
I think if you watch Bleach now, with the option of just binging it without the fillers, it is honestly one of the best philosophical shounen anime tbh.
There is such a huge cast of characters and Kubo honestly deals every one of them with a lot of care and thought.
Orihime is the perfect example of the anime vs manga in terms of Bleach. The differences are subtle, but overtime it’s like FUUUUUCK they really misrepresented these characters.
she's trash in both anime and manga
@@sherif8350 she isnt trash in both anime or manga liar
I hate the anime orihime
Especially because voice acting is involved so all she does is "kurosaki kun kurosaki kun kurosaki kun "
@@chadadams not really. She is very fine in the manga,but kind of trash in the anime
@@chadadams 😂
I hope Kubo somehow manages to incorporate the Narita novels a bit into the anime. No way the backstory of the Soul King, Juha's motivation, Ichibei's intentions towards Ichigo, Aizen's motivation towards dethroning the Soul Kind etc just get lost to a book...
He did said that a lot of things he has no time to put in the manga he will try to add in the anime, but I'm not sure if that includes the novels.
Yhwach motivation was already in the manga though
@kamamara2567 yeah, but it's only mentioned at the very end of the manga, and only right as Ywhach is getting defeated, effectively making that motivation only a factor in the final battle's writing in retrospect
@@samt3412 Don’t think it matters if it was revealed later in the manga wouldn’t change much to me either way.
@@samt3412 yeah that's always pretty shitty to do
I rewatched it like a year ago, and I must say, I still love it. I love the growing up metaphore, where first he finds out he can change something, then learns to accept his dark side, deals with feeling lost and to lean on his friends and then accepts his legacy and inheritance. In my experience, that IS the way you grow up as a person
Bleach is one of the few series from my baby anime fan days that I revisit on the regular. It's one of the few series that I keep picking up on tiny details I've missed on a previous read through and Kubo's art is just a joy to look at. Honestly, as artist myself, his composition is something I aspire to. With how striking it is while still being able to understand what's happening on the page is a huge goal that I don't think many action manga can hit.
As someone who's written serial fiction, I'm still dead sure that, particularly in earlier portions of Bleach, the reason that the majority of exposition/explanation/worldbuilding is given by non-experts, experts who're nutcases and bad at explaining things, and people who are straight-up lying (Bleach has a couple of particularly great "I lied about how these powers actually work" moments) isn't as much because Kubo had a grand cohesive vision, but to give himself enough slack to avoid writing himself into a corner later down the line.
Worldbuilding and exposition is a very difficult beast when working at a weekly serial pace: you don't get to go back and change the initial explanations (as you'd be able to when writing at novel length), which makes delivering explanations through unreliable or partially-reliable in-universe sources very attractive, since it gives you enough wiggle room to change things a bit later down the line. That's part of the reason "it just works" do-anything power systems are more popular with authors in that format.
True. That's just how it is. And it's a shame
@@chasinghaze0962 It's not necessarily a bad thing - leave stuff like that open-ended enough, and as you go on and add more and more detail to it over time, you can often come up with something that looks like it was planned all along.
@@SomeOtherTroper I agree. I just think that may turn off some people.
Yeah but it just breaks the immersion for me.
@@justaway6901 strange, it adds to it for me. We don't even understand our own universe, why would any one character have a clear understanding of their FAR MORE convoluted world? Makes me feel like a theorist trying to solve things alongside characters (much like Jojo characters) when confronted with something new. It also keeps readers questioning things well after a story's conclusion.
The fact that Bleach (manga) is what it is, considering the frequency of releases in it's run, is damn impressive. Not enough deference is given to mangaka. What they are able to create in such limited time, and most of the time alone. Being able to keep to the weekly Jump schedule is a feat not appreciated as fully it deserves.
Seriously the sheer number of stuff Jeff managed to touch upon in this single video reveals to me a chasm of mad mad lore, research and wiki fodder that rivals a fictional world, established by me and my friends, over *_literal years_* of work and worldbuilding (which is still ongoing) interspersed with decisions, lore bits and characterization that can only truly make sense if you know the real-life drama surrounding them. This man managed to match all that shit without the severe personal entanglement for a teen boy Japanese comic magazine whose readers want only to see cool dudes blasting less cool dudes to pieces while on a weekly installment schedule and got it popular enough that forum wars over it persist to this day, almost entirely on his own. _To call that impressive is an understatement._
Elden Ring is HOPSCOTCH compared to mangaka long runs!
My experience with Bleach:
>Watched the first arc about saving Rukia
>Loved it
>Watched the Bount arc next
>Didn't know it was filler
>Dropped it
>Have never gone back
The whole "Ichigo is a magical girl" thing at the beginning of the video reminded me of a crossover fanfic I once read that meshed together the world of Bleach and Madoka, and by god, it works _perfectly_ and now I realize exactly why.
You're right. Ichigo is a magical girl.
Edit: I am an idiot. I can't believe I completely skipped over the fic name. *As N Approaches Infinity* by *Corisanna* on AO3, as both @jurifengshui7426 and @aidanhayes3571 mentioned.
I mean Kubo did watch Saint Seiya growing up and that show is literally a male version of magical girl series except it's really graphic with blood
The streets need to know Ao3 or FF? 👀
As N Approaches Infinity on Ao3
@@jurifengshui7426 bless you 🙏🏽
@@jurifengshui7426 Man that such a good story. I hope they keep updating it. Been waiting a year.
now I NEED a Bleach conversion mod for Sekiro...
Here in Brazil, we're still fighting against the same mindset you presented at the beginning of the video.
People can't see or understand something, therefore they scream to the internet that there is nothing there.
There is mostly nothing there.
@@za-ir5ni yes there is illiteraye blind hater
@@za-ir5ni apparently not for some readers. People can't still tell why Ichigo protects the others so they are like "eh,whatever"
But there is indeed something
@@marcomilillo2001 there are legitimate issues here & there too, let’s not brush it off as perfect and we people are blind to “it”
But at least he goes into detail and debunks some bs
@@StripedJacket mhm i donot think anyone who loves bleach or even the most diehard bleach creator like jaymes and tekking will deny the problems with bleach , he was just adressing the issue regarding misunderstanding for ichigo as a character
2:30 - You brought me back man talking about how you first watched Bleach and that intro. 2006, didnt have any friends, moved to a new country and I went to a local anime event and they had three anime DVDs, Naruto, One Piece and Bleach, kind of like IRL Shonen Pokémon starters. Needless to say I choose Bleach. What a ride that has been. I regret nothing
As a former MASSIVE Bleach fan, this video may actually convince me to resurrect the love for it that I've lost over the last ten years. So many videos about Bleach's so-called downfall have made me hesitant to give it another chance, but this video may just be my sign to just feckin do it.
Do it
I think you should not read the manga because i think kubo is fixing the story in the anime adaptation
@@Anihan26fixing? given how fraud 0 continue to be the loser frauds that they are even in the anime, I'd say he's failed already
@@ambatuBUHSURK?? So you just didn't watch cour 2. That or you have serious comprehension issues considering what we saw ONE squad zero member do by themselves..
I literally cannot help but be excited every time I hear *Asterisk. I love it so much that I actually hate hearing it when I'm not watching Bleach because it preys on my attention until I go watch an episode. My God, the style of that first intro will never be beaten in my mind.
Goated song
What built the hype up in Bleach for me was the animation and most importantly the music. Shiro Sagisu created one of the greatest anime OSTs imo for this show. It fits the vibe of the series so well and creates a TON of tension. the track "Precipice of Defeat" being my go to for explaining this. On top of that the anime showing lines over the screen to represent spiritual pressure was absolute genius. It truly amplifies a character's feeling of power at a massive scale.
Ten thousand years later and I still have "Number One" on my phone's SD card just in case I need emergency hype.
@@SinHurr Absolutely Based
It has been years since I watched Bleach. From what I remember, what burned me out of Bleach was what burned me out of Dragonball Z some time after the Soul Society Arc. The side characters would get powered up. Yet when they came up to an antagonist, they would lose. Only the MC could actually beat the antagonists. On top of this, I was seeing victory coming from powering up more than out thinking the opponents. So once I could consistantly predict what was going to happen, everything that wasn't the MC fighting felt like stalling.
at least in the final arc , there are just tons of other characters who win/lose relevant side fights , and the same occurs at the end of arrancar arc , all except for aizen/ywach don't require Ichigo to take down , & for those 2 although only Ichigo was capable of directly fighting them they are also in part defeated due to others , by Urahara sealing the immortal before it can evolve again in Aizens' case & by spoiler
both Aizen's illusion & Tsukishima's time/memory alteration creating blindspots in Ywach's otherwise perfect perception and Uryu's arrow making Ywach vulnerable in the last fight , Ichigo's powerup has almost no bearing on the final outcome & even in the Aizen fight it's debatable what would have happened without Urahara
@@Marcusjnmc some people find this trait as a sign of Ichigo being bad as MC & even the show being bad in general. But it just feel refreshing to me that Ichigo wasn't the only character to defeat the villains, typically like so many other shounen protagonists.
It shows to me that despite Ichigo is a "special" being & character in Bleach, team work with his friends & allies is what makes the difference.
I disagree to an extent. Yes; only Ichigo could beat the major villains, but there were a ton of side antagonists that were beaten by the side characters. Let's not forget that, with the exception of Ulquiorra and Grimmjow, the espada were defeated not by Ichigo, but by soul reapers, and in the fullbringer arc, it's Byakuya that fights and defeats Tsukishima while Ichigo fights Ginjo.
It was annoying when Ichigo's friends would show up only to lose, but that was actually surprisingly rare, and in the case of the Hueco Mundo arc, it was justified by a major plot point: attrition. Aizen set it up so that they would all win against relatively weaker opponents and then be exhausted by the time they were up against more major threats as he wanted them to be bait for the soul reapers to show up in Hueco Mundo.
As for winning via power-ups rather than something more nuanced, yes; that did happen sometimes, but I'd say it was often far more nuanced than that. Again, the fights against the espada were definitely not won through raw power, and the Tsukishima vs Byakuya fight had Tsukishima: a relatively weak human, put up an extremely close fight against Byakuya through _clever_ use of his Book of the End ability.
@@matthewmuir8884 like I said, I stopped some time after the Soul Society arc. Most of your counter points are content I never watched because I dropped the series. I made it through like two to three arcs. I believe it more than fair to drop anything if you do not like what you were seeing at that point.
So you watched the fillers because Ichigo lost every fights between the Soul Society arc and the Hueco Mundo arc.
Which is not common for a shonen MC.
You are an imaginative guy who is able to articulate how your mind interprets and fills in the gaps of stories. I'm not sure if you genuinely fail to realize how personal these interpretations are, or if you are being disingeneous for the sake of rage bait though. You brought up some of the most widely shared criticisms about Bleach in the beginning: repetitive arcs, shallow world building, inconsistent power scaling and asspulls, then failed to counter any of these for the rest of the video.
The repetitive and formulaic story telling of Soul Society arc and Hueco Mundo arc wasn't there in the manga? Does the manga somehow give you more information about the poorly constructed worlds of Bleach? Does the manga not have the exact same powers and how they increasingly get ridiculously strong and complex as the story progresses? Does the manga somehow explain how certain training like being taught by zero division for a short amount of time, or learning the final Getsuga gives characters insane power ups that conveniently make them strong enough to move the plot forward?
By far the point I disagree the most is that Bleach uses the "show, not tell" strategy effectively. That is simply your brain filling in the gaps with fanfics not because your perspective is more "complete" now, but because your perspective has changed to wanting to praise and like Bleach as much as possible for some reason. Most powers from the earlier phase of the story didn't need verbal explanations because it's either a huge chunk of sword that fires blue slash projectiles, or a sword that transforms into many petals. Just like you acknowledged with the fullbringers, these powers get so complex and alien to its own series that by the point in TYBW arc nearly ALL characters explain their powers to the detriment of the involved characters and fights. Famous example being Rose getting smoked by Masked de Masculine. As for the world building, I completely lost it when you suggested that the ratio of time dilation between the physical world in Bleach and Soul Society is 2:1 because Jesus died 2000 years ago, and the Tokugawa Christian Persecution happened 400 years ago in OUR world. Are you saying that the Bleach's physical world also had these two events, or are you just equating the physical world of Bleach to our world? You recognized that Yhwach is an analog for Yahweh, they aren't literally the same being in Bleach universe. Just like how neither Yamamoto nor Ichibei were a shogun in the physical world of Bleach during the Edo period. Surely you are not making this point in good faith.
There are many things to love about the Bleach manga, I quite like it myself. You definitely pointed out some of them like how engaging Kubo's art, design and paneling can be. But not acknowledging, or properly engaging with the criticisms that you literally opened up the video with comes off incredibly disingeneous and even opportunistic given that this video came out when the tides were turning more favourably for Bleach.
So you just want to see him talk trash about the show for 40 minutes? Gtfo
@@user-qh4ij7ip1u That's some laughably low reading comprehension if that's actually what you took away from my comment. Pay attention in school, you really shouldn't stay this dumb for much longer.
@@whdgk95I don't think you can judge anyone's reading comprehension when you consider having media literacy and knowing how to look past the surface level as "being imaginative and filling the gaps with fanfic". Kubo literally said that his biggest regret is being too cryptic with bleach.
Ain't reading all that
Loved this, if you ever did another bleach video about how masterful the world building is, you should mention the sounds of things in bleach. I noticed that the different techniques in bleach all have different sounds. I can only base this off the anime since I can’t read kanji, but listen to the differences in sound between shunpo, sonido and hirenkyaku.
I really appreciate the depth of analysis you gave to this series. While I most definitely did not spot all of this, much of your explanation gives voice to the reasons why Bleach has always stuck with me. I'm a huge fan of the character designs and power system, and I agree that the manga is by far the better experience. I think the bigger problems I've had with this series have always been in the narrative direction (i.e. it's plot and how it chose to wrap up certain arcs and, most unfortunately, the series as a whole), rather than how individual fights went or the worldbuilding. I understand why you didn't go into the specific narrative choices since your goal here was to address some deep seeded prejudices against the series that have prevented many from either picking up Bleach or revisiting it, so I respect the choice to go this direction with it.
As someone who doesn't have the time or patience to go through all of Bleach after I dropped it but still very curious, I would love a full in-depth explanation of how everything in Bleach works. It was cool from what I remembered, and what you started explaining is so interesting! I LOVE lore and worldbuilding. Please do that video I would love the ramble
Oooooh Bleach Lore is a WILD RIDE my friends
Below is an explanation of the history of the Bleach verse and a brief like very brief explanation of the how the cosmology and power system of bleach relates to Buddhism. I decided not to go into depth about how the power system works nor how each race interacts with it as that would be several youtube comments about as long as this one for each race.
So essentially the whole power system boils down to the Buddhist concept of enlightenment of course it is an over simplification as this doesn't account for the intricate ways as to how each race/magician uses the reishi around them and how their personality affects it.
Now as for the cosmology... well that is it's own 40 minute video on it's own but it essentially boils down to the different Buddhist realms being represented by the Bleach realms, it has been a while since I dove deep into the topic so I can't give an in depth explanation as to what realm relates to which. How it works boils down to 3 realms which need to maintain the same number of souls in each or risk loosing balance and destroying everything.
Now I do want to mentioned that it is implied by the story and that many of us fans theories that there aren't only three realms but many more and each represents a realm in Buddhism. Also hell is an outlier which has existed since before the Soul King (I will talk about this guy later) and does need balance but rather than splitting the balance between three realms it is split between that which is hell and that which is not hell. If hell gains to many souls then the doors to hell will break open. In essence the realms of soul society, World of the Living and Hueco Mundo all work as a counter balance to hell.
Then there is the history of Bleach to dive into which extends millions of years and is hinted at by Aizen, who by the way was only wrong in the execution of his ideals and his own view of himself rather than in what he wanted to do, and Yhwach then later expanded upon by the canon light novels of Cant Fear Your Own World. In essence the soul king who was truly alive millions of years ago helped the soul society (which was not exactly the soul society at the time) protect themselves from hollow for inexplicable reasons, as this is going on the 5 great noble clans which consist of Shihon, Shiba, Kuchiki, Tsunayashiro and a a fifth undisclosed/forgotten one have recently been created with their founders still running around and ruling this world. Now it is important to note that at this point in time there was not such thing as the world of the living or the dead as well as hueco mundo (not too sure about hueco mundo I might be remembering that wrong) they only came into fruition when the five founders of the great noble clans got together with the Soul King to discuss the increasing hollow problem and how to solve it at which point the Soul King created the bleach cosmology by dividing what is implied to be a singular universe into at least 2 if not 3 or more unique universe which created what we know as the world of the dead, the world of the living and hueco mundo. At this point in time the five great noble family leaders become fear full of the Soul King and now needing a linch pin for their new cosmology plan to butcher and seal the soul king as said linch pin all save one, the leader of the Shibas who offers themselves as the linch pin in place of the Soul King but is vetoed by the other heads. This sets up the conflict the Shibas have throughout history with the other four great noble houses and the reason why they are eventually pushed out of the position of one of the great noble houses by the other three as well as the entirety of the conflict between the Quincies and the soul reapers as well as Aizen but I digress. In the end they do end up sealing the Soul King and butchering him but not because he was over powered by the five leaders but because he allowed himself to be done in as such. At this point I should mention that the origins of the Soul King are unknown, his motivation for doing what he does and for allowing himself to be sealed and butchered are unknown, all that is known are two things that he outclassed all of the five leaders/founders in power by so much they were terrified of him and this is saying a lot since there has not been any person as powerful as the five founders in the history of the SS since the five founders the entirety of current soul society would lose in power to just one of the founders by a large margin. The other thing that is know is that he, like Ichigo, is a hybrid of every race that exist in bleach as such large parallels are drawn between the Soul King and Ichigo to the point where their fates are almost the same.
I mentioned before about Bleach having more than 3 reals and talked about hell well now after having actually talked about the soul King I want to mention his origins, or more accurately what we know of them. We know that the soul king does not originate from the original Bleach world/universe but from outside of it. We also know that he does not come from hell. What we do know is that he is implied to have come from a real which exist outside of what is now known as the soul society, hueco mundo and WoT. A realm with more beings like him and well that is all we know. So in total that makes at least 5 different realms in bleach.
Now this brings us to a post Soul King era and pre Gotei 13 era which spans millions of years. All that we know is that at different point during this time period the different body parts of the Soul King became sentient and deties to the people of the soul society and that the hierarchy of the soul society was established with the Five great Noble Clans at the top. The royal guard was also established at this point which most likely only included Ichibe (has grated the names to pretty much everything in the bleach cosmology and has the power to erase something via erasing the concept of their names) who is the one of the if not the oldest being still alive in bleach and later expanding to add Nimaya (created the zanpakuto as we know them today) and maybe one other person or two.
Now there is one event which I am not sure of if it happened before or after the gotei 13 were founded. You may have noticed that I said that only three of the five of the five great noble clans agreed to expulse the Shiba family from their great clan status and that I didn't mention the name of one of the five great noble clans because it is unknown. Well that is because at some point either before or after the founding of the gotei 13 the fifth, unknown member of the the five great noble clans did something so horrific that the other four of the five great noble clans decided that they should not only be stripped of their noble status but also completely expelled for both the world of the living and the soul society into the space in between realms which is also the space in which all the realms exist called Garganta. Now this place is pretty much empty save for the ocational spontaneous real that pops up aside from hueco mundo, Wot and SS, so you can imagine how horrible what they did must have been to get this type of treatment. And not only did they get banished to a void, essentially, the other five great noble clans decided they weren't event worthy of having their name remembered in history so they erased all records of it so all we know is that they existed and did something that got them expelled into the Garganta.
This brings us to the foundation of the Gotei 13 which can be summed up as a violent gang who fought the quincies to nigh extinction then later pacified into the militaristic government it is in the present day. At some point they decided to completely exterminate the Quincy due to the danger they posed to the bleach cosmology. Later Aizen comes into the picture causing several captains including Kisuke to seek refuge in the WoT which later also had Ichigo's dad, who was the current head of the Shibas, to leave his life as a soul reaper behind to save Ichigo's mom which directly leads into Ichigo being born as besically a second soul king as him mom was a Quincy who had been infected and partially hollowfied by a hollow and his dad was a human who had become a soul reaper and to top it all off he had a small piece of the original Soul King in him. Ofc Ichigo being of the same race as the Soul King would come back to bite both Aizen and Yuha in the ass as by definition Ichigo just has way higher base stats than anyone who has been alive for the las several thousand to several million years in the bleach cosmology, as such he has much higher innate potential than anyone in the bleach verse which in turn leads to the defeats of both Aizen and Yhwach
same. I dont wanna read something when I already know whats gonna happen, it just wont be interesting. I really wish I read bleach BEFORE watching the anime tho
Watch dbzImran he explains everything
@@williamwoolf8072 Technically, you don't know what's gonna happen tho because the anime never finished the story. It's only now covering the last arc.
A "reboot" of the older bleach series would do so much magic, like it helped dragonball with DB Kai. Even more so with the new arc currently running, a shortend and refreshed bleach serie would be amazing.
I read it way before this video was made and was disappointed by all of it.
Aizen is actually responsible for me dropping out of college.
Aizen is also responsible for my parents getting divorced...
Aizen was responsible for my Friend turning Gay.
Aizen is responsible for me losing my job...
Aizen: "All according to plan."
Why though? You don't matter to the man
As someone whole only ever read the manga and never watched the anime in more than bits and pieces, I can absolutely see how anime pacing would have made a lot of the arcs and fights unbearable to sit through. And while I'd never given much thought to the why behind it, you're absolutely right about how strikingly beautiful many of Kubo's panels are thanks to his skillful use of the black and white palette, and sadly some of that inevitably just gets lost when it's colored and animated. You're also spot on about the wealth of complex and interesting characters. In a way it's a double-edged sword because it's so easy to get attached to a minor character during their brief time in the spotlight, and then spend the rest of the series sad that they're relegated to the background again.
It’s funny how a bias can change someone’s outlook on something done terribly. I like bleach but the way you explain it, you’d think it was AOT. It’s not. It’s cool and it’s half assed.
Ikr? Like come on Bleach is not that well written & the anime is even worse.
While I agree with you on almost everything you said, there are a few things that made me abandon bleach (spoilers ahead) :
- IEP or the Ichigo's Endless Powerups...
While everything can be explained, some of the powerups and power scales feels really frustrating. While I understand how and why Ichigo can tap into every power type and become as strong as he is, it is always reaaaaaally convenient that he can do this when he does this (ie, losing to the unstopable opponent of the moment). This simply destroys any tension, when you just know that Ichigo will have some kind of new power the moment he must win...
- Ichigo is uninteresting. Well... he is interesting, but much less than anyone else, really, which makes him uninteresting by contrast. This is made worse by the fact that for all his powers, he makes nothing of it, except being faster and stronger... which, in turn, makes the more original powers much less impactful : in the end, the winner is the strongest... in the most basic way possible.
- Aizen is a villain sue.
This one irks me the most.
The guy is smarter and stronger than everyone else. All. The. Time.
Presented as a master planer and manipulator, he orchestrated events centuries old (Arrancar flashback and exile of Urahara), the birth of the hero, the events of most of the manga... yet, for all his devious plans, being twarthed is a minor setback at worse : his plan was to have Rukia executed ins such a way that he could get the Hougyoku back but when that doesn't happen, he still gets it back because of course he could get it back however he wanted... After that, he uses the Hougyoku to build his own Arrancar army to invade god's palace, as this is taxing for the Hougyoku itself, he kidnaps Orihime to use her power and restore it, presumably to make more Arrancars. But in doing so he invited opponents in his realm... opponents who were able to reduce his 10 super soldier to a measly 4 elite and some cannon fodders, all the while not achieving what he wanted with the Hougyoku. But it turns out he didn't need to build more super soldiers anyway and decide to invade with his weakened army. Of course, said weakened army gets completely destroyed, but it still doesn't matter, since he always was strong enough to do everything alone anyway ! And when he looses, it's not because the hero was stronger than him, but because, deep down, he didn't really want to win... which kind of explain how his plans aren't that bright and always fails, despite him being treated as some kind of genius...
Anyway...
The moment Aizen was all : "Meh, I don't need yall loosers, Imma go curbstomb those weaklings by myself" I knew Bleach was lost to me...
The poems at the beginning of every volume, the bankais connected to the journies of the characters, themes being explored through poetic writing and on top of that being cool while doing so is what makes Bleach stand out from other shounen.
Wish it was kept in the anime originally
@@Celty.Sturluson The new anime is doing a much better job. Somethings are just hard to adapt from page/literature to screen correctly.
No matter what anyone says the inner world moments with zangetsu, and Bankai, are some of the most wonder things to come out of bleach, and anime quality otherwise aside from the continuation the fucking music.
Damn you Geoff now i want you to explain for us the philosophy and lore of Bleach
He definitely should maybe he should get tekking, as a guest.
that first opening still hits me with a ton of nostalgia to this day.
my problem with bleach? count how many times someone has said "if i use blank ability ill lose all my powers", proceeds to use that ability, then loses their powers just to get them back later but stronger.