Bleach, one of the big three shonen and it hit the mark for me
Photo: taito kubo
the picture shows ichigo as a soul reaper
Overview:
Bleach is centered around a highschooler named Ichigo Kurosaki who obtains the power of a Shinigami from a soul reaper named Rukia. Bleach has Ichigo teams up with his partners of spiritually gifted teenagers exploring different worlds and fighting many strong opponents. Bleach is generally considered the worst out of the big 3 shonen, the others being One Piece and Naruto, two other shonens I enjoy very much. Though I’d say my favorite is bleach out of all three. The general consensus is bleach is the lowest rated shonen, and disliked in the public eye for the most part due to poor sales and the cancellation of the anime the 27th of March 2012, overtime the show went from being a top rated manga in shonen jump to not even being in the top ten, Shonen jump being the magazine that has mangas like One Piece and Naruto.
Review:
I got into bleach after being recommended bleach from a mutual friend. After watching the first bit of it I loved every last bit of it. Though I can’t ignore the fact it did get worse over time I still very much enjoyed bleach. The story and characters made me love the series as much as I do. It started out with the anime but ended up reading the manga alongside watching it. I’ve even considered buying the physical set of the manga I love the series so much, fights like the ichigo vs kenpachi in the soul society is one of my in shonen. The soul society arc has some of my favorite fights in the series, along with Ichigo vs byakuya.
Now that I’ve spilled out how much I love bleach nothing can be perfect all the way through, so as much as I hate to say it, I can’t ignore the reasons the show gets the bad rep it has. One glaring flaw of bleach is the series slowly losing its thing that made it great overtime. Bleach had such a good start and a very promising future from the looks of it which sadly wasn’t the case in a lot of peoples eyes regarding the future of the series. Ichigo overtime went from a great character to a stale character with little objectives. The beginning showed him saving his friend rukia who gave him these shinigami powers from her imprisonment in the soul society, to the same concept of the damsel in distress being saved by her knight in shining armor being repeated over and over. The later arcs like the lost substitute arc show the series shift from being amazing to out rite boring in some spots later in the series. Ichigo later felt like he was just fighting strong guy after strong guy with no real intention to move forward besides to just fight. Though the series has a lot of flaws, none of these downsides stopped me from loving the series.
Conclusion:
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Bleach is a fun watch all the way through and I’d recommend it to anyone that hasn’t already gotten into the series, you’ll either love or hate bleach. I wouldn’t let all the criticism hinder your enjoyment and prevent you from getting into it, the soul society and arrancar arcs are some of my favorites in shonen as a whole. If I were to pick a favorite arc I’d have to say soul society is my favorite, I can’t stress enough how good this arc is, easily my favorite arc in bleach. The characters and story really peak in the soul society though it doesn’t match the fight scenes in the arrancar arc the story in soul society is easily the best in my opinion. bleach as a whole is something anyone could get into and everyone should give it a watch.
Devin Ryan is a senior at Ada High School. This is his second year as a staff member of The Cougar Call. Ryan is a big fan of pop culture, so expect a...
