Bleach

At the start of this year, I began a re-watch of bleach for a few reasons. First off the last arc in the manga was being animated and I wanted to remember all the content. Another reason was for the pure nostalgia of watching one of my favorite shows as a kid. Finally, and I think this turned out to be the most important: I wanted to discover if the show I cherished as a kid could still impact me as an adult who had a much more diverse spread of shows under their belt. I can say now that in that last point I was wrong, it impacted me a lot more.

I'll try and space out this review in a few sections, there will be spoilers and I'll go into detail on a few parts. I want to address the flaws in the show first before I can talk about the better parts of the show.

Note: I did not watch any filler content for the sake of I couldn't be bothered and I wanted to finish this rematch before the new anime aired

The struggles of being a 2000's era shounen Bleach struggles a lot from purely an adaption level. There are times where the story is paced very well and things flow into each other very nicely (i.e Soul Society) and times where the pacing accelerates to the point where the watcher is almost lost (i.e End of Fullbringer Arc). This doesn't affect the show too much but it's worth noting as the difference between the good pacing and poor pacing is noticeable much more to me than in other shows.

Like most shounen shows (even in this age), Bleach suffers from what I like to call "Right-Arrow Syndrome" which is essentially when the show forces you to skip illegal levels of recap and empty space in order to get to the new content in the episode. I might be biased but I don't really mind this too much as shounen anime is nothing new to me but with bleach, it's a bit different. Usually, I'd just skip 5-7 minutes into the episode to get to the new stuff but with bleach, because 99% of the openings are bangers I had to watch the opening and then skip the recap, small but worth noting.

Aizen was disappointing First, let me preface, Aizen was a decent villain until the last part of the Arrancar arc, where he becomes no more relevant than a normal hollow. Aizen is a villain that you hate from start to end, for the pure fact that nothing seems to faze him no matter how much the characters we grow to care about try. To me Aizen never had a motive worth caring about, he was simply a good villain to give Ichigo a reason to grow and become strong. This isn't just for Aizen, even Ginjo to a point never really had a motive that mattered, their purposes were simply to be obstacles for Ichigo to overcome (along with other stuff which I'll get to later).Orihime was flat for 90% of the show

Orihime is a character that I could never put my hand on just right. She does a lot in terms of her actions and growth, but my god this is a dramatic case of "actions over words" because for every physical thing she does in the show she says "Kurosaki-Kun" twice. It's a real shame because she has a lot of development silently but none of that is actually shown until the Fullbringer Arc. She triples her vocabulary in three episodes of that arc than the previous 300 episodes. I think she ends up being a great side character and the fact that she, along with Chad and Uryu are able to stay relevant throughout the entirety of the anime is something that needs to be addressed alongside this.

Now I wanna talk about what Bleach does well, and what it does really well because this show has a lot.

When the Spanish Guitar Starts Strumming I start Sweating

Bleach's music was in a league of its own. From the openings to the battle OST's the music was standout to any shounen shows airing at the same time. The scratchy guitar makes your spine tingle, to Ichigo's battle theme which varied in hype depending on the stage of the fight. There are so many notable sounds in Bleach that enhance the quality of the show. The way that they use music to direct a fight was a treat to watch, although the slower-paced episodes definitely did not keep up. There's a moment in Soul Society where Ichigo has just finished defeating Byakuya and Aizen shows up. His theme starts playing softly and it goes into one of the most hype set up moments where Ichigo gets a direct hit on Aizen, only for him to be stopped with a finger. At that same exact moment the music cuts-dead. This sense of chills you get completely changes your perspective on the gap between Aizen and Ichigo and raises the stakes of the show.

Addressing the title, the Espada/Arrancar Arc introduced Spanish guitar into the OST, which was without a doubt the single greatest directional choice to be made in a show. The thematic tone that is set from watching someone lose all hope in their life to the sound of the soft guitar is something that sticks with me, at this point, it's a Pavlov. The fact that they were able to integrate this into the show so well was something that I didn't fully realize until near the end of the Fullbringer arc. There was a big gap in the time that we heard the guitar (end of Arrancar arc to the end of fullbringer arc) but as soon as I heard it, goosebumps ran down my entire body.

Lastly, I'll end by saying Bleach's openings and endings are incredible with a notable discography that includes many favorites. In addition, the visual themes that are presented are a treat to watch.

Where Bleach sets itself apart

Every shounen show has that first "real" arc. The first one to have stakes with all the main cast. It's the arc that pulls you in for the long run. Naruto has the Mist-Village Arc, One Piece had Arlong Park (although this you can argue is not the first), and so on and so forth. I think I can say in Bleach's case, "The Soul Society Arc is the best first arc in any shounen new age and old age." The arc is set up so that you have one storyline merge into another one like on a highway. The way that they use Rukia as a ramp to connect the climax of the Soul Society Arc to the Arrancar arc is something that I am amazed by. It sets up all the major characters and storylines all in one arc with high stakes and hype battles. I don't think there were many flaws in this arc if any. You can say that Ichigo had a way too big of a power spike in this arc but I think you're going down the wrong can of worms if you want to address any form of power scaling in bleach.

This mostly brings me to the end of the review, in short 2000's shounen format is not the most enjoyable to watch and bleach has amazing music and a banger first arc to set up the show. There is one thing I want to address and it's the one thing that surprised me the most in this re-watch: Ichigo.

Ichigo

I never once thought of Ichigo as a protagonist who had any real depth to him. I always saw him as just a monotone teenage protagonist who just wanted to "protect his friends". This isn't necessarily false, but it's a drastic oversimplification of his character. One of my biggest misconceptions, even upon rewatching, was that Ichigo was able to work through his trauma of losing his mom upon his first encounter with Grand Fisher in the first few episodes of Bleach. His change of attitude was not that he was over it, but that he wouldn't let it happen to anyone else. This is supported by the fact that there is a clear change in his attitude towards his shinigami "responsibilities" . Ichigo has abandonment trauma and he projects that onto everyone he cares for with an obsession of being someone who needs to protect people to feel valued. This is highlighted beautifully in the Fullbringer arc, where Ichigo loses everything he values most and breaks as a result. The clear change in attitude when he has power vs when he feels vulnerable and useless is almost exaggerated in this arc. Ichigo even addresses the fact that his protectionism is because of his guilt from not being able to save his mom, and being responsible (in his mind) for her death, although this is done subtly. I've heard that Ichigo's character falls flat here but this is an anime-only review so I won't entertain any of those ideas. Ichigo was not the boring straight-headed protagonist I thought he was. He was a 17 year old with trauma who had to work through his grief through trial and hardship.

That brings me to the end of this review, the last arc's anime adaptation is only a month from now and so if you are feeling nostalgic I'd recommend watching this again, and not to find some deeper meaning in the show, but just to enjoy it.