Bleachhas come back to be a big topic in recent years, with the manga returning for a special one-shot while the anime is back to finally adapt the original manga’s final arc. As one of the Big Three,Bleachwas a wildly popular and influential series, and its impact can still be felt in modern manga and anime.
However, despite being a beloved classic, there are quite a few elements ofBleachthat… well, just haven’t aged very well. Revisiting the original anime, and to a lesser extent,the manga, one will find that the series is actually showing its age quite a bit,for reasons surrounding both the content of the series itself as well as how it was structured and told in the first place. Here are some of the biggest ways in whichBleachhas aged poorly.
10 Strongest Bleach Villains Of All Time, Ranked
Bleach has seen some absurdly powerful villain characters over the years, but how do these villains stack up against one another?
10Bleach’s Fanservice Can Be a Bit Much
Unnecessary Fanservice Detracts from Characters
Compared to modern anime and manga,Bleachhas quite a lot of fanservice, which can have a negative impact on the story or especially on certain characters' characterization.Much of the fanservice inBleachis brought about deliberately by Kon, and is completely superfluous to the plot. In other circumstances, the fanservice can feel out of place or tonally inappropriate, as it’s often played for humor. One major instance of this fairly early on is Yoruichi, who is often shown naked after transforming from her cat form, much to Ichigo’s chagrin.
Fanservice can definitely have a negative impact on how seriously one can take a character, and the anime would often exacerbate this with filler.
Characters like Orihime and Rangiku often suffer the most from this, but they’re far from the only ones.Fanservice can definitely have a negative impact on how seriously one can take a character, and the anime would often exacerbate this with filler, such as beach episodes, which are entirely centered on fanservice.
9Ichigo’s Power-ups Are Acquired Too Quickly
Ichigo Accomplishes in Days What Took Others Decades
Bleach’s story often operates on a tight timetable, meaning there’s very little time for training arcs and other standard means of growing stronger.The series' solution to this problem is simply to have Ichigo’s training occur exceptionally quickly, to the point where it sometimes strains believability. This happens several times, but the most egregious case is likelyIchigo’s training for Bankai. In universe, it’s said to take most Soul Reapers decades of training to achieve Bankai, but Ichigo’s training from hell gets him Bankai in mere days.
If this kind of rapid training is an option, why don’t more Soul Reapers pursue it?While it is established to be risky, surely there would be others who want to attempt this path. It has the unintended effect of making other Soul Reapers look weak for taking so long to do what Ichigo did in less than a week.
8Bleach’s Abilities Can Be Overcomplicated
Character’s Powers Are Sometimes Hard to Understand
One problem that initially wasn’t present, but grew to be an issue over the course of the manga, is that of overly complex powers and abilities that some characters wield.While some are straightforward, like Ichigo’s, other characters have abilities that are extremely confusing.
This is partially a consequence of having so many characters that each need their own unique abilities, so naturally some of them are going to be convoluted at best.
Shunsui Kyoraku’s Zanpakuto, for example, employs a complicated system of rules for children’s games which the opponent is forced to play along with.This gets way worse in the Thousand-Year Blood War arc, where someSternritter, like Gremmy, have abilities that are seemingly unstoppable or so confusing as to be unintelligible.
7Bleach’s Anime Underwent Many Technical Changes
The transition from SD to HD Didn’t Help Bleach
One thing that makesBleach’s anime a little hard to watch these days is the fact thatit went on for so long that it transitioned from standard definition, full-screen to high definition, widescreen format. The transition is a bit awkward when rewatching the series today, even though there wasn’t much that could be done about it at the time.
The early material in SD sometimes has animation which doesn’t hold up to the kind of closer inspection possible on a modern TV.It makes the series feel even more dated than it is, which is a shame, as the parts animated in fullscreen format are some of the best parts of the manga.
6Bleach’s Anime Quality Doesn’t Measure Up to the Manga
The Bleach Anime Has Far More Flaws Than the Manga
On a related note,the animation quality of theBleachanime is, generally speaking, not that great.This is partially a consequence of when it was made, but is just as much due to how it was made, asBleachran year-round instead of using a more modern, seasonal approach.This problem is especially bad with filler content, which often had an even lower budget than the average episode, making the already inferior filler content look and feel even worse than it is.
While theBleachanime did many things right, such as its soundtrack, the general quality of the artwork is simply inferior to that of Tite Kubo’s original manga, greatly lacking in detail by comparison.This improved somewhat over the course of the series, but never to the level that it needed to be at.
5Bleach is Driven By One of the Most Clichéd Tropes
Bleach Overuses the “Damsel in Distress” Trope
One ofBleach’s biggest problems when revisiting the series today isits over-reliance upon one of the biggest clichés of all time: the Damsel in Distress. It first happens with Rukia, who goes from a strong and competent character to a helpless one who needs to be rescued in the Soul Society arc. Then, that same trope is repeated almost immediately with Orihime in the Hueco Mundo arc. In both situations, the female character in question is taken by mysterious forces who mean her harm to a tower in a distant land, which Ichigo must undergo many trials and tribulations to save her from.
Orihime’s kidnapping never really makes much sense compared to Rukia'.
Aizen andhis Arrancar armywere enough of a threat that the story really didn’t need Orihime to be kidnapped in order to force characters into action.Worse still, Orihime’s kidnapping never really makes much sense compared to Rukia’s, making it feel even more like a tired cliché.
4Bleach’s Plot Moves at a Glacial Pace
Bleach Needed Better Pacing
Bleach’s story moves at an exceedingly slow rate in both the manga and the anime. The anime makes things even worse with filler, but the pacing was already painfully slow.It takes until chapter 71 for what is arguably the main plot, the Soul Society arc, to begin, meaning that over a year’s worth of manga chapters are dedicated to the world of the living and characters there, who mostly have little-to-no impact later in the story.
A big reason forBleach’s slow pacing is due to the sheer number of characters it features, as it takes a long time to address all the different storylines that each character is a part of.Bleachalso loves to split the party, such as when Ichigo’s party enters the Seireitei, forcing even more ongoing plotlines to crop up.
3Bleach Has Too Many Characters
Bleach’s Sheer Amount of Characters Hurts the Story
If there’s one thingBleachis known for, it’s having a LOT of characters.Almost every arc introduces a huge new batch of characters; the Soul Society arc introduces the 13 Court Guard Squad Captains and their Lieutenants, as well as other Soul Reapers, more than doubling the size of the cast. This happens again with the Vizored, then the Espada and their Fracciones, andthen again with the Fullbringersand Sternritter. Few, if any, of these characters get substantial development, and the need to check in with them slows the story pace down too much.
Tite Kubo has freely admitted that creating new characters is one way that he overcomes writer’s block, butthat doesn’t mean that all these characters need to appear in the manga in significant roles.It ends up hurting the development of characters who should get more focus, like Chad, in favor of characters whose very existence is simply unnecessary.
2The Bleach Anime is Overflowing with Filler
The Anime Filler Wastes So Much Time
Easily the biggest hurdle to watchingBleachtoday is the sheer amount of filler incorporated into the anime.Out of 366 episodes in the originalBleachseries, 165 of those episodes are considered at least partially filler. That’s almost half of the series' runtime!Bleachhad a particularly huge problem with filler, as it would often incorporate entire filler arcs, which could last 30 episodes or more, and yet often amounted to nothing after they were over, since they didn’t happen in the manga and couldn’t have a lasting impact without changing the story drastically.
The real problem is that mostBleachfiller just isn’t good, either.They aren’t entertaining and often feature dull villains who either repeat what manga-canon villains are up to, or whose plans are completely extraneous to the main plot.
1Bleach’s Perverted Humor Really Aged Bad
Characters like Kon, Keigo, and Isshin Aren’t Funny
One of the aspects ofBleachwhich has aged the worst is its propensity for more perverse humor, which is especially prevalent early in the series. Kon is often responsible for this, with the assumption that harassment from a stuffed animal would be funny, but it really isn’t. Kon isn’t the only one, though; Ichigo’s friend Keigo and Orihime’s friend Chizuru both have a tendency towards perverted humor as well. By far the most egregious is Ichigo’s father, Isshin, who in early chapters comments on his daughters' panties in a way that’s truly revolting.
These types of perverted characters are beginning to fall out of favor in anime and manga, and it makes them especially stand out when watching with a modern eye.
Since most of these characters aren’t important to the overall narrative, their existence is purely for comedic relief, but they don’t even do that well. These types of perverted characters are beginning to fall out of favor in anime and manga, and it makes them especially stand out when watching with a modern eye. That makes the perverted characters and humor associated with them easily the part ofBleachwhich has aged the worst.
Bleach
Bleach is a multimedia franchise created by Tite Kubo. The franchise started as a Japanese manga series. Ichigo Kurosaki is the main protagonist who is granted the powers of a being called the Soul Reaper. The success of the manga led to two anime TV shows, four feature-length animations, and several video games.
