Bleach

It was not.

It is an interesting question, what did cause Bleach to lose its popularity?

Cause Nardo is still going on strong even if the current main product is a mediocre show about the ninja-school (that is about as effective as the American education system) life of Nardo’s son.

What made a sizable enough amount of people to stop supporting Bleach?

Edited by slimcoder on Apr 5th 2019 at 12:38:45 PM

I want to say the main character not appearing for long stretches of time.

Nardo's son gets by on character interaction and the liverties they have now that they aren't chained down by manga.

So Mitsuki is what keeps the show alive then.

The show seems to be popular enough.

Well it is Naruto.

Its at a level of popularity that I'm not sure what can kill it.

Its around Dragon Ball's standing sorta really.

I think one reason may be because Bleach has a problem with not letting things breathe. One fight leads to another over and over again.

Also, I feel that it is less of a steady decrease in quality and more of the quality rising and falling. This is of course true for many series, but I think that Kubo wanting to quit at several points made it more noticeable.

This has probsbly happened in other shows but it feels like it stands out with Bleach where they had to interrupt the action to do filler arcs because everything was a breakneck fight fight fight fight all the time

And the characters in the show lampshade it

To this day everything post-Aizen leaving Soul Society and pre-Yammamoto gets stomped by Yhwach is a blur. I recall staying up to 1 in the morning and wondering why Ichigo and co were still in that desert after what seemed like a month or two of Bleach airing. Reruns, perhaps.

Then the Vandenrich come in with all of their crazy sh't - Askin and his "death ball poison adaption" whatever. Barro the sniper dude who turns into some kind of phoenix. The evil hand thing that Mayuri fights. Whatever the heck happened with Kenpachi. Yoruichi turning into an electric, naked cat. The zombie fetish girl who turned her ally into a sex slave zombie. Hitsugaya getting turned into a zombie. All of the other V-Reich whose names correspond with the English alphabet for some reason. Somewhere down the line Ichigo finally (Finally) finishes training, races to fight Yhwach, fights Yhwach, loses said fight, Aizen gets stabbed, epilogue, Ichigo and Orihime have a son.

That is my modest, off-the-cuff recollection of Bleach post-Soul Society arc.

Now to be fair I didn't read or follow it consistently, and I mostly backtracked from when Mayuri started fighting Pernida, but I was able to watch Naruto Part 1 years ago when it was on Toonami then backtrack from the War Arc of the manga all the way to the point where Team 7 went after Sasuke. Despite reading it sporadically, I had a much clearer picture of what was going on.

So either my ability to backtrack/read cliffnotes got f-cked in-between skimming Naruto and Bleach, or Naruto was just easier to follow in general.

Not that Bleach is inherently worse, but I ended up "what the frigg is going on" more than I have with Naruto or

Edited by Soble on Apr 5th 2019 at 7:18:21 AM

I guess it depends on what you prefer more than anything. I remember Bleach quite well, Naruto's a bit fuzzy in the war arc, and I'm extremely fuzzy on the current arc of One Piece despite the fact that I am currently reading it. The same thing happened back in the Zou arc, which is virtually gone from my memory.

I should have added that I think the truncated ending was something you could really feel in the story even without knowing the background and that hurt things. But I don't agree with the common perception (which I believe to be) that around Hueco Mundo-FKT there was a decline in quality that the series never recovered from (or completely recovered from).

I do thing that section of the story suffered, but I was still enjoying it through its run. I then enjoyed the Fullbring arc, though the ending was rushed and had other issues.

And the final arc really kicked things into gear, having some interesting ideas, satisfying pay-off to earlier plot threads, and really cool moments. It's such a shame that Kubo's health deteriorated so much, and I think he tried too hard to include everything he wanted at the start of the arc so his health caught up with him more at the end. It feels really harsh to say, but he probably should have started cutting things sooner. Hindsight's 20-20 though and we don't know exactly when things hit 'oh shit' territory for his health.

So yeah, I'm of the opinion that the FKT decline was never so drastic for this series and it had definitely recovered from it by the final arc.

Edited by Saiga on Apr 6th 2019 at 12:17:27 AM

I mean, I'd say that FKT was a definite dip in quality, but that the series recovered after that- probably the thing that caused the biggest perception problem for the post-FKT was that the series had failed to adequately establish that there were bigger bad guys than Aizen out there.

To be clear, I don't believe he was ever intended to be the final villain, but there was so focus on him and so little on his place in the grand scheme of things that I can totally understand why somebody less inclined to devote headspace to minutiae of Bleach's story that myself might come away with the idea that he was, and that therefore everything after that was pointlessly dragging out a series that should've ended.

And then there a second period of decline, which is everything that happens after the fighting moves into the royal palace. There were still bright spots, like Askin and that Hand guy whose name I don't remember, but things had gotten incoherent, badly paced, and downright weird. And that was, unfortunately, the note the series ended on.

Oh yeah. So many people saw Aizen as the final villain, especially when people quoting fake interviews where Kubo mentioned as such.

I'm not entirely sure how you'd set up that he wasn't the final villain, or that there was something after him, without undermining his current presence.

I guess it should have been obvious by the fact that even in FKT there were many unsolved mysteries around.

I mean, the groundwork was there, it just wasn't emphasized- we had talk about a secret squad of super-captains hiding off-screen, and we had the fact that his entire goal was to make a key that let him get into the place where said super-captains were hiding.

A true final villain certainly would never have been thwarted before getting a key like that, and so the fact that he needed to wipe out Karakura Town to make the key, the thing that was definitely not going to happen, tells us that he's not the final villain. But, of course, all of that was only brought up, like, twice. Which is mind-boggling when you think about it- Aizen's entire motivation is only really brought up twice, and the first time is a dry exposition dump.

People were convinced he was going to find a way into the Royal Realm, though. There was references to a fake interview where Kubo said that Ichigo and Aizen's final fight would be in the King's Realm, a lot of people saw the destruction of Karakura Town as a red herring and that he'd find another way to get there (a big theory is that he was actually letting his Espada die because they had enough souls within them to make the key).

It's a pretty common twist in the story for the villain to find another way to their goal if an earlier stage appears to be twarted. Hell, that's how Aizen got the Hogyoku (even if we didn't learn that was his goal until after Rukia was saved). It would be a very Aizen thing to do to go 'oh, I didn't really need to destroy Karakura town'.

That Espada theory seemed so almost plausible at the time

I suppose you're right that that would be a very Aizen thing to do, but, like he didn't do that, and the possibility of him doing that was never brought up. He might've if he had been the final villain, but the more time past without that happening, the less likely him having the status became, if that makes sense.

And anyway, once you reach the point where all the Espada are down and we haven't even met Squad Zero yet, well, then he's also not the final villain even if he gets into the Royal Realm, because then the shape of the story is 'Aizen gets his ass handed to him to establish Squad Zero's powers'.

Edited by Gilphon on Apr 5th 2019 at 11:16:48 AM

And in the end the one who found another way was Yhwach instead.

The possibility wouldn't be brought up until he actually did it. And he was defeated before he could do something like that, which is well after people expected the series to end with him.

People had all the expectation that the Espada would all go down before he went to the Royal Realm (I'm not sure what anyone expected the RG to do), so that didn't change anything.

Edited by Saiga on Apr 6th 2019 at 1:29:37 AM

Essentially, if Aizen wasn't meant to be the final villain as Kubo intended, then it wasn't a good idea to devote so much of the series on him without properly establishing there were higher forces.

He's the main villain for roughly half of the series. By comparison, Ginjou and Ywach only got one arc, even if the latter had a higher threat level and plot involvement.

Edited by IndirectActiveTransport on Apr 14th 2019 at 9:36:47 AM

What does this have to do with Bleach?

Did you listen it?

It's your responsibility to describe what it is.

-New Challenger-So I'm up against a rubber band man and a fairy tale? You must think I'm a joke, so I'm gonna put you both through hell. I don't even need to bankai, because you're both small fry. Beat you both with one eye, because it's finally my time. This is my debut, you can't believe what I can teach you. Fire or rubber, you know it really doesn't matter because it all ends the same you can't stop the show stopper.

Personally I think Natsu won, but Ichigo was uncontested, that's a huge advantage.

Edited by IndirectActiveTransport on Apr 15th 2019 at 9:22:57 AM