As a Bleach fan, I totally get why you dipped.
Self-professed Wild Card who thinks cynicism isn't so bad.I can relate to that. For me, it was the Arrancar and Deicide arcs was where I dropped Bleach. I was getting genuinely annoyed with Sosuke Aizen and I wanted him gone. It also didn't help that I was working the night shift at the time and I had to finish the series on my Cable DVR when I returned home. I have the same problems with the series as you do with the added caveat where it had too many characters and too much filler in the anime.
Edited by GAP on Jun 1st 2025 at 12:59:12 PM
"Fan, a Mega Man character."As you might imagine, the source material manga is much more digestible and lacks filler. Stuff that drags on in the original anime breezes by in the manga when binge-reading it. I will admit that waiting to read it week to week was torturous, but reacting with everyone to whatever bullshit twists Kubo put out week after week was also some of the most fun I've had in an internet fandom.
Anyway, TYBW anime is tight and lacks filler, so I find it much, much better than the earlier anime adaptation.
For me, Aizen worked better in the moments when he was being more irreverent, sadistic, and comedic.
For example, Aizen using his powers to replace himself with Momo to get Hitsugaya to stab her was tragic the first time. Then, the second time it was hilarious and almost vindictive. It's the same thing when he replaced himself with Ichigo in the final battle. Aizen's amusement then was infections. Plus, it's just a simple straight forward use of his powers. It's all foreshadowed and logical which is really nice to see.
It's primarily when the narrative tries to sell me on Aizen's brilliance or mystery that I start to feel annoyed. Aizen's actions aren't dumb, but I never got the impression that he was super smart. And the "mysteries" about the soul king never felt organic.
I found his manipulation and abuse of Hinamori to be unnecessarily cruel. It was him being evil for the sake of being evil. Which, to me, made Hinamori a tragic figure.
For the most part, Aizen comes across as a ridiculously OP a-hole who effortlessly 1-shots pretty much anyone not named Yamamoto, or Ichigo. It makes me wonder why he even bothers with Kyouka Suigetsu at all when he can already defeat everyone with such ease? Which made him equally boring and frustrating to watch and insufferable to have to endure since a significant portion of the main story centers around him.
The only other villains i can think of that come close to Aizen's level of Sue-ness are: Reishen (from Black God) and Love Espada (from Maken-ki!). Though, to fair to Espada, at least her case was eventually subverted when she turned out to be not-so-invincible after all.
It was cruel and tragic to me the first time. The additional times almost crossed over into black comedy but I understand that it is very subjective.
Regarding Kyouka Suigetsu, I think it was ok in a vacuum. I liked that the weakness was that he can't use it on the main character or his friends because he didn't get a chance to show them it before. It was a nice way of explaining why Ichigo and company were important even though all the other Shinigami exist. However, the execution I think was the problem. First, Ichigo being immune to Kyouka felt less important compared to him having a secret ultra form that wasn't revealed until just then. Second, all of his friends were also immune didn't get to play any role in the final battle. It feels like a wasted opportunity.
Edited by Freshwater on Jun 2nd 2025 at 3:17:38 AM
Dude, I completely forgot about Lille Barro (or however you spell his name). I was watching random clips from the TYBW arc and saw this one
pop up in my YT recommendations list. As soon as I watched that scene, I immediately thought: that should've been Sui-Feng's bankai.
No clumsy rocket, no big explosion. Just a simple sniper rifle that'd allow her to covertly pick the enemy off one-by-one with clinical precision. The victim has no idea they're even under fire 'til it's already too late and bystanders don't know where to run because they don't know where the shots are coming from. That's assassination.
Lille had it down to a science. He was one of the few Quincy I can honestly say I liked... until he transformed and the fight turned outlandish. If only he had been Sui-Feng's opponent, a showdown between assassins. Talk about a missed opportunity on two fronts.
I mean you gotta truncate the 6 other days down into the three you wrote
might as well make Yhwach's motive out in the open
especially when you gonna pull the Role reversal for Yhwach and Uryu verse Ichibei and Shutara
which is probably my favorite fights cause it flips the Shinigami back into the Antagonist roles like they were in the soul society arc.
like the when he does it with the Mask de masculine fight
Mask only becomes the villain when he purposefully blows up james in an attempt to kill Renji
I think if Kubo had been alot more on the nose with the "Are you sure you should be rooting for the Shinigami?" during the SR fights it might have endeared them like the Espada and Arrancar... instead of the Kubo treated them like he was having to speedrun his way to a kill quota
You got 9 days Tite calm the fuck down... oh wait right.
This is an outrage against Luminara!![]()
My personal read is that the Shinigamis were 100% the bad guys a million years ago and that's not something that should be still relevant to the beings inhabiting the three worlds today. Ywhach is not wrong in wanting to release his father and take revenge on the Royal Guard, but the current Soul Society is more right in refusing to become collateral damage to that retribution.
The Shinigami are like the Marines in one piece
They are effectively defending a perverted system of existence that benefits their Elite ruling class who are effectively nigh immortal and live in splendor while everybody else lives like old world peasants
The arc literally starts with Mayuri having his men gather up a district and kill them to keep the "balance"
Yes the current crop outside of Mayuri are effectively innocent of the crimes of the past since we have next to no info on the Quincy massacre from 200 years ago 'other then the attack caused a mass change in staffing with several Captains needing to be installed'
welll jury still out on what Shunsui and Ukitake were doing... and the shinigami being near ageless also make matters of Time questionable
Edited by FrozenWolf2 on Jun 19th 2025 at 5:04:24 AM
This is an outrage against Luminara!
I'd say it's more likely that the Gotei were originally intended to be unambiguously villains (just look at Renji when we first see him), but they became popular so the execs at Shounen Jump likely had Kubo retroactively make them heroic instead. It's not unheard-of. In fact, it's a trend.
Look at Harley Quinn: she was originally a villain, but she quickly became popular, so Warner Bros. started making her more sympathetic, until she finally left the Joker and switched sides by becoming an anti-hero.
Vegeta, Knuckles and Shadow the Hedgehog, the Turks, all more of the same. So it wouldn't surprise me if Kubo followed the same trend with the Shinigami.
I don't think that lines up at all.
Renji is clearly way more sympathetic when he next appears in the SS arc, which doesn't take long. We're introduced to a sympathetic Shinigami in Hanataro fairly early on as well.
I don't think that lines up well with thinking he could have made all those changes so rapidly with how Jump chapters are completed weeks ahead of being published and that we weren't properly introduced to the Shinigami for a while into the SS arc, when we already started to get more mixed portrayals of them.
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Renji was outright hostile and antagonistic towards Rukia when we first saw him and openly mocked her about her upcoming execution — in front of Byakuya, no less.
Rukia, Hanatoro, Hinamori, Unohana (at that time), and Isane seemed more like the exceptions compared to the rest of the Gotei.
It'd be like saying the Fire Nation wasn't all "that bad" just because Ty Lee was cheerful and quirky and one of Iroh's prison guards was nice enough that kindly warned her to not show up for work the next day. It wouldn't change what the rest of the FN was like as a whole.
Edited by MiinU on Jun 19th 2025 at 5:52:49 AM
I think some of the Reapers probably would've stayed villains - in addition to the Obviously Evil Mayuri and Gin, Yamamoto, Byakuya, and Suifeng were also pretty damn awful in their early appearances.
However, I do think a Quincy faction and a Hollow faction were planned as major antagonists all along, the former because Kubo outright said so, the latter because some organization being behind the Hollow attacks was hinted at as early as Grand Fisher.
Maybe Ichigo and co. were originally going to be the sole unambiguously good characters, caught in the middle of the squabbles of larger evil factions?

'k, so against my better judgement, I decided to check out some of the TYBW arc to see what all the hype is about and... and it wasn't long before I remembered why I dropped Bleach to begin with. Too many bs powers, haxx, and utter lack of tension.
Fights in previous arcs were at least interesting since you could try to gauge how the opponents stacked up to each other, based on their relative skills (zanjutsu, hakuda, shunpo, kido) and their shikai when necessary.
The battles during TYBW arc are just bs contests to see who can out-hax whom. Gorgeous animation, I'll give it that, but that's about all it really has going for it. So after watching a few clips, I decided to follow my first mind and simply ignore the rest of Bleach.
Edited by MiinU on Jun 1st 2025 at 6:02:41 AM