Anime Review — Bleach

May 4th, 2007 by

Bleach logo

Episodes so far: 124
Episodes watched: 124

Bleach has become my favourite (yes, I use the Queen’s English) anime over the years, and that’s saying a lot. Being an otaku, I follow numerous anime shows every week, and have anime-a-thons regularly to catch up on series I didn’t see during their lifespan. Bleach has always stuck out to me for a few reasons that I will outline to basically encourage you to watch this great anime too.

Anime is nothing without well-developed characters. Even if an anime has the most beautiful artwork, if the characters weren’t given a soul, didn’t have life breathed into them by their creators, then the anime would be worthless. Tite Kubo, the creator/director/etc of Bleach did just that for the characters in Bleach. Almost every character has a well-developed persona, back-story, and reasons for how they behave. Entire groups of episodes are dedicated to characters’ stories near the beginning of the series, showing you what shaped their lives, and how they’ve shaped each other. This makes it so that while you’re watching the anime, you understand (and often sympathize) with what the characters are doing, even as they have problems with each other. The characters in Bleach seem all the more real because they are given desires, dreams, hopes, fears, flaws, and loves. There are only a few things better than an anime with such deeply and well-shaped characters.

Kurosaki Ichigo

The second key aspect of Bleach is action. Being a derived from a Shonen (action or “boy”) manga, Bleach of course is home to many, many intese battles. The main character, Ichigo (pictured above), is constantly at war not only against corporeal (physical) antagonists, but also ones inside himself. An interesting aspect of the anime is that Ichigo’s inner battles are portrayed physically so that the viewer can understand (allegorically) what’s going on inside him. Over the course of the show, so far, Ichigo battles hoards of enemies (some who become allies), each with their own stories, purposes, and unique battle-styles. If you’re in the mood for action, Bleach won’t disappoint either.

Ichigo Vs Hollow

The third key aspect (which I will cover briefly, so as to avoid spoilers) is story. The main and general plot of Bleach is that a 15-year-old boy named Kurosaki Ichigo is thrust unexpectedly into a world of battling evil lost souls (Hollows) and must not only learn how to function as a Death God (Shinigami), but also learn how to wield his powers in such a way that will allow him to save both the real and spiritual world from annihilation. To do this, he must conquer not only his enemies, but his inner demons and doubts, to be able to do the one thing he wants to do the most, protect those that are close to him.

A fourth aspect that is also very central in this anime is a solid sense of humour (Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves). This sense of humour pops up in the most random of places during the show (often times to break tension). It’s also able to roam freely in the very humourous shorts that start to precede the anime episodes fairly shortly after the anime begins. Some of the more humourous characters in the show end up being Zaraki Kenpachi (coupled with the kawaii (cute) Yachiru), Urahara, Don Kanonji (who the show forgets about rather quickly), Kon, and poor old Hanataro.

From now on all of your opinions are rejected!

Umm… That’s about it for now, really. I have to say that I’m very passionate about the quality of this anime. I’ll give you a numerical rundown of some of the aspects that you might be concerned about below:

Story: 10 / 10 (both compelling and entertaining, even through filler episodes)
Artwork Quality: 9 / 10 (not the most beautiful anime, but still very good)
Sound: 8 / 10 (not a huge soundtrack, but it does its job well)
Characters: 10 / 10 (very deep, very compelling)
Humour: 9.7 / 10 (quite funny when it needs to be)

Overall (not an average): 9.9999 / 10
Like I said, it’s my favourite. ^_^

Please for the love of the universe do not start watching the English dub if this anime.