Now there are a lot of fans of the Shounen Jump manga and anime, Bleach. It’s one of the more popular series in the US, and of course does well in Japan too. However, along the way many fans fall off of Bleach or start to feel as if it’s dragging. Something is missing, something that drew you into the series initially and kept you reading for a long time. I believe there to be a simple indicator of whether or not you feel like either dropping Bleach or putting it on hiatus or whatever.
When a character reveals their Bankai for the first time, are you excited?
If you said, “No,” then it’s possible you need a break.
It’s difficult to tell with whom the “fault” lies. Maybe it’s that you the reader have read so much Bleach that it’s starting to become old hat. Maybe you’ve lost a taste for endless Shounen Fighting. Or maybe the author Kubo is losing his touch, or at the very least losing his touch in your eyes. Whatever the reason may be, you have the option of sitting back, avoiding the comic, and who knows? Maybe you’ll come back to it a month later and appreciate it anew. Or you might just never read it again.
But really, it all comes down to the Bankai. The reason why I use this specifically is that because the Bankai Reveal is always supposed to be a Big Deal in Bleach, and if the Big Deal moments aren’t grabbing you, something is up.
Oh, and if you tired of the manga before the first Bankai is ever revealed…well I can’t help you there.
OGIUE MANIAX 
I’ve found Bleach boring for a while now. I don’t think it’s me. I think it’s Kubo.
Bleach has turned almost entirely into a fighting manga. I don’t like fighting unless I care about the characters; otherwise, I don’t feel any actual tension. In Bleach, the fighting has been so close to constant lately, that I’ve lost emotional contact with characters who I used to really like.
The current round of fights, for example, has gone on since chapter 316. It’s currently chapter 363. That’s… 47 chapters of uninterrupted fighting. More than an eighth of the *entire Bleach manga*, spent on one group of fights.
And even worse, those fights are becoming more and more formulaic. The endless “suprise! that wasn’t my true strength!” turnarounds are getting staler and staler. Sometimes he mixes it up with a last minute rescue, but that’s not enough.
I’m not going to say that my opinion is anything but subjective. However, I’m certain that I’m not the only person who thinks 47 chapters is too long for a fight.
I want to like Bleach again. I wish he would finish this fight, and this arc. Then he could remind me that I like the characters he’s created. I know he can do this. The negative chapters were character driven and interesting. I just wish that carried over to the rest of the manga.
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I agree with honeybunch that the problem is Kubo. I remember reading Zombie Powder and that one also suffered from too many “cool” characters and one fight after the other. The good thing is that since it’s only four volumes long, there weren’t that many characters. Kubo seems to make a very good start and his designs are very original, but it seems he can’t develop the story properly halfway into it.
The first 6-7 volumes of Bleach were one of the most awesome shonen manga I’ve read as of today. I’m not that much into the fighting parts, but Soul Society Arc was the first heavily invested in fighting (and even that dragged a bit) and due to epic revelations and what not it was ok. But now… Bleach has become bland:
1- There are too many “cool characters”. Everyone is so cool no one is cool anymore. Everyone ab-so-lu-te-ly needs to be part of a fight and demonstrate they’re cool. That gets old very fast, and characters I thought were great are lame now.
2- The fighting has become endless (as honeybunch said) and they’re all basically the same. Looking cool, the winner first gets a little bit of damage (so it looks like omg he’s in trouble) and then owns the loser (and heck the bad guys aren’t menacing anymore).
I think the last fight that really got me on my toes is Rukia’s (and that was quite a while ago). That one was truly emotional because it heavily involved her past. All the others… meh.
I’ll pick it up again when the plot advances a little, aka when the ending is near, since readers who started it (I read it in Toriyama World first) are at least entitled to know the ending.
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My problem with bleach around the time i stopped reading/watching it is that it ended up becoming nothing more than a “big bankai reveal” every damned week. Also, it wasn’t just the good guys revealing their new powers to the enemies, but the bad guys revealing their powers as well.
It didn’t help that the current large story arc was almost a carbon copy of the previous large story arc only with 400% more of these dick measuring contests and less character development, either.
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I tried to continue Bleach at some point in 2006. Followed from somewhere in 2003/4 to around ch200; the first major arc (saving Rukia) was about the apex for me. :/
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I agree with all the above, but I want to add that nobody from the “good’ side has yet to die; only the “bad” folks are getting killed. This is ludicrous in my opinion…it gets boring when you think a character is dead when a new power is revealed, et al.
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Have to agree with everyone here. I remember when Bleach had storyline, from the dead brother turned Hollow, to the Hollow that killed Ichigo’s mother, there was real character development. But it’s changed. As the first poster said, it’s nothing but fights no between characters that no one cares about. Not to mention Rukia, one of my favorite characters in the manga, has barely been seen at all during this arc (I think she appeared for one or two chapters when number 10 leveled up to become number 0).
The fights have all gone dragonball. Guy gets his butt whipped, then powers up, he beats up the next guy, who then powers up himself, then they go back and forth like this till one of them (the bad guy) is dead. Formulaic, boring and repetitive fights, combined with seeing them constantly, makes the manga lose everything it once had. Not to mention that they’ll spend an almost entire chapter and not two words will be written.
Where’s the plot? Where’s the storyline and character development? There is none. :\
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My main problem is the lack of suspense in the fights… NOT ONE “good” (a lot of them are perverts and/or idiots/bastards so that’s relative) character has died yet! Instead of getting rid of one of the 1000000 characters he just adds more, my MAIN complaint is the vizards and their stupid plotline, just who are they? Ex-Captains and lieutenants my ass, they’re all a bunch of idiots and pervs… the current captains are NOTHING like them at all. Honestly after the Rukia ark Bleach just becomes a headache trying to remember faces, names and powers…
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i felt i lost my passion in bleach simply because every arc are getting redundant, showing the lack of creativity which i think is getting dried up as each episodes passed.
the first episodes are good, but there’s nothing worth interesting that hooked me up after.
i feel sorry for this series because i followed ichigo from day one and expected a lot, but now i don’t even care what happened,whether in manga or anime.
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I can definitely relate to that. I felt like the first few episodes, back when it was just Ichigo and Rukia running around and chopping Hollows was one of the best periods for Bleach, if not the best.
It reminds me of Yu Yu Hakusho, which also had an excellent beginning with detective work and such, but then turned into shounen villains and fighting tournaments.
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