I wanted you to be my favorite:

Written by adlorin on June 19, 2010 at 1:00 PM

Bleach features the theme of the Shinigami , a glorified grim reaper of western culture, though largely inspired by the Edo period and a sense of responsibility to humans' souls. This series focuses around lead-boy Ichigo Kurosaki and his involvements with the Shinigami. *

Character development in most senses is done quite well, and the viewer is often left with a sense of attachment and empathy towards both the good and evil characters. Sometimes this requires a few episodes to really understand one particular character -- which can be enjoyable and rewarding. Other times, it truly feels like the viewer is being bled and drug though much filler and fluff which doesn't substantiate the storyline, but only allows the series to air for a longer period of time. The action - although too limited IMHO - is excellent, and the important fight scenes reflect a lot of time and effort on both the director’s and artist’s efforts. The theme, fight scenes and over-all development are substantial and enough for me to want this to become my favorite anime, a place in my heart held by Darker Than Black.

The down sides to Bleach are numerous, the worst of which is that the story focuses so heavily on a particular theme, that when it goes non-cannon (which it does for months at a time) it really distorts the significance, importance and virtue of what the series is supposed to be about; which makes it very easy to loose interest. This is one of the few times, IMHO, when purists whom clamour the manga as being fantastic and the Anime as being subpar are actually right. Had the anime focused largely on the manga, and utilized fillers to develop characters further, such as going back in time to develop the understanding of why things they way they are today, Bleach would had the single must substantial and developed world of any anime and/or manga in existence. Bleach really had that potential IMHO.
But instead, the fillers are often used to jump into some unspecified future segmet – which often comes in the middle of important developments and violates the actual story line to abuse our attachment and knowledge of Bleach to create sort of sub-Bleach-world, which cannot or should not exist. It’s this sense which seems to abuse the viewer’s understanding and interest in order to simply increase its number of episodes. This appears to be the single most thing that people complain about, when they complain about Bleach.
Although Bleach airs for roughly 30 minutes, there is usually no more than 15 minutes of actual story going on. The first 4-5 minutes of most every episode consists of the opening credits and recap of the previous episode. These racaps go into so much detail that it’s possible to miss every other episode and still have 95% of the story down. After this, there is about 15-17 minutes of the current episode, and 8 to ten minutes of commercials, ending credits and additional ending filler / fluff.
The last bit of contention to be had is dialogue, which is incessant at best. Enemies will hold their weapons, speak for several minutes and then perhaps clash swords, continue talking, and then resolve sometime in the next episode. While this might feel okay from time to time, it seems to be the basis of fights in this series. Evil characters are typically quite cheesy and unreasonable in the effect that they will stand around, taunt and explore the meaning of all which is going on in virtually every fight, save two key bad guys (Grimmjow Jeagerjaques and Nnoitora Jiruga) – whom do live an act on the basis of what would be considered appropriate for their character’s alignment.

Over all, it’s an okay anime which had the potential to become something of the highest order. Whether it’s the fault of TV producers forcing this to be milked for all its worth or change of heart/direction/finances from the series’ creator it’s hard to say, but for what it’s worth, it’s fun to get into if the story line is only sort-of meaningful to you, you like engaging dialogue and characters who appear to change their clothing between episodes. :)