When I was still starting out reading manga, one of the first series that I picked up was Bleach. At the time, I thought pretty well of it and hoped to see it develop further to better things. Unfortunately, the series failed to deliver on that more times than I care to mention.

STORY:

Bleach follows the generic shonen manga formula: Fight. Fight fight fight. Fight. Not to say that there's anything wrong with simplicity or fighting manga in general, just that there needs to be more substance in the plot and characters in that case. The problem with Bleach is that it doesn't make up for that simplistic formula and instead tries to craft story lines that fall on their face. It follows the arc system of story development, where the overall end goal is reached through a series of arcs. The first major arc, and the point when the series was at it's peak, was the Soul Society arc, but after that, a problem quickly become evident. After that, almost every arc reads like the Soul Society arc and Bleach has become so formulaic that it's not that hard overall to predict what happens. There will be a character who's main goal is to fight Ichigo, regardless of what plans the boss has laid down. There will be a stoic character who tries to stick to the plan, but ends up experiencing an emotional epiphany by the end of the arc and does something against the plan. One or more of Ichigo's friends (usually female), will end up getting kidnapped, or attacked, or brainwashed, or some other way of giving Ichigo a reason to rescue them. And rather than develop the abilities they already have, Ichigo and (possibly) the friends who aren't in danger will receive a power-up that will become obsolete in time for the next arc. Lather, rinse, repeat ad nauseum. Formulaic plots can work, but they work best when the formula for them is simple and easy to make each use of it unique. If it's possible to describe an arc in such vague detail that it can apply to any of the other arcs, your formula is WAY too complicated.

Another big problem is that Bleach frequently uses a "tell, don't show" method. What I mean by that is that many things get hyped up beyond belief or a character is established as being great, but these things are only done through characters talking about it. When we finally get to whatever it is that's been hyped up, it very rarely lives up to that hype, and in some cases fails to live up to it even before the hype even happens.

ART:

I've never really been interested in the art of a manga, or really most illustrated things I read, unless it's horrendously bad, but I feel like I should give credit here. The art of this manga is actually pretty good. Some of the character designs look good, even though at times it feels like it's just the same few characters drawn with different hair styles, clothes, etc., and Hollows look threatening without entering nightmare fuel territory and without looking too cartoony. That said, this manga has a problem with backgrounds. If there are any at all, it's essentially just black or white most of the time.

CHARACTERS:

Now that the good is out of the way, let's get into the characters. There's a lot of them. Too many of them in fact. Every arc introduces some 20 - 30 new characters that receive very little story time, exist just to be there and in general just take up space. We never find anything out about these characters, just that they exist and than we move on. The character's that do get focused on can barely be called characters at that as they are essentially just one-dimensional character archetypes more than anything. Each of them relates to some general archetype (whether it's the stoic, the hero, etc.) and never receive any development beyond that.

OVERALL:

I've said a lot of bad things about it, but at it's core, Bleach is just a lot of cliche and mediocre work, especially the later chapters. Still, I'd be lying if I said that I've never enjoyed the series. It has a pretty promising start, but the problems of the series become clear as it drags on. If you don't mind a repetitive plot, than you might like it, but otherwise, I'd advise staying away from it.