A treatise on strength and its two founts, courage and power.

A person's resolve to shatter the millstone of fate.

A willingness to depict different aspects of power in a manner both directed and artistic.

A recognition of solitude swathed in sorrow, held upright by words.

A panache unbroken by the plethora of distinctive character designs and fighting abilities.

A stark portrayal of the soul within the blade.

My #1 favorite manga as of writing this review. Give me another shounen manga with the same level of art and attention to how power is conceived... BLEACH is great, it really is. Don't view it as just another trope-infested shounen rife with flat characters restricted to one-liners, repetitive fights, lots and lots of fights with little constructive dialogue, fights that follow the same formula with variations, fights that end as expected. If you can look past all that, change your perspective and realize that Bleach is something different -- an exploration of sorts, Tite Kubo's means of showing us Humans the possibilities and potential residing within life energy, reiatsu in this case, using characters as mere vehicles or even vessels that carry such power to varying degrees and combinations. Ichigo is the centerpiece, but still with the many character dynamics going on it's all part of a spiraling wheel of Fate, or millstone as Kubo deemed it. The anime is best viewed, I think, after the manga such that you can enjoy it as a moving, sound-backed representation of the source.

But even then, the anime is a poor manifestation for the vision Kubo strove for with mere black and white is enough. Even with just those two shades, there is a certain ineffable flavor or quality that resonates within the created shadows and parameters of light. The general human design is also quite clear-cut in a manner not so cut out by Kishimoto, Togashi, or even Oda. What I like to call "focus" or the mangaka's ability to present certain parts of characters or flickers of movement with truncated panels, the counterpart to anime and films' directors, is a heavy component of what makes Bleach a strong manga. It utilizes the capabilities of the medium and can't really be bettered by any other. To illustrate just look at Hunter x Hunter, which was floored by the 2011 anime adaptation, or Boku no Hero Academia, whose anime literally looks like the manga colored and given movement and sound.

You could gripe about the lackluster character development and progression. Call out the sheer prevalence of fighting. Criticize the imperfect writing. Label Bleach as just a mainstream shounen that doesn't deserve anything more than what its genre demands.

But let me tell you this. Align yourself with the artist's mission, the intent behind the making, and perhaps you can see more clearly. Break free of the limits placed on you by popular perception. If you haven't seen the blade unsheathed, keep it that way. If Naruto is a story about the meaning of Hokage -- if One Piece is a story of pure adventure -- Bleach is a story of the strength held in a blade and its origins. Watch Ichigo get back up, again and again, witness his courage, and ponder the process of black being bleached to white.