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Has Bleach Lost Its Status As One Of The Big Three Anime?

Has Bleach Lost Its Status As One Of The Big Three Anime?

The latest season of the anime Bleach is airing nowadays, with one new episode being aired every Monday every week. Bleach Season 17 is set to excite and tantallize fans with a final battle between the Quincies and Soul reapers, who have remained enemies for thousands for years.

However, while the heat and excitement is strong, it is also equally true that many people have dropped this anime long time back due to a variety of reasons like repetitive and super-long fights, many anime fillers (sometimes, entire seasons), and over-reliance on the main character’s saviour complex to keep the plot going, among others.

In addition, many people found the mangaka Tite Kubo’s choice of plot direction very poor and slow-paced with very lazy authorship. Such was people’s discontentment with the anime that many anime weebs in online forums had contemplated removing it from the Big Three List which includes Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece.

Read this: Bleach: Why Head Captain Yamamoto’s Bankai Will Traumatize You

While we don’t necessarily agree with their arguments, here are some points that we think deserve some mention:

Fillers, Fillers, Tons of Them!

Bleach anime is filled with plenty of fillers, which can be pretty fun sometimes. However, one’s tolerance level of fillers can’t withstand 3-4 filler seasons, which is the case with Bleach. The Bount Arc, Zanpakuto Rebellion Arc, and the Shusuke Amagai arc were some eyesores that didn’t really add anything substantial to the plot.

Has Bleach Lost Its Status As One Of The Big Three Anime?

Read this: Why Bleach Captains Are Getting Rampaged by The Quincy Sternritter

Overreliance On Ichigo’s Strength To Drive The Plot

The first 3 seasons leading up to Rukia’s execution and Sosuke Aizen’s betrayal were awesome and had many fans engaged. The introduction to the world of Soul Society with its elaborate world of soul reaper squads and military-style hierarchies was extremely entertaining.

However, Ichigo had started to feel quite boring as a main character in a Shounen anime. This argument still holds ground despite the cliche of the overpowered Shounen anime MC.

We never get an idea why Ichigo has suddenly become much stronger than even the Captain-level Shinigamis who have sharpened and honed their skills for centuries. In a matter of less than a month, he even achieved his Bankai, which is a bit hard to swallow.

Has Bleach Lost Its Status As One Of The Big Three Anime?
Image: Tite Kubo/Shueisha, TV TOKYO, dentsu, Pierrot

It almost felt like the world of Bleach always needs this substitute Shinigami to always save the day when there are hundreds of soul reapers who are as strong as him. There is no room for other characters to show off their skills and save the day too. This same pattern goes on for more than 2-3 arcs, which become repetitive and too predictable.

Read this: Bleach: Äs Nödt’s The Fear Will Wipe Out Soul Society

The World-building Is Poor

Unlike animes like One Piece, the world-building in Bleach is unimaginative and lacks creativity. The world of Soul Society is always focussed on the 13 squads when there is a world of spirits outside their barracks. This world could have received more spotlight to make the world-building more believable and rich.

Has Bleach Lost Its Status As One Of The Big Three Anime?

We see only Japanese-style houses arranged in the same fashion with soul reapers wrapped in the same Kimono. While this was the USP in the initial stages of watching it, it quickly gets boring. Take a leaf from One Piece, whose creator went on to create maps of the world of One Piece.

Hundreds of Characters

For viewers to enjoy the plot, they need to feel emotionally invested in the characters and their struggles. While Bleach too has us rooting for the struggles of Ichigo, Byakuya, Rukia, Renji, and many more, it is littered with a plethora of characters for whom we have no emotional attachments with.

All bleach characters... | Bleach Amino

Like, how am I supposed to care for the 3rd seat of the 8th Division? Moreover, most of them receive no good amount of battle scenes and their unique identities. Though an anime thrives on a unique combination of interesting characters, it often quickly becomes a recipe for disaster and boredom, like in Bleach.

 

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