Most of the new Shinigami, who later became main supporting characters, were also memorable and had plenty of new abilities that were sometimes cooler than the main cast’s powers. The plot itself also maintained tension, momentum and focus in a way that Kubo hasn’t been able to do since. The best part of the arc was Aizen’s introduction at the end, where he came off as an unbeatable villain who had been manipulating everyone involved from the start. Basically everything that was good at the start improved: the fights were better, the new characters had a lot of cool abilities and Ichigo’s friends got more chances to shine. The second major arc, the Soul Society arc, was where Bleach hit its peak. It wasn’t anything amazing, but the fights were good, the supporting cast had potential and there were plenty of interesting abilities. There were a few longer arcs that introduced the supporting cast, but most of it was just Ichigo fighting the newest Hollow to appear. It started out as a pretty straightforward monster of the week action series. I won’t give much of a plot summary since I’m assuming everyone reading this is at least somewhat familiar with Bleach (it would also take way too long), but I will go through each arc and look at what worked, what didn’t and how it changed over time.Įarly Bleach was radically different from what it became later on. I’ve been following Bleach for a long time. I first picked it up back when the anime was airing on Toonami and I’ve followed both the anime and the manga ever since. With the manga having just ended, I’d like to look at how it went from one of the most popular shonen franchises of it’s time to having the anime get cancelled and the manga rushed to an ending. Warning: This editorial contains major spoilers for Bleach.