TL;DR: it starts off mediocre and gets even worse.
Synopsis: boy becomes a magical samurai, goofs off with his hot and cool female magical samurai friend and then goes to the spirit world to save her.
I first watched Bleach when I was like 13 and stuck with it until about episode 150. By then, I thought that there was two problems with Bleach: that the little green haired girl was too annoying and that Kubo was recycling themes and plot points. Even so, I thought the anime had a strong start and thought that it was unfortunate it had to fall that off hard. Most other reviewers seem to agree, though there is disagreement on when exactly it started to get worse.
After watching it as an adult, I think that both teenage Seb and all of the other reviewers were wrong. Bleach starts off poorly and ends poorly.
First, lets talk about the plausibility of the setting. We have a parallel spirit world that leaks monsters over to the real one, and special agents have to destroy them to save human lives. A non-negligible amount of humans (1/50000 according to the wiki) can see these spirits and interact with them, but this knowledge somehow has never leaked into the mainstream. According to a commenter, these spirit geniuses are frequently killed, which makes the setting more believable, but still rather crazy
Also, we find that at this Japanese school, most of the friends of this one spirit-seeing teenager also come to interact with the spirit world, whether it’s through family experiences or innate characteristics. The baseline chance of this happening is extremely low. Of course, you would assume spirit seers are much more likely to become friends with each other, but Ichigo was friends with most of these people before they all interacted with the spirit world.
Beyond the fact that the setting isn’t plausible or even creative, Kubo is also bad at writing scenes. The anime opens up with Ichigo beating up a bunch of teenagers over… Tipping a flower pot that was placed by a wall. A bit excessive. Yes, apparently that flower pot is important for spiritual reasons, but the people who knocked it over didn’t know that, and punishing them for it is both unjust and moralizing.
Another example of a poorly written scene is the principal scolding Ichigo and his friends for doing weird shit on TV after the spirit guide incident. All I have to ask is this: why would the principal care about their students being on television? Do people really see some students with uniforms goofing off and write off the school because of this? (Apparently this is a cultural shock — in Spain people are looser about protecting the reputation of private schools, but this doesn’t apply to Britain or Japan).
Last, there is the scene where Ichigo and his friends all look at the scoreboard of the test results. They discuss their scores like they saw them for the first time. For example, a girl who has been friends with Orihime for some time said “wow, you seem like a dumb girl but you score really highly on tests!”. Haven’t these people known each other for years? Why are they surprised? Rather poor exposition.
I must admit that there are some well written and entertaining scenes in Bleach, and what they all have in common is that Ichigo and Rukia are in them. It can’t be understated how much chemistry these two have, any scene with them in it is destined to be at least decent. But for whatever reason, Kubo has not abused this gold mine of a duo. In fact, he introduced too many side characters.
The lack of seriousness and quality in the writing hit me really hard when I started watching Bleach right after watching Legend of the Galactic Heroes. It’s like looking at a 600 lb bodybuilder’s chest and then glancing at Sydney Sweeney’s tits right after. The fact that the characters act in such exaggerated ways also makes this worse.
And then, there is the Uryu question. No idea why he had to introduce himself by telling Ichigo “I hate you because you are a soul reaper”. How ridiculous and cartoonish (though, I guess this is technically a cartoon). They do expand on how his race of people were extinguished by soul reapers, but taking his anger out on Ichigo, who did not even know what a quincy was, was weird as hell. An unlikable character, and not even well written to make up for it.
Uryu, as cringe as he is, somehow is not even the worst character of the series — that honor goes to Kon. Initially, he seemed to be a promising and entertaining character. Then, he got stuck in the stuffed animal, which was funny at first, but got old extremely quickly. The combination of the uselessness and the narcissistic personality makes him unbearable, and he’s even rapey. If this was a right wing twitter academy™ production, I would fine the rapiness funny, but this felt extremely out of place in a show for normal teenagers.
They also griefed the production a few times. For example, in episode 13, these characters open mouth like idiots for 10 whole seconds.
Bleach, like most bad anime, has some redeeming qualities.
The soundtrack is great. The individual pieces stand out on their own and are suitable for the atmopshere the series is trying to create. Their selection of which tracks to play isn’t the greatest, and they have a tendency to overuse Ichigo’s theme, which is a poor track: it’s too cheesy for epic moments, but too energetic for low stakes ones.
Rukia is a fantastic character. She has an entertaining and strong personality, and she has incredible chemistry with Ichigo. As this anime was written before 2012, there is no “hurr durr I am a strong female character” charade or monodimensionality; she simply has a naturally masculine personality, but an emotional side to her that she shows from time to time. She is physically attractive, but not grotesquely sexualised or fanserviced (that is left to the other women in the series…).
Beyond Rukia, Bleach’s cast is acceptable — Ichigo does have a “protagonist personality”, but he’s more mature and controlled than the typical shounen protagonist. Chad is also cool — it’s rare to see his combination of traits (quiet, eccentric, physically strong, intelligent) in the same person. Since these traits are close to uncorrelated, it doesn’t come off as weird or unrealistic.
The anime was well introduced, even when you consider the flaws of the first episode. The details of the episode are unimportant, but in the grand scheme of things, the episode tells us that there is a secret spirit world that Ichigo can somehow interact with, that he has a dead mother, and that Ichigo becomes a soul reaper. The existnce of the spirit world was already shown in the first scene, which is great, as it tells the viewers what they are getting into.
To conclude, Bleach’s first arc has a lot of issues that make it a bad anime, and it also drops off hard after the soul society arc. This is sad, as Bleach did have the potential to be a B tier anime with a solid romantic pairing (Ichigo and Rukia), but Kubo tanked the project by isolating Rukia, recycling themes and plot points, and writing individual scenes poorly. If I were to rank the first 60 episodes alone, I would give it a 6 or a 7, but when you consider that it fell off with time, I would have to give it a rank closer to a 5.
Side note: I watched the anime subbed and dubbed. In both versions, Ichigo and Rukia have great voice actors, though I thought that the voice actors were better matches for the characters in the sub. Personally, I chose to watch most of it subbed.
Scoring:
Design (10/15):
Distinguishment: (3/5) - generic art, unoriginal school setting
Animation: (1/2) - eh
Sound: (1/2) - eh
OST: (2/2) - extraordinary, but Ichigo’s theme is overused
Character designs: (2/2) - conceptually strong
Backgrounds: (1/2) - eh
Script (30/50):
Character Investment: (8/10) - love Rukia.
Character Realism: (1/2) - the main cast is, side characters not so much
Character Complexity: (2/3)
Plot solidness: (1/5) - writing is inconsistent, exposition is poor
Plot complexity: (3/10) - it’s bleach. what do you expect?
Ending: (3/5) - didn’t watch
Pacing: (4/5) - not bad, actually.
Stakes: (8/10) - high stakes
Value (4/15):
Thematic elements: (3/5) - the anti-authoritarian/rebellious vibe works, but it’s reused in later arcs
Skill: (1/5) - nothing against Kubo in particular, but he’s a hack. He has some good characters (e.g. Rukia) and gave his manga a stylish look, but his overall talent as a creator is quite limited.
Originality: (0/5) - Bleach is not original or imaginative.
Enjoyment (9/20):
Did I like it: (9/20) - the only reason I watched this show for 23 episodes is for 3 characters: Chad, Ichigo, and Rukia (the queen).
I mostly agree and, like you, watched the show until ~150eps when I was a teenager. I think you would have enjoyed this rewatch more if you pushed through to the Soul Society arc.
1) "A non-negligible amount of humans can see these spirits and interact with them, but this knowledge somehow has never leaked into the mainstream"
The majority of people who do interact with the spirits are probably killed so I presume this is the in-universe basis for youkai folklore. 1/50,000 is still rare enough for any reporters to be considered superstitious/crazy but I agree that it's dumb for this not to be more plot relevant.
"most of the friends of this one spirit-seeing teenager also come to interact with the spirit world. The baseline chance of this happening is extremely low. Of course, you would assume spirit seers are much"
I never finished Bleach but I recall that there's a lore explanation for this. The proximity and uptick of supernatural events are indirectly caused by Ichigo's awakening. This is also why they get powers, despite being human
"why would the principal care about their students being on television?"
Even in Britain, well-to-do schools discipline students for loitering in public with uniforms on. I doubt that it's atypical in Japan and I'd be surprised if they weren't more uptight about it
"No idea why he had to introduce himself by telling Ichigo "I hate you because you are a soul reaper"."
I don't remember the context of the scene so I'll take your word for it. There are lore reasons for Uryu hating Shinigami though (literal race war tier)