Bleach

>>158110370
Going to Soul Society was a mistake.

Yes
Is that even a question

>>158110370
SS was a mistake. The shinigami became too popular.

>>158110478
That white haired little fag was insufferable.

No, a lot of people like the ghostbusters arc but SS is the peak of the series.
If anything, the only good episodes from the first arc are the very first episodes until kon is introduced, after that is not that good.

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Squandered hype

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Is the SS arc truly good or is it that the other arcs that follow are so bad that they make SS look good?

>>158110370
No. At no point in the entirety of Bleach did Ichigo have any motivation to do any of the shit he did. He had no reason to help Rukia at the beginning. For all he knew, she could be a member of a group that captures and tortures lost souls. He DEFINITELY had no reason to keep helping her because he saw not a shred of evidence that what she said was true and that the "purified" souls were moving on to a better place. Then he gets to the Soul Society and sees how full of shit Rukia was, but still decides to risk his life to rescue her. What little personality Ichigo had before becoming a shinigami was COMPLETELY forgotten too. He never tried to hit people with anything besides his sword, even though he was predominantly a fist fighter before, despite other shinigami implementing such tactics in their fight.

>>158111177
She gave him the power to protect others by stabbing him in the beginning. He was repaying his debt.

>More Can't Fear Your Own World isn't out.
I thought it was supposed to be released every Thursday?!

>>158111919
Every 2 weeks. New chapter this upcoming Thursday.

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>>158110918
On a writing standpoint SS arc doesn't hold up well especially when you consider the whole thing came about because everyone was too stupid to check the body it also paved the way for all the series problems going forward
>Too much focus on the shinigami characters
>Your princess is in another castle
>Lame enemy franchises
Basically it only looks better because what comes later is just plain bad.

Two rescue arcs side by side was pretty dumb. Although I did enjoy strawberryman getting his chest punched out and going full hollow.

>>158112352
Hueco Mundo is probably my favorite part of the story, closely followed by the Fullbringer stuff. I haven't gone beyond that though.

Hueco Mundo has a lot of potential to be pretty fleshed out beyond "where the bad guys live", if you connect common elements. I wish it had gotten more attention.

killing giant hollows was better than emo spanish vegetas

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Turn Back The Pendulum was the peak of the franchise in both story and sales.

>>158113616
Hollows strike me as kind of lame now. They look cool, but they're basically just giant invisible monsters. Same with Soul Reapers, basically just invisible superhumans. I feel like Kubo could have done more to make it feel more paranormal.

>>158113768
Not sales. I can't find info on earlier volumes, but the 25th volume sold over a million copies. The volumes focusing on TBTP didn't surpass a million.

>>158112271
I don't think that's true. SS was very popular and for good reason. One of the chapters of the Byakuya vs Ichigo fight even got full color which is a pretty big deal.

>>158113986
>SS was very popular and for good reason
Not because it was well-written or anything unless you're stupid to believe popularity=quality.
> One of the chapters of the Byakuya vs Ichigo fight even got full color which is a pretty big deal.
Every series that ran in that issue had full color chapter it was to commemorate a special occasion back then so its not particularly special.

>>158114160
Was there any part of Bleach that was truly well-written? I've always considered it to be something of a guilty pleasure.

>>158110418
>>158110478
I thought the Rescue Rukia arc was the highlight of the series. Diverse characters with diverse abilities split up across enemy territory in a middle of a civil war and with a time limit to find one another and escape? It was fun.

Things immediately went downhill from there.

>>158114899
It would have been pretty good, if there was a middle ground between Ichigo's friends kicking ass and being entirely useless.

>>158115312
Yeaah, that's fair. A lot of confrontations boiled down to taking down mooks or being completely wasted by captains.

But there were a few more strategic ones sprinkled in there if I recall. Before Ichigo got a power up that started to define the class shonen gap for the rest of the series.

>>158115932
>But there were a few more strategic ones sprinkled in there if I recall.
In the Soul Society arc? The only strategic one I recall was Ganju vs Yumichika. The rest were either trash or be trashed, barring Ichigo's fights and Uryuu vs Mayuri, which flipped who was being trashed mid-fight.

Back to the pendulum also had a great backstory.

>>158116265
>Ganju vs Yumichika
> Uryuu vs Mayuri
>Ichigo vs Saitama
Yeah, those are the ones I remember.

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Good times

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>>158116265
SS arc fights didn't need to be anything but generic due to the characters and emotion in them.

Byakuya vs. Renji is far better than an autisticly complex HxH fight.

>>158117053
Back when Kubo actually cared about art

>>158117131
Byakua and Renji was a good fight. I meant stuff like Chad getting sliced down instantly when before he was trashing these hyped up Soul Reapers, or Uryuu doing the same and then getting wrecked by Mayuri until he proceeded to wreck Mayuri, and of course Orihime being established right off the bat as not worth a shit in combat at all.

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without doubt

>>158117997
Tatsuki was such a wasted character.

Looking back at Bleach, the big mistake I think it made was that it didn't go full Kekkaishi and make Soul Society based in the human world.

Letting the story go to a bunch of giant wastelands basically ruined all the stuff that made Kubo's art interesting in the first place.

Have Soul Society Headquarters in downtown Tokyo and keep the same plot and its already better.

Hell, if they had never done anything past the Winter War and just had Gin kill Aizen and be the Actual Antagonist the Entire Time it would have been so much better.

>>158110370
The cast of characters felt tight and purposeful, and up until Aizen's big moment the story felt a lot more pointed as a result. So, yes. Soul Society was the obvious peak, but the early ghost busting was better than most of what happened after SS.

Ichigo was a very, very bland main character. Bleach in general deserved to be a lot better than it was. Kubo had some cool ideas that he completely botched.

>>158118279
>Kubo had some cool ideas that he completely botched
This. I feel like this kind of thing happens way too often. Great concepts, ideas, and designs get bogged down by inferior writing and storytelling.

>>158118178
I just wanted more devastating events to go down in the human world. I don't want everything happening in the white structures of SS or the empty deserts of HM. Seriously, I dropped Bleach for a long while when it brought in that "Fake Karakura Town" nonsense.

I'm reading the Ulquiorra vs Ichigo fight right now, and it's funny. When I watched the anime I considered his second release to be bullshit, but now that I think about it, it makes sense. It's basically Arrancar Bankai.

He clearly had nothing planned after the hueco mundo arc, and then just started ad libbing the series to stretch it out for the money until shonen jump told him he needed to end it in X amount of time and were done with his bullshit.

Bleach was the worst way for an ongoing series to go out, forcibly.

>>158118584
Is it actually over? I thought it was pulling some Boruto type shit, having Ichigo's son become the protagonist.

>>158118824
It's over.

If they ever do pull a boruto, I bet kubo won't be heading it.

>>158113804
Instead of just being invisible, it would have been cooler if it was something like the astral projection fights in Doctor Strange. They're semi-intangible, but can slam into things and cause disturbances as well as phase through walls and people and mess with machines and all that.

>>158110370
because it was some what original. Then turned to shit after soul society. Kubo ran out of ideas fast.

>>158110370
Do you meant the very first arc? The sustitute arc?
Of course not, that arc had mediocre fights and the story of simply fighting hollows wasn't interesting. It's a good introduction for the posterior large story, but in itself it wouldn't have lasted much in the magazine because was boring.
I suppose people who like the human characters most, enjoyed it more, for me the series didn't get my interest until the arriving of Byakuya and Renji, then was when the series experimented a great qualitative leap in all aspects, and the shinigami are, to me, much more interesting characters too.

>>158122765
>Kubo ran out of ideas fast.
Yeah, you can tell because Hueco Mundo is basically Soul Society 2.0.