i rly like bleach :(

 

 

(i am aware that this cat is what i look like right now)

Intro:

There’s an inherent problem with discussing the positive qualities of a divisive work. That Is, people who disagree with you/who have made their minds up will think you’re deflecting or trying to “justify” liking that thing. It happens all the time, especially in the anime fandom. I’m guilty of it myself! I constantly scoff at fans of things I’ve decided aren’t good, like fuckin Darling in the Franxx, which is a bad practice when it comes to enjoying media. I fully admit to that. It’s a problem.

            I say this because I fucking LOVE Tite Kubo’s Bleach. Not just like, “oh I like this thing a lot” which is how I am with most battle series, which is also just how most people are with media. I finished that shit and gave it a tentative like, 7.5/10. I thought it was fun and good and had a lot of cool shit and great characters. It peaks at volume 48, but every series has its clear peak, and some have it earlier.

            But then something happened. Whenever I consume media I really like to find something that will stick with me. I don’t pick what I dive into easily. It’s why I don’t really keep up with serialized art. Because that shit’s not done yet, and I like to see if something from like, say, Spring 2020 will really stick around in the public discourse for a while. And obviously I don’t follow this rule hard and fast, I’m only human and plenty of serialized art does catch my eye enough for me to decide to make the emotional commitment of “this isn’t over and may disappoint hard with my time investment.” And also, when I wait to see what stuff sticks around, it’s usually the stuff that has more meat to chew on, more stuff to think about and analyze and stew on.

Which is why I like to look for finished stuff, older stuff. And when I find something I decide to consume I really, REALLY try to stick it out to the end, even if it’s not like, clicking with me. I’ve had so many times where I’m like “yeah this is fine” but a work really knocks that ending out of the park, or has that turning point that makes the investment feel worth it, way more than those disappointments (so far.) I also just like, LOVE analyzing stuff. I prefer having meat to chew on. Textured relationships, complicated characters, intricate plotting, something to keep me thinking long after I finish it. I want to be sitting a week later and have a thought float across my mind that makes me go “OH FUCK!” about something.

            All this to say that when I finish something I want it to be something that stays with me. I don’t like discarding media when I’m done with it. I finished Neon Genesis Evangelion seven fuckin years ago at this point and not a day goes by where it doesn’t cross my mind. Vinland Saga is my favorite manga ever and I think about the farming arc constantly. The visual novel The House in Fata Morgana is a perfect example of something I wasn’t super hot on at first but as I kept going it kept improving on itself, making smart writing choices only to fucking EXPLODE in quality halfway through where it gives up the goat, pulls back the curtains, and starts smacking you left and right with insanely intelligent and emotionally charged writing decisions. I want media to feel special.
            So when I finished Bleach and I was like “hm people told me this was shitty? But it was good. Great, even” I trawled the internet to find out why people didn’t like it. Most of it boils down to the same like “I dropped off after Soul Society/the filler arc between Soul Society and Arrancar turned me off” discourse, or people going “Kubo clearly gave up after Soul Society, he just wanted to draw cool shit and got roped into writing a plot… so stinky.” “Hueco Mundo is soulless” etc. And then, Bleach stuck. It stuck with me HARD. It lives in my mind rent-free now. I love it.

            That cynicism around the rhetoric of “Kubo gave up” feels so unearned and pessimistic to me. You aren’t Tite Kubo. You don’t know his thought processes. Assuming the author’s mental state is so counterintuitive to thinking about media. Like, when Soul Society ends, Tite Kubo has set up this fucking insane plot hook that had been led up to up ALL ARC. He then goes on to deliver on that plot hook in spades. It fucking owns!

If you don’t like a certain plot beat or aesthetic decision or whatever that’s fine, media is subjective, but you do a disservice to yourself and to like, how art is made when you look at something like the Hueco Mundo invasion and immediately disregard it out of hand because of like, a gut reaction of “oh but didn’t he just save Rukia? Now he’s saving another friend?”

And like, don’t get me wrong, Bleach isn’t perfect but I feel like everything before the Fullbring arc is clearly and obviously intentional if you’re not a cynic. I’d go so far as to say that the first 48 volumes of Bleach, the pre-timeskip arcs, are like, pretty close to a perfect battle series. At least for me.

I’m also going to be focusing on the first 48 volumes (Substitute Shinigami vols 1-8, Soul Society 9-20, and Aizen 21-48) because I feel that it’s clear that Bleach peaks at volume 48. Everything after the time skip is obviously a dip in quality, but it’s still nowhere near as bad as people say it is. Like, it’s mostly just fanservice for the characters and emotional payoffs that aren’t necessary but hit because of how lovable the cast is. Also, I love the final volume of the series a lot and think the ending is good even if it’s not as bombastic as it could have been. Bleach is genuinely, honestly just misunderstood, and that misunderstanding comes from how it doesn’t hold the reader’s hand.

Storycraft:

            Stories are not, and again this is my opinion, just things to passively consume and go “that made me feel emotion.” That’s a valid way to consume media, of course, but stories are also more than just the text on the page. More than the emotions that it makes you feel. More than just quote-unquote “unique” story ideas or crazy plot gimmicks. Stories are things to be picked apart and thought about on more than a purely textual level of “this is what happens without any inferences or analysis.”

Also, A story doesn’t need to spell everything out for you. It shouldn’t have to. But so many anime series do just that. Anime will sit the viewer down and exposit lore, plot, characterization, etc. at the viewer without any nuance or depth and people will eat that shit up. Hell, if it’s done well, with texture like in Attack on Titan’s basement reveal, I eat that shit up.

            But Bleach really doesn’t do that. Outside of the usage of flashback-no-jutsu, a storytelling tool long derided despite how well it can be used for dramatic effect/heartstring pulling/really concise and efficient characterization, Bleach expects more of the reader. It tells its story and conveys its themes through text, visuals, and even the absence of text. All basic storytelling methods, obviously, no duh. Saying a story “tells its story through text/visuals/whatever” is kiddie shit. But it feels like something that needs to be explained sometimes. Especially to a wider fandom that seemingly doesn’t get what an “inference” is half the time.

            So when I say something like Bleach tells its story/conveys its themes through an absence of text, I mean the things that characters don’t say to each other. How they act. How characters like Gin Ichimaru and Soskue Aizen lie through their teeth, or how a character like Grimmjow expresses himself through his actions, through violence. How Tosen and Shuhei’s relationship deteriorates through their lack of communication. Shinji never opening up to and getting to know Aizen leading to basically EVERYTHING that happens in the series. How Isshin acts around Ichigo before the reveal that he’s a Soul Reaper too.

 

Visual analysis:

            This brings me to the visual storytelling of Bleach. One of my bigger sticking points is the derision of specifically Hueco Mundo itself. Many people (my mind wanders to Super Eyepatch Wolf and his videos on Bleach) will analyze the Soul Society and its denizens to death. How the Soul Society is designed after feudal Japan. How its visuals, to a Japanese reader, will convey a sense of age. The characters all have stories about being trapped in a cycle of toxicity and violence perpetuated by the aristocracy. The architecture in the inner Soul Society, the seireitei, is fucking massive. Buildings tower over the cast. It’s oppressive and claustrophobic. The Soul Society and its customs are clearly archaic – rooted in tradition over logic. Bleach’s worldbuilding follows this through-line, one of thematic visual metaphor over the concrete, “this is a real place” worldbuilding that exists in, say, One Piece.

            So when Ichigo and the Gang roll up into Hueco Mundo and they find a barren wasteland devoid of life, it felt pretty fuckin clear to me what Kubo was going for. For one, the empty wasteland of Hueco Mundo is oppressive as well, but it’s also very alien. Instead of the claustrophobic bureaucracy of the Soul Society there is the suffocatingly vast desert. There is no society here, it is a land ruled by beasts. Coupled with the Espada (and other arrancar) who are like, obvious parallels to the soul reapers, and the animalistic nature of life in Hueco Mundo, shit’s meant to represent raw emotion and instinct. The Soul Society is an ancient, tradition-based culture full of people and civilized (to a point) life, with all of its ups and downs. Hueco Mundo is the opposite. Like Thomas Hobbes-ass fuckin “life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" ass shit. Hobbes, in that quote, is describing the “natural” state of mankind, an animalistic life. The Soul Society is rigid, emotionless tradition. Hueco Mundo is wild, animalistic instinct.
            This is reflected in the ways that the Espada/Arrancar mirror the Gotei 13. In the Soul Society you get the rigid structure of the squads, where outside of petty politics, it’s a system that is ruled by tradition and rules. The Espada, on the other hand, is a chaotic free-for-all to grab the top spot with people undermining and even killing each other constantly in order to gain power.
            I could go through and make a bunch of comparisons between a whole lot of the Arrancar and the heroes, but I’m gonna leave it at specifically Ichigo/Grimmjow and Kenpachi/Nnoitra. If I wanted to keep being pretentious I would bring up the Jungian idea of the shadow self that’s ever-present in the Persona series, where Jung states the shadow to be the unknown dark side of the personality. According to him, the shadow, in being instinctive and irrational, is prone to psychological projection, in which a perceived personal inferiority is recognized as a perceived moral deficiency in someone else.

            Ichigo is a a hotheaded, kind man driven by a “morally good” purpose so to speak. He wants to help people. He was molded this way by his upbringing and society. Duh, obviously, no shit. “A person is molded by their upbringing” is character writing 101. But then you look at Grimmjow. Grimmjow is, intentionally, a mirror of Ichigo. His personality is  also hotheaded and he’s driven by a purpose that had Ichigo, a delinquent, been brought up in a more toxic environment he very clearly could have had. That is, Grimmjow is motivated by anger and the lust to be validated. He wants to be strong, and he wants people to know he is strong.

Also, and this is another obvious one, Ichigo and Grimmjow are Orange and Blue respectively. Complimentary colors. Their personalities are really one in the same, Ichigo was simply allowed to be nice, taught to care, whereas Grimmjow, through his instinct and existence as a hollow in Hueco Mundo, became an angry, competitive person. Grimmjow, having no other course of life ahead of him, became the way he is because in Hueco Mundo life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Had he not become strong, had he not become selfish, he would have perished. He had to be the king.

            Then you have Kenpachi and Nnoitra. Kenpachi is presented in the Soul Society as someone who lives for the fight. Combat is the air he breathes and it’s so ingrained in his personality that a fight should be fair and honorable that he intentionally dampens his power level so it’s fairer. When he finally learns his bankai, it’s literally to make a fight perfectly even. Then you have his arrancar mirror, Nnoitra. Nnoitra is a physical embodiment of a fighter’s id. He lives for the bloodlust. To crush his enemies underfoot. He does not care about the power imbalance, he just wishes to win. He’s also, design wise, not just completely opposite of Kenpachi’s bulky man muscle, being a skinny twig boy, but also reminiscent of Unohana, the previous kenpachi, with his long straight black hair. There’s also the whole “mirrored eyepatch thing” This tracks for so many of the arrancar and soul reapers.

 

“Hueco Mundo is just soul society again”

            No it’s not, the Orihime rescue is like not even a third of the Aizen arc, content wise. Rescuing Orihime is also given different narrative weight because we, the reader, know she was coerced, but the characters do not. For all they know, she defected. Alongside this, who gives a shit if a similar plot beat occurs in a story. Shit happens all the time and the Aizen arc is literally way more than just the Orihime rescue. This whole “Bleach repeats arc structure” is a bad faith criticism that ignores the visoreds, Turn Back the Pendulum, and the fake Karakura town stretch. This brings my point back around to “think about shit a bit more and stop being so cynical.” Art is deliberate. People who make art for a living don’t fucking half-ass it. Especially not someone working on a clear passion project. Like, Tite Kubo went on record to say that, had he not been pressured into starting TYBW early, he would have had more arcs between fullbring and TYBW. Stop being silly.

 

Emotional throughline:

 

            Bleach has an emotional maturity and depth to it that I feel is rare in battle series. Much like how its worldbuilding is designed to invoke strong visual metaphor over being concrete, “real” worlds, the way it handles its characters and their emotions is on a similar wavelength. Many battle series have characters just fuckin, scream their feelings, or be super blunt, or never lie or whatever. Bleach doesn’t do that. On top of that, Bleach’s cast, despite being so young overall, feels so much more mature than other battle series. The way they carry themselves, how they look, how they emote, it’s a far cry from the Narutos and One Pieces and My Heroes of the genre, works where characters are very emotionally charged and vocal.

            Characters in Bleach lie. They internalize things. Characters like Gin keep their heart so close to their chest that they’ll be lying through their teeth, but their face is rendered so that you see the pain they’re keeping inside. They don’t just fly off the handle and go on speeches about friendship, they show how they care through action and dialogue that shows that friendship, not just tells it. People act like humans, not characters. Their relationships are intimate and complicated and painful and real.

            And like, again, Bleach doesn’t tell you this. It shows you this. Sometimes through flashbacks but mostly through dialogue and interactions that are subtle. Bleach expects the reader to intuit things. To make inferences. To read between lines and understand the characters as people in a way that other battle series don’t do nearly as well.

 

Ok I don’t really know where I’m going with this anymore:

 

            I dunno Bleach fuckin owns dude ok? I went into it last year with zero to negative expectations and I came out of it with one of the most emotionally mature examples of a battle series I’ve ever gone through. The art owns, the cast owns, the themes own, the scenarios own, the powers own, the metaphors own, it’s just like, Fuck.

            And obviously I don’t expect any opinions to be changed after this, I just wanted to get these words out of my head in some coherent way. Bleach means so much to me and I know to people who dislike it this just seems like “n..nonlnon .no I  it’s G o OO GOOD I p-p-p-rpomise” but like. It is good. It’s fucking great.

            If you have zero opinion on Bleach still, great! Give it a shot. If you don’t like it, that’s fine. Obviously tastes are different. I just love this series a lot. Too much probably. And I wanted to just fuckin get why, to some degree out on the page. Bleach is a series that I’m going to be thinking about and digesting and picking apart forever because of how hard the characters and themes resonated with me. That’s so subjective it hurts.

But you never know, even if you don’t do it with Bleach specifically, go into the next piece of media you consume with a positive mindset. Sometimes you’ll get burned and it’ll just be bad, but if something makes you go “why?” don’t just leave it at that. Continue. Ask “why” and then look at the text and figure it out. It’s fulfilling and engaging and fun!!!!!