Here I am, finally finished reading Bleach. It's been quite a long journey for me which started with anime series. Just to be clear, I started to read manga once series had ended, following the story. Can't believe all these long series of my childhood are finally coming to their end. Kinda sad.

The story is the main issue for Bleach. It's very vague. Starting from begining, there were dozens of question popping up in my head. The whole setting is rather vague. I was hoping the author would explain all this mess... but instead I was still receiving new and new conundrums . To speak in general it's way too unlogical. Setting was given almost just it is to readers. Well, sure, there were explanations but, once again, they weren't sufficient.
What was good is fights. Well, I mean all of them were done in particular shounen style, almost always ending in a predictable way using deus ex machina. Kubo's scheme never changes. Nonetheless, they were epic. Full of pathos and good speeches. Probably that's why I was caught on in my childhood times.
Unfortunately, the more manga was reaching its prolonged final boss battle... the more it was getting boring. Some of concepts were utterly dumb. I was compelled to make facepalms with a frequency of one facepalm per 5 pages. By the way, they say, there were some earthquakes in Japan caused of Japanese people clasping their hands onto their faces teamwise while reading new chapters...
It was super rushed at the end. Some storylines just vanished without further explanations. I wonder what made Kubo to rush things like that. I can't express how much I'm dissapointed in the ending. It doesn't feel like a decent ending to me at all.

Speaking about art, there was nothing remarkable. It's fine. In some places it was smooth and good, in some other places it was getting worse. But I can't really complain. Maybe I didn't like designs of some foes in the end. I had a slight feeling that Kubo Tito was lazy to draw them... If you were reading final arc you'll know what I mean. Hm, also I should say I liked shinigamis' outfits. They were cool. If I were to cosplay someone from Bleach I'd definitely choose any shinigami.

Characters were good. I liked foes, I liked main(save Ichigo) and support characters. They weren't unique, yet they felt pretty alive to me. I could easily sympathised with them. Every character had its flaws and strenths, own fighting style constantly evolving. Oh, and surely there were some badass characters(especially the particular captain) which I could only admire and couldn't wait for their next appearance in the series. The main antagonist of the first part of Bleach is awesome.
However, approaching the end... new characters were lacking depth, I think It had became little overflowed with new characters. One moment they appear, the next moment they die.
What do you think is the most important part of shounen manga to be succesful? On my opinion, this is the main character. Unfortunately, main character of Bleach is lame. I can't even remember any specific characteristic of him. I've got a feeling that he was just there to beat bosses in every arc. Even episodic characters were better and more interesting than him. Ichigo could be easily replaced with any random overpowered character.

In conclusion, the quality has been relentlessly declining approaching the ending. The way it's ended... it could be done much more better. Even within the confines of shounen predictability. Actually, I think it should have been ended on Aizen arc. That was the time Bleach was the most good.
If you are a fan of shounen genre I wouldn't recommend you Bleach. There are a lot of better series out there. I can recall only one shounen series worse than Bleach: "katekyo hitman reborn".
To end my review with more pleasant note, I should admit I'll miss Bleach. I'm already feeling slight nostalgie for my childhood series. I haven't greatly enjoyed reading Bleach, yet I don't regret the time I've spent for these years.