Bleach is a manga that has a lot of potential which is why it's one of the most popular ones in recent history. But popularity alone can only get you so far. It's how well it lives up to that potential that determines if it's truly worthy of certain recognition. it doesn't matter how big of a fan-base a story can build by pandering to a certain audience, in this case to young Japanese boys between the ages of 4 and 12, when you're looking at something critically but it does help at looking at something and understanding how it got so well received in the first place.

It's important to make clear from the start that Bleach was only decent from the beginning despite its vast potential as a huge Jump series. Of course a lot of the long running series have the same kind of beginning that usually depends on the fact whether it's gonna be a marketing success or not. Therefore only once Bleach had its established place in the magazine it could start focus on a more broad scope of things knowing that there'd be time to close it all.

Problem is that the things presented in the beginning partially contradict what it slowly becomes. A lot of elements and details are conveniently forgotten overtime like the very mechanic of the introduced souls leaving bodies etc. This isn't uncommon for battle shonens, especially for long-running ones, but it still doesn't excuse the repetitive usage of lazy and predictable writing techniques almost even abused during the first proper arc of the series, Soul Society.

Soul Society is a decent arc overall with tons of exiting fights, mediocre story-line, entertaining characters and a new and interesting environment. it's not as hugely impressive as some other stories opening arcs and happens rather late overall but it gives you at least a sense of where the story can go and even ends with a surprisingly good cliffhanger. Although the beginning parts of Bleach isn't still anything to write home about it still explains enough of why it got popular among children, even overseas. And unlike the anime filled with filler, the manga actually steps from what it set up with Soul Society straight to the story-line that follows it.

Now the parts that lower Bleach as a story from pretty decent to nearly kind of average mostly start during this area of the story. In which again, there are interesting environments introduced, new exiting characters, enjoyable action and a hugely mediocre story progression that kind of stops and continues at weird times (even more than in the first arc). This part of the story serves as interesting enough to keep the reader's attention but still fails to make a conclusion satisfying enough because you feel like you've read just the same thing again, just with less certainty of what it's supposed to be.

And that's the main problem that the series has all through it. It ignores the well established theme and doesn't give the feeling that the events in the story have a point towards something. It's not a parody but it's not serious enough either, the plot gets filled with characters but is too generic to use them, the premise is refreshing and deep but isn't taken full advantage of.

The third arc is very poor compared to the rest while introducing some interesting aspects and is overall forgettable because it would honestly work better as an individual story. The final arc which covers almost half of all the content suffers from mostly the same problems as the second one except this time the beginning is actually exciting for much longer which makes it even more disappointing when it just kind of derails to a mess of writing and inconsistent usage of techniques. The fourth arc has also the worst fights all out and makes a bunch of the best characters the story had to just simple "this is my real strength"-"no this is my real strength"-characters along with the new bland villains introduced.

A lot of the last events in the manga end up as just empty and flashy fights between previously well-developed characters. Instead of using all this time to tie in all the opened plot-lines the author decided to fill most of the endgame content with shallow and repetitive scenes. As an addition to everything there are also old characters brought back for fan-service that barely have a role to play which makes the ending even more satisfying when it actually happens.

Overall it's an entertaining but rather empty series all out. There are many poorly constructed moments but also redeemable aspects to keep it going. It has flashy action, a too huge but still mostly enjoyable cast, good art style, average designs, impressive panels/ compositions, interesting symbolism with rather low effort, lacking fights and a decent story compared to the demographic and genre it represents.

Pretty much what you'd expect from a hugely popular battle shonen, nothing more, nothing less.