Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-10838999-20130614081922

Just a thought that occourred to me, and had to put it out there as I was watching the entire Anime Series of Bleach, really want your opinion on this too.

It's obvious that Bleach is a popular anime as it's been on for around 5 years, it's beloved by many people as Tite Kubo immerses the audience through his Characters. I've been watching the anime since I was 15, I'm 20 now and looking back on the anime I've been getting the feeling that Tite Kubo has lost 'something' in his progression over the years in the Manga and Anime.

Now I really don't want to use this as a comparison but Naruto has its similarities to Bleach, for example 'Inner Evil Power' complex and 'accepting your demons', and the fact they're both about teenagers and emotions and stuff.

The reason why I'm wording the last sentence in the paragraph above so abysmally is because as I've grown up, watching Naruto grow up relates to me, even though he is still 15/16 in the Anime, Narutos Character has come a long way since the start of the Shippuden Series and his character is more relatable as he's gone through significant changes and most importantly how he handles and develops himself as a character.

Bleach on the other hand with Ichigo's character development seems for some reason, questionable as I've got some gut instinct telling me that for some reason Tite Kubo was finding it difficult to develop Ichigo from being a head strong character, to a mature adult, or is plain 'out of ideas' despite his adventures Ichigo has grown strong and powerful, although that doesn't necessarily mean he's matured into an adult as his attitude still relys on his power. And for this reason I feel the series is slowly declining and becoming bland, personally anyway. Even with the latest Mangas out, Ichigos seems like to me a modern day Goku, a character who naturally gains a lot of power, for this reason I feel his character is not relatable to me anymore, as I can't seem to figure out his motivation and what determines him to do what he does, fair enough being a 'bad ass' alone is cool, but only for the first 3 seasons, after this his character just relying on being a total 'bad-ass' and that being his motivation (as well as protecting everything around him, which is overly used) and his reason, becomes bland to watch after 5 years and Tite Kubos direction in the series to me feels unstructured, confusing and alienating at some point in anime as its got a DBZ complex where everything is based around one character (Ichigo) in this universe of many characters.

I've considered the fact that I can't PERSONALLY relate Bleach for my own reasons, but reviewing this series through the eyes of a "Casual Anime Viewer" people who are getting into it now will soon go through the stages of seeing his become this bad ass hero, finally gains the ULTIMATE power to defeat the enenmy, then finally the stage of 'what now?' when he loses his Death God powers. Going back through the complete series, through the perspective of an casual anime viewer, and through the MAIN Arc, the story just seems to loose a lot of material and general reason around the Arrancar Arc (not completely obviously) and finally fallen face first at the Full Bringer/Xcution Arc as it left me feeling confused when reading the manga arc that is currently on, it's left the realm of the generic teen development device that is mainly the relatable character device used in nearly everything, and jumped to a place where I can't seem to figure out what Ichigo is always so emo about, and more importantly what the story in its core is trying to make me feel. If anything I feel confused from leaving the end of the Full Bringer arc, to the current manga.

In all... Being compared to Naruto or anything else, character devlopment is key any medium, especially in a anime like bleach, and over years I feel watching and more importantly GROWING UP with this anime, it's lost its back bone and it seems like a dog chasing its own tail, its just not going anywhere at the moment for me, another annoyance to me personally is that Kubo has some weird obsession with plot holes, and not generally explaining things well enough, like WHEN ichigo was hollowfied by Aizen, how the Hogyoku visually works, and a proper explanation of ichigos power, although I'm currently aware of some speculations like his half quincy blood... THEY STILL CONFUSE THE EVER LIVING OUT OF ME AS ITS NEVER FULLY EXPLAINED!! And with the cancellation of the anime, it's clear it's not coming back anytime soon, the series seems to be falling slowly, as much as I WANT this to stay on top, Tite Kubos input in this feels to me like he's finally tired of what he does, and it affecting his current work.

This is my overview on the Anime and Manga of this series and why it is in a bad heading, but do you think Tite Kubo is getting tired of sitting on chair made of money and just writing out crap? or is he trying to break the generic character development device and try something new?

do you think the series is declining because Kubo can't find anything good at the moment?

What do you think? 