Back to Eironn's Profile Eironn's Profile

Spanning 366 episodes, Bleach is regarded as one of the big shonen shows out there, sitting at the same table as One Piece, Naruto and Dragonball. Watching it in 2024, however, I can tell you that Bleach aged like milk.

First of all, I could sit here and talk about fillers all day, but we've all seen the memes. Bleach is *at least* 45% filler, but even that is a generous number. If you remove all the useless shonen tropes like pointless flashbacks, repetitive shouts, long running scenes, still shots, slow camera panning and reused frames, you'll soon realize that Bleach is more like 70% filler.

Bleach ... also has a serious issue with bystanders that *constantly* interrupt fights and serious moments so they can do their comedy routine. And it's not even good comedy. It's children's comedy. Manzai is a very popular (and exhausting) type of comedy where the "funny man" does goofy things while the "straight man" gets angry and reprimands them. Alright, now crank that up to the maximum, shove it in the middle of life-or-death situations, and make it as long and obnoxious as possible. That's Bleach's comedy. The thing is, Bleach knows how to create funny moments, but it does so at the worst possible times as the story progresses.

Speaking of progress, that's one of the weird things about Bleach. Instead of getting better as the series goes on (like the other three big shonen series), Bleach does the opposite. One quick search and you'll see that the community generally agrees that Bleach was awesome in the first few arcs but had a drastic decline in quality and pacing as the story progressed. Even my friend who recommended it to me said that he skipped almost all of it. Putting Bleach on the same category as Dragonball, One Piece and Naruto is almost disrespectful. How can I recommend a series that only has one or two good arcs and then say: "By the way, it gets really bad towards the end."

-- Minor Spoilers Ahead --

Another big issue that Bleach has are the power levels. The power levels are all over the place and it's not even funny. Ichigo always gets his ass kicked by every new enemy, only to be saved by someone he defeated previously. Now the person who is supposedly weaker than Ichigo proceeds to defeat the villain who is supposedly stronger than Ichigo. This happens because Bleach is a kid's show where the protagonist befriends all of his enemies, even the ones that do unspeakably evil things. No matter how edgy Bleach tries to be with its dark imagery, at the end of the day it's just a kid's show. The constant bickering in the middle of fights is no different than children fighting in the playground to decide who gets to be the Red Power Ranger, and in the end we see everyone holding hands and singing a song together.

Bleach looks particularly ugly when you compare it to the flashy and action-packed modern shonen shows we've been getting recently, but it also looks ugly when you compare it to the other big shonen shows of the 2000s. The action, pacing, story and even the training arcs are completely messed up. Honestly, I basically just watched 366 episodes of a show I detest for the sole purpose of watching the sequel, which people say is really good.

The sad thing about Bleach is that it had such a strong identity. The captains are cool as hell, the overall theme is unique, the setting had a lot of potential, and the Soul Society arc was amazingly good. I loved everything about Bleach at first. Hell, even the way the characters hold their swords when they're not fighting tells you something about their character. Even some of the lines that characters say are so powerful that they'll stick with you for a while. The creativity and attention to detail here was great, and I hate using the past tense here.

Honestly, I don't even think that this is the case of a bad anime adaptation. For example, you've probably heard someone somewhere say: "Bleach is good but the ending was kinda scuffed." And no, it's not like a beloved character dies or anything. The "ending" is bad because the author decided to introduce the weirdest and most nonsensical magic system ever created. Everything that made Bleach great is suddenly replaced by elements that genuinely make you forget that you're watching Bleach. Hueco Mundo's arc was bad in terms of pacing and power levels, but the last arc is especially insulting. Bleach's antagonists stopped being cool and memorable after the Soul Society arc (save for a few exceptions), but the last arc manages to be even worse in that regard. We even get a discount Aizen that fails to capture even 1% of what made the original a good villain.

In conclusion, I unfortunately can't recommend Bleach. It's simply not worth it. It doesn't hold up well today and only serves as an example of how to ruin something that had everything to be great. This review may sound overly negative, but it's just an honest warning.

Calling this anime "yet another isekai" is genuinely an understatement for how criminally bad the show really is. Even among the worst, Isekai Maou stands out, and that speaks volumes.

Story: 1/10
The story is unoriginal and uninspired. Every single aspect of the plot is a massive cliché. Without giving spoilers I can tell you that the story is exactly what you would expect from an isekai. A self-insert shut-in who has never talked to a girl before is teleported to another world where every girl throws herself at him as he panics and makes silly faces. There's a stereotypical demon lord that wants to destroy the ... world yada yada the protagonist doesn't need any character development because he's already overpowered yada yada defeats the demon lord.
Even with bad shows I usually find myself intrigued by one thing or another about the story, but not even once did Isekai Maou have me on the edge of my seat. It's as predictable as it gets.

Art: 1/10
It's easy to see that the show had absolutely no passion put into it. Most full-body shots have the same level of detail as the classic background characters we often see in anime in general. Unless the camera is really close to a character, the art is genuinely just terrible.
My biggest gripe against Isekai Maou's art design, however, is the animation. The animation is insulting. I'm not exaggerating when I say that 90% of the time it honestly looks like I'm watching a slide show, while the other 10% is a slightly better slide show. I cannot accept that each episode took longer than two days to animate. There is barely any motion at all. Dialogues are literally just the mouth changing its shape with the ocasional head turn. Walking scenes are just the characters bobbing up and down with two or three extra frames at most for the limbs. Every scenario looks dead, previous shots are often reused (literally copy/paste), a lot of screen time is filled with still shots, I could go on all day.
The fight scenes aren't good either. Animating magic is easier so the protagonist just has a staff that he barely moves when casting magic. Animating melee combat is more difficult since you actually have to put some effort into drawing the body so there's really only two melee fight scenes that last more than ten seconds, and even so, most of the scene is filled with reused frames or dialogue, while the different shots are also pretty much motionless. Even the magic lacks imagination. There's one big spell that the protagonist casts but actually trying to animate something must be too hard so the spell is just a big white beam. No effects, no colors, nothing. Just a bland solid white beam.
This genuinely feels like 90s anime in terms of animation, and even that is still an insult to the shows of that era.

Sound: 3/10
Nothing special. You can't really go wrong with sound, except for the fact that the sound effects lack impact and none of the soundtracks really stuck to me. Now that I think about it, I can't even remember if the show had any. That's how forgettable the soundtrack is.

Character: 1/10
The self-insert, the stereotypical big-breasted airhead and the flat kuudere. You can't get more cliché than this. The female elf is, as always, a walking fanservice and the flat kuudere cat girl is generally used for breast envy jokes. There's really not much to be said about the characters since character development is nonexistent in Isekai Maou. The few side characters barely have any screen time while the main girls serve absolutely no purpose besides providing fanservice.

Enjoyment: 1/10
Funny and goofy for two episodes, subsequently getting more stale by the second. When you start questioning the characters' decisions, watching this anime gets utterly revolting. At some point I just wanted to finish all episodes out of sheer spite. I can't really explain why the decision-making is so repugnant without giving spoilers, but trust me, it is that bad. One might argue that bad decision-making is just a flaw that makes the characters look more real, but that's simply not true. Every bad decision is just a plot device used to push the story forward since the show lacks any form of inspiration to naturally develop itself, and in the end none of the main characters face any consequences for being so dense. That's plot armor. Plot armor only makes everything less believable. A spoiler free example would be how the self-righteous protagonist refuses to kill anyone because he's a spineless worm, only to then see the character he refused to kill causing issues that could lead to the death of all the girls he loves so much, but it's okay since the plot armor will protect them.

Overall: 1/10
It's definitely not for everyone. It's one of those shows that you have to turn your brain off to enjoy. Everything about this anime is forgettable and lacks any essence. It is possible to enjoy Isekai Maou if you're easily satisfied with cheap entertainment that provides no sense of fulfillment and has no message to convey, consequently becoming nothing short of a low-effort attempt at cashing out on the isekai trend. If you fit the criteria, go right ahead and give it a watch.