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Warning! No spoilers ahead. <3

Short review:
Very unexpected, very different, cool, juicy art, juicy music, fancy animation camera angles, fancy effects.
Everything about "Bleach: Sennen Kessen-hen" screams
Wow, this is so different from what the old "Bleach" was.

In general:
Another good shounen anime that has conflicts/issues and how people solve them either through being clever or using power.

... Is it a must-watch?
If you're a fan of one of those:
*In general Shounen animes
*Antagonist/Protagonist story system.
*Long intertwined stories.
*Cool/Complex power system.
Then it's a must-watch whether you want it or have doubts.
Otherwise, the only reason not to watch is if you're too lazy to watch long series.

I don't recommend watching "Bleach: Sennen Kessen-hen" without watching the story that happened before.
*The story in "Bleach" is connected to the story in "Bleach: Sennen Kessen-hen".
*It will be a painful spoiler if you do decide to watch the story that happened before.
*You won't understand much in general.
The only reason to watch new series without watching old series is if you only want to see some cool action without caring about the story.

If you do consider watching the story from the very beginning. Please watch the blu-ray version it looks perfect, not worse than anime that could be released nowadays and be considered a good anime.


Review of just the "Bleach: Sennen Kessen-hen":

Positive things:
Music, art, story, characters, etc. simply top-notch.

Negative things:
The pace of the story is horrible. Everything happens so fast it almost feels like more things happened in 13 "Bleach: Sennen Kessen-hen" episodes than in 366 "Bleach" episodes. Many things became needlessly cruel which is a big reason why everything became so fast-paced.



Review of "Bleach" as a whole series.

| THORNY FILLER PATH |
Many filler arcs are as long as the main story arcs, not just a random couple of episode pop-ups like in most animes that have fillers.

The fillers are often so intertwined with the main story you would never guess they are fillers.
There are many points when something from the filler is mentioned or present in the main story, after the filler has already ended, which makes it even more difficult to understand that it was a filler.
First time I watched bleach I didn't know that "Bount arc" was a filler, because of the same reasons I mentioned above.

Some fillers can repeat concepts exactly from the story that happened before. A good example of that is the end of the "Bount arc" (Bount Assault on Soul Society Arc) took at the same place in a similar style as the canon arc that happened before the "Bount arc" (Soul Society: The Rescue Arc).

Horrible power system.
Dragged-out/boring things. Boring non-canon characters.

Not all fillers are horrible tho. "Bount arc" is not too bad.

If you do consider watching the fillers as there can be some fun things to see or you don't want to feel left out with some intertwined things that will happen while watching the main arc. If you ever consider dropping the anime because it's boring at whatever point you're at, check out whether you're watching a filler. I guarantee if you're bored you are watching a filler.

| COMPLEX STORYLINE |
From the start to the very end of the series everything was already thought of on the day when the manga production has begun.
Everything that happens in the story has a reason.
New random things don't happen at the midpoint of the story just because the author thinks it's better that way which means the reason behind things happening throughout the story is realistic and has a logical explanation.

There are lots of moments you could've predicted because many key story points were present from the very beginning, but you most likely didn't/won't predict things cause they're not that obvious, when you don't know them before watching for the first time.