I may not be into the Bleach anime, but I rather enjoy the Bleach manga. Why is that?
Probably because the Bleach anime is like a Cliff's Note version of the manga. I swear! They cut out so many things! And I don't like what was changed or added either. The manga's not perfect, either, but it's much more nuanced, and, I think, has even better artwork. It's not striking to look at, but it's really cool artwork, at the same time.
True, Bleach may be yet another shonen serial with a bunch of kids with crazy powers (and crazy personalities) fighting to save the werold(tm) without anyone else knowing it, but in terms of quality, it's a lot more enjoyable than the shonen fluff of my teen years. I mean, why read about The Legendary Super Saiyan, (funny, considering nearly every Saiyan character goes SS eventually.) kids playing dangerous card games, or Feudal Japanese demi-humans fighting for fangirl raves when you can read about a boy coping with his zany family? Bleach is one of the funniest manga I've read.
There's also a few great characters, too. My favorite is Rukia, although I think that's a given. When she's around Ichigo and no one else, that's when she's showing her true self. When she's posing as a high school girl, though, then she's putting on a hilarious act. It's funny, because she's close to 150, and lived in the Soul Society all that time, yet is trying to behave how she thinks teenage girls of Earth behave. In a way, her act reminds me of Clark Kent. And yet, when she's her true self, she's just a total badass.
Of course, there's other characters I like. Ichigo, unlike most shonen leads, isn't an idiot like Son Goku, nor irritating like Naruto Uzumaki. Kon is the requisite perv, yet his antics always gets him into hilarious situations. Orihime is almost too sweet to be real, yet lacks any common sense whatsoever. Chad is just plain cool. Ichigo's family is crazy fun: Yuzu is motherly, Karin trash talks everyone, Ichigo's dad is childish, yet insightful at the same time. Urahara looks, and talks, like a slacker, yet is probably the smartest person in the Bleach universe.
However, I must say one thing in defense of the Bleach anime; its voice acting in English is totally awesome. A lot of dub superstars in that. The dub's so good, I never bothered to watch it in Japanese. When I read the manga, I do my best to picture their voices from the show.
So yeah, kids, you can like any long-running shonen series you want to . . . so long as they're Naruto, or Bleach. Or FMA, if that counts.
