For Bleach, fans of the anime and fans of the manga aren’t necessarily the same people, and for good reason. The anime series isn’t an exact replica of the manga, and in a lot of ways, the anime has a totally different tone than the manga.
Plus, there are actual changes to the way the story is told that make a big difference to some fans, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. Here are five ways the Bleach anime has improved on the story in the manga and five ways that it hasn’t quite done it justice.
10 For The Better: Less Violent
It’s hard to get away with as much violence on television as it is in a comic book, and that definitely shows in the Bleach series. The anime has less blood and guts than the manga, which can often see characters getting limbs cut off or spurting blood everywhere. For the squeamish or weak of heart, the anime series might be a better bet than the uber-violent manga.
9 For The Worse: Less Violent
On the other hand, the Bleach manga is very concerned with the idea of death, since the main characters are all Shinigami. And they do a lot of fighting.
It’s important to show the intensity and importance of these fights and the fact that the characters are actually in danger of dying from them; it lends an actual reason to feel like it matters that the characters are putting themselves on the line to fight for their causes, and since the heroes might actually be in mortal peril it lends some intensity to the proceedings.
8 For The Better: The Bount Arc
The Bount Arc was the first filler arc in the Bleach anime. While filler arcs in general are pretty contentious with anime viewers, since they detract from the main story and are just meant to be time-killers while the manga gets further along, and while the Bount Arc in general has divided fans, the actual story is pretty good for being anime-only. For a world with as much insane world-building as Bleach has, it’s good for viewers to spend some time learning about how everything works in a way that isn’t immediately connected to the main plot.
7 For The Worse: Filler Arcs In General
That being said, filler arcs can be a death-knell for a shonen anime series. While anime are often treated like episodes-long commercials for the manga, nothing can kill a fandom like endless episodes that don’t go anywhere or seem to not mean anything for the plot.
And Bleach has a lot of filler arcs, with tons of villains Ichigo and his friends have to defeat that don’t seem to matter and do seem to cheapen all the work they do to get through the main story with all of the growth it’s lent them.
6 For The Better: Fight Scenes
While the fight scenes haven’t changed that much from the manga, they have the major advantage of being animated, and that’s enough of a change to really get people excited to watch the series. The show is so exciting because of the interesting ways that characters battle, and getting to actually watch the Shinigami and Hollows battle in awesome, animated fashion definitely gives the series a one-up on the manga.
5 For The Worse: Extended Battles
These might be the worst kind of filler episodes. Instead of battles taking just as long as they need to in order to get all of the important parts in and to see the characters do something cool, the fights are dragged out into three or four episodes each, with the characters doing a lot of thinking about things and figuring out how to power up.
Pretty much every shonen anime has fallen into this trap: Dragon Ball Z, Naruto, etc. Nothing is less interesting than watching a character get ready to fight instead of just doing it.
4 For The Better: Ichigo And Rukia
A big point of contention with Bleach fans, particularly fans of the anime, is the fact that Rukia and Ichigo don’t end up together in the end. Instead, Ichigo marries Orihime, and Rukia ends up with Renji. This is partially because the relationships between the characters are represented a little differently in the anime than in the manga, with Ichigo and Rukia spending more time together and having more of a connection. This seems like a good way to go, since the tropes of these kinds of series would probably have these two characters more naturally ending up together than Ichigo and Orihime.
3 For The Worse: Less Time With The Supporting Cast
As with any anime adaptation, there isn’t as much room to spend time with all of the characters as there is in the manga. This ultimately means that a lot of the side characters get short stick and don’t really get their moment in the spotlight.
This is definitely true of Bleach, which has a huge supporting cast anyway. All of the characters have their own character arcs in the series, but the anime doesn’t really have the time or episode space to devote to each of them getting to actually have those moments.
2 For The Better: Art Style
Don’t get us wrong: the art style in the Bleach manga is awesome. It’s highly-detailed in a way that a lot of weekly manga aren’t, just because it’s hard to pay so much attention to detail in such a short timeframe. The characters have unique designs and carefully drawn expressions. But this look would not have translated well to animation, and the heavy shadowing work in the manga would likely have made the anime look muddy and hard to follow. Instead, the series is colorful and not overly-rendered, and that gives it its own feel that definitely makes it great to watch.
1 For The Worse: Not Finishing The Story
The anime got canceled before it could reach the end of the story that the manga was telling, which means that it has a pretty abrupt ending that doesn’t really resolve anything and leaves it all pretty up-in-the-air. While there have since been plans for it to come back and finish up, for a long time, the only ending anime fans had was pretty unsatisfying while the manga actually got to wrap up its final storylines.