Ranking as one of Shonen Jump's "Big Three" alongside its contemporaries One Piece and Naruto, Tite Kubo's hit manga series Bleach launched in 2001 and got an anime adaptation in 2004. Manga authors are always thrilled to get an anime of their series, but the anime may or may not live up to the source material.
So, does the Bleach anime stand up to the manga? It's true that the Bleach anime is returning in 2021 and may have slick new visuals, but for now, we are comparing this franchise's manga with the current anime, the one we already have access to. Let's review five reasons this anime is indeed a great one, and five reasons why you are better off with Bleach manga instead.
10 Watch The Anime: Great Intro Videos
This is a reason why many manga fans want their favorite franchises put on the small screen: the intro videos! The anime industry is known for making flashy, catchy, and all-around cool opening credits videos, and Bleach is no different.
The first few opening credits videos for Bleach are beloved by the fans, and they use quirky, graffiti-like imagery to set the show's vaguely urban and punkish tone while adding a good dose of the supernatural. You get a fair impression of the anime right away. The song selection is spot-on, too.
9 Read The Manga: No Filler Arcs
We're starting off with broad reasons to compare anime and manga, and when it comes to large franchises like the Big Three, this is a big deal. While the manga is still ongoing, the anime might catch up... and it needs to find new material to animate.
So, filler arcs step right in, and many shows, from Bleach to Naruto to Fairy Tail, do just that. True, Bleach's filler arcs do expand on the lore, but manga fans will get impatient and long for the real story to come along. If you read the manga, you get exactly that.
8 Watch The Anime: The Soundtrack
Who doesn't love a good soundtrack? Many hit anime series get a full-blown OST with thematic music for all kinds of scenes, from action to tension to sadness to humor. And we are happy to say that Bleach's anime delivers.
What's so different about Bleach's OST is its use of ethereal, abstract sounds to compliment the franchise's story of ghosts and the afterlife, complete with eerie vocals, synthesizers, creatively distorted guitar music, and more. It's spooky and bizarre, but in a good way, and the OST will really stick with you long after the anime is over.
7 Read The Manga: R-Rated Content
There is a difference between Shonen and Seinen anime/manga, and Bleach is Shonen, meant for middle schooler and high schooler boys to read. But the manga pushes things toward an R rating, and that makes it exciting for older readers.
Unlike American cartoons, anime and manga can appeal to audiences of all ages, and the Bleach manga makes the action more intense and visceral with broken bones, bleeding wounds, amputations, and much more. The anime edits all that out for a more PG look, and some audiences may find that to be rather watered-down.
6 Watch The Anime: Great Dub
The world of anime has a reputation for iffy English voice acting, and the voice acting work in Pixar or Disney works nearly always outstrips that of dubbed Japanese animation. Some anime are known for their hilariously bad dubs.
Good news: Bleach does better than that. Its English cast is spot-on, where each voice actor/actress sounds exactly like what you'd expect the characters to sound like, and they deliver fully developed emotional content. Dubbed or subbed, Bleach is a treat for the ears.
5 Read The Manga: Distinct Art Style
What does manga look like? Anyone can tell it apart from American comics, and there are some stereotypes about how manga looks. But there's a lot depth in this industry: despite the long list of cliches and conventions, many manga artists successfully find their own unique style.
Artist Tite Kubo expertly uses techniques ranging from shading and shadows to dramatic close-ups, intense facial expressions, freeze-frame timing, and panel layout to make a manga that is highly detailed but also very clear and easy to read. Bleach is never cluttered or confusing for a single moment. This gives the art some space to breathe.
4 Watch The Anime: Special Effects
This is one of the main reasons why you want your favorite manga series to get animated: so you can be dazzled with the special effects. Even non-action series look great with sparkly or colorful backgrounds, and Bleach can do more.
With all the shikai, bankai, kido, and spiritual stuff going on here, animating Bleach is a must, and you'll see magic powers of all different colors, including people's auras and even the sky changing color. You haven't seen Byakuya's bankai until you've seen those glowing pink petals rushing in a torrent on-screen.
3 Read The Manga: It Finished The Story
Fans were divided on Bleach's final chapter, and many fans were vocal about their dislike for the canon final pairings. But in any case, the manga has an advantage over the anime simply because it concludes the story.
The anime will resume, yes, but anime-only fans have a big wait ahead of them to see the final storylines wrap up. For now, the manga is the best and only route for seeing the end: its drama, its action, its sacrifices, its happily-ever-afters.
2 Watch The Anime: You Enjoy Filler Episodes
Many anime fans agree that they don't like filler arcs, and that's practically a general consensus by this point. But that's just a matter of prefernce, not fact. Different fans have different interests, and if you really do enjoy filler episodes, that's great!
This just means there's more to love, and Bleach's filler arcs are cohesive stories, not just an anthology of goofy what-if scenarios. The Bounts are a whole new set of villains, and we bet that plenty of Bleach fans had fun with this anime-only bonus.
1 Read The Manga: Avoid Low Resolutions
Ichigo and Kon don't look too pleased, do they? While Bleach's anime has many perks, it is also showing its age; namely, its resolution. By now, anime fans are regularly treated to big-title series with wide-screen formatting and high-def visuals, such as Attack on Titan. That anime is a technical marvel.
And Bleach's anime is absolutely not. This anime is a product of its time, mainly the mid to late 2000s, and it is hampered by full-screen formatting (resulting in black bars on the sides of your screen) and decidedly grainy and pixelated visuals during streaming. Younger anime fans may be horrified, and older anime fans will usually have no nostalgia for this level of animation technology.