Originally Posted by Jordan Y.

Bleach was about as good as that kind of kiddie fighting show gets until the end of the SS arc. Then it got boring and they started in on DBZ-style runs of 10, 20, 30 episodes with about 5 episodes worth of interesting new material and the rest filler garbage. I stopped watching at around eps 130 though I'm considering picking it up again because filler garbage is less annoying 5 at a time than once a week, and the writer's strike has left me with few options.

To tell the truth I was very disappointed by the show even though it started out entertaining enough. I think they could've gone a completely different direction with it and made it a lot better. Go with the darker tone of the first few episodes, focused on death, the main character struggling with killing off the hollows and basically condemning innocents to oblivion, eventually tracking down and taking out the one that took out his mother. 24-26 episodes of top-notch anime summarized right there.

Ah well, in the end it turned out just to be another brainless never-ending fighting show. The darn thing's targeted at 10-year-old Japanese boys; I shouldn't be expecting existentialism from children's cartoons.