I've finally finished Bleach...

[Uzumaki Goku]

That was such a nothing ending.

The final battle is over anticlimactically, (Seriously Ichigo just cuts him in half and that's it)

We cut to 10 years later, Ichigo and Orihime are married and so are Rukia and Renji... I'm pretty neutral on this... Ichigo and Orihime have the same problem of Naruto and Hinata which is in that there was plenty of stuff that showed that she liked him, there wasn't much that showed he felt the same way... and this time there's no movie to explain it. (Though considering how THAT turned out, maybe that's a good thing)

Poor Rukia. She doesn't even get to do anything in the final battle. Kubo did her dirty (not as bad as Kishimoto did Sakura but still pretty bad)

AIZEN is the one who gives the summation of the series theme... (not quite as surreal as Orochimaru being allowed to do whatever he wants but it's up there)

Overall, did I like it better or worse than Naruto's ending?

Eh... it's about the same honestly. On the plus side though, Kishimoto and Kubo set the bar pretty low so Oda doesn't have a very high bar to clear for One Piece's ending.

 

[Makoto Yuki]

Very unsatisfying ending in my opinion.

 

[RealTravisty]

It pisses me off that Renji was there with Ichigo. Aizen is forgivable since they needed all the power that they could get, but...Rukia should've been there with Ichigo. The two have never fought together properly (to my knowledge) and she was there since the beginning.

 

[Uzumaki Goku]

It pisses me off that Renji was there with Ichigo. Aizen is forgivable since they needed all the power that they could get, but...Rukia should've been there with Ichigo. The two have never fought together properly (to my knowledge) and she was there since the beginning.

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I know! I was screaming at that.

 

[HStallion]

It was a giant mess for so long. It was like watching a train wreck but the train was a hundred miles long and is crashing for a couple hours straight. So many groan worthy moments as well like the God of Thunder stuff. Yeesh.

 

[Septimus Prime]

I thought it was funny that to beat the unbeatable, omniscient god, all you need is Aizen.

 

[Autumn]

Has the rushed ending ever been explain? Did the series just lose all popularity and SJ lost money?

 

[Uzumaki Goku]

Has the rushed ending ever been explain? Did the series just lose all popularity and SJ lost money?

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I've heard it's either that or Kubo's declining health.

Well, I hope the anime fixes this.

 

[edo_kid]

No its not the same, Naruto for all the shit it did atleast didn't have a rush ending with a garbage final fight and multiple end fights just anticlimactic cut off. Bleach is on another level of bad that's not even comparable lol

 

[HomerSimpson-Man]

I'm sorry you put yourself through that cause how Bleach was doodooing all over itself was evident long before the final arc....cause yeesh.

Damn series broke my heart.

 

[Jonnax]

In my opinion the only good part was the the soul society ark.

After Ichigo rescued Rukia the whole thing fell apart

 

[_Jelly_fish]

AIZEN is the one who gives the summation of the series theme... (not quite as surreal as Orochimaru being allowed to do whatever he wants but it's up there)

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I've never been able to understand quite howOrochimaru's thing works in Naruto... even if he's good now he was basically the most unconditionally evil ninja walking around before and has destroyed literally thousands of lives (if not more)

I would even argue Aizen had gotten nowhere near the level of harm that Orochimaru did in the background of Naruto

 

[99nikniht]

In my opinion the only good part was the the soul society ark.

After Ichigo rescued Rukia the whole thing fell apart

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Aizen/Hollow (Heuco Mundo?) ark has its moments, but ya you're mostly right. I lost most of my hype for bleach after the Soul Society ark came to an end.

 

[darkside]

I thought it was funny that to beat the unbeatable, omniscient god, all you need is Aizen.

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The one thing I'll always love about the series is that Aizen was so powerful he never needed his bankai.

 

[Uzumaki Goku]

No its not the same, Naruto for all the shit it did atleast didn't have a rush ending with a garbage final fight and multiple end fights just anticlimactic cut off. Bleach is on another level of bad that's not even comparable lol

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Honestly if I was to sum up Naruto's ending

It may not be TERRIBLE, but it's not anywhere near as good as it could've been (and probably should've been)

 

[Deleted member 12352]

It was trash.

Bleach had been walking a fine line for years, but the entirety of that final arc was the tipping point for me where it slipped into outright garbage territory. Bad story decisions made at every possible turn.

Fuck's sake... just remembering how Kira got killed by having a huge hole blown through his chest in the first half of the arc only for him to reappear alive with cyborg parts or some shit in a single page right at the end and Kubo doesn't bother with even a passing explanation for how this happened. Like... what?

I've never been able to understand quite howOrochimaru's thing works in Naruto... even if he's good now he was basically the most unconditionally evil ninja walking around before and has destroyed literally thousands of lives (if not more)

I would even argue Aizen had gotten nowhere near the level of harm that Orochimaru did in the background of Naruto

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I can vaguely recall this being half-heartedly addressed in Naruto Shippuden at one point when Sasuke and Orochimaru had a conversation about why they're both still allowed to walk around and Orochimaru's reasoning for it was along the lines of "There'll always be more monsters, so best to keep some monsters of your own close to hand just in case."

 

[Deleted member 1839]

I thought it was funny that to beat the unbeatable, omniscient god, all you need is Aizen.

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He's bullshit personified.

 

[Okabe]

But how new did your clothes look afterwards? It's kind of amazing what that product can do

 

[Hoa]

I'm just glad Aizen got to style on someone one more time at the end 😂 Made everything worth it.

I'm pretty sure Yhwach squad would have won just letting shit play out instead of taking his powers back. Thor didn't seem beatable at all and Hashwalth already had Ishida beat.

 

[Deleted member 33533]

I've never been able to understand quite howOrochimaru's thing works in Naruto... even if he's good now he was basically the most unconditionally evil ninja walking around before and has destroyed literally thousands of lives (if not more)

I would even argue Aizen had gotten nowhere near the level of harm that Orochimaru did in the background of Naruto

Click to shrink...

Orochimaru is basically on house arrest. Even when he leaves his base, he's being shadowed by Leaf shinobi 24/7. The thing is, Orochimaru was a huge part in saving the world during the 4th Shinobi War - without him, Obito and Madara would have killed everyone. With the lingering threat of the Otsutsuki, Orochimaru is more useful as an ally than trying to kill him (which might not even stick) or lock him up making a potential enemy of him. With Naruto and Sasuke around, they feel confident he's not going to do anything. It's a complex sort of issue and not everyone is cool with it - Tsunade in particular was against it.

He's bullshit personified.

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This was such a good part though. It also felt like it actually was far less bullshit than half the things the Quincies were doing in that final arc. Like Ywach's abilities revolve around him being able to see infinite futures and Aizen's ability revolves around making people see what he wants them to see. It actually made sense that Aizen could counter him and Kubo even set it up many chapters before. One of the satisfying parts of that whole final arc.

 

[ArgyleReptile]

Has the rushed ending ever been explain? Did the series just lose all popularity and SJ lost money?

Click to shrink...

Declining health.

 

[Imperfected]

Poor Rukia. She doesn't even get to do anything in the final battle. Kubo did her dirty (not as bad as Kishimoto did Sakura but still pretty bad)

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Eh, Rukia got to fight As Nodt, which is practically top billing. (I'd say he, X, and D were the stand-outs of the Sternritters, and the one the reader probably develops the most antipathy for. Maybe I'm just projecting because I absolutely love his design and feel like he has some of the best panels in the manga, though.)

Comparatively, Renji's stuck fighting Mask de Masculine and then being one of a few dozen getting punked by Gerrard, which is a pretty hilarious fall-off considering he was basically presented as being built up alongside Ichigo. Obviously, you've got a ton of characters who just do nothing in that fight. I'm not sure Shinji, who's supposed to be a captain at this point, ever even does anything on-screen?

My biggest problem with the final arc isn't the ending, but that the Squad Zero stuff still is just a massive deflation. The manga looks so good up to the point they're introduced, it's moving at a thousand miles a minute and interesting stuff is happening all over the place, and then they just land like a wet fart and let all of the momentum escape from the story.

I'll throw an honorable mention to the Bazz-B flashback in terms of pacing problems, too. Like, really, Kubo? We're doing this right now? Really?

PS: I actually like parts of the Aizen/Tsukushima setup for the finale. You have a BS JoJo villain who has the power to control the future, so how do you beat him? You bring in the guys with the power to control the Present and Past, respectively. You change the Past to create new possible futures, then change the Present so that he doesn't see them.

My bigger complaint would be that the Soul-Silver Arrowhead or whatever is just kind of "meh" and felt like a limp way to try and make Ishida seem involved in an arc that was, thematically, supposed to be mostly about him but never really was.

 

[Septimus Prime]

This was such a good part though. It also felt like it actually was far less bullshit than half the things the Quincies were doing in that final arc. Like Ywach's abilities revolve around him being able to see infinite futures and Aizen's ability revolves around making people see what he wants them to see. It actually made sense that Aizen could counter him and Kubo even set it up many chapters before. One of the satisfying parts of that whole final arc.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, he set it up waaaay back, when Aizen tells us that his hypnosis is absolute after you see it once, and even if you know about it you still can't do a thing about it. And Yhwach, well, he sees everything, so for sure he saw the hypnosis. So there we go.

 

[Hoa]

Orochimaru is basically on house arrest. Even when he leaves his base, he's being shadowed by Leaf shinobi 24/7. The thing is, Orochimaru was a huge part in saving the world during the 4th Shinobi War - without him, Obito and Madara would have killed everyone. With the lingering threat of the Otsutsuki, Orochimaru is more useful as an ally than trying to kill him (which might not even stick) or lock him up making a potential enemy of him. With Naruto and Sasuke around, they feel confident he's not going to do anything. It's a complex sort of issue and not everyone is cool with it - Tsunade in particular was against it.



This was such a good part though. It also felt like it actually was far less bullshit than half the things the Quincies were doing in that final arc. Like Ywach's abilities revolve around him being able to see infinite futures and Aizen's ability revolves around making people see what he wants them to see. It actually made sense that Aizen could counter him and Kubo even set it up many chapters before. One of the satisfying parts of that whole final arc.

Click to shrink...

The fact that the first thing Yhwach did when he went to Soul Society was visit Aizen to try to recruit him spoke volumes to his threat level. Letting his clone take a beating and one shotting the CC was an afterthought.

And it was even hinted back then that Aizen could influence his perceptions:

 

[Deleted member 33533]

It pisses me off that Renji was there with Ichigo. Aizen is forgivable since they needed all the power that they could get, but...Rukia should've been there with Ichigo. The two have never fought together properly (to my knowledge) and she was there since the beginning.

Click to shrink...

It is weird. Ichigo and Rukia seem to drift apart after the Soul Society arc. There are moments here and there but it's never quite the same. And no, I don't think they've ever fought together.

That said, Rukia still got a great moment using her bankai for the first time to defeat As Nodt who beat Byakuya.

Yeah, he set it up waaaay back, when Aizen tells us that his hypnosis is absolute after you see it once, and even if you know about it you still can't do a thing about it. And Yhwach, well, he sees everything, so for sure he saw the hypnosis. So there we go.

Click to shrink...

Yep and during the first Quincy invasion, Yhwach goes down into Aizen's prison to try and convince him to join his cause. Aizen refuses and when Yhwach leaves he realizes he was down there way longer than he thought and Aizen messed with his perception of time. Aizen was just testing to see if his hypnosis would work on Yhwach.

 

[Moppeh]

As far as I'm concerned, Bleach ended after the Soul Society arc.

 

[edo_kid]

Honestly if I was to sum up Naruto's ending

It may not be TERRIBLE, but it's not anywhere near as good as it could've been (and probably should've been)

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Oh for sure Naruto ending wasn't great or anything but when looking at what happen in Bleach... it just can't be compared lol

 

[Tatsu91]

That was such a nothing ending.

The final battle is over anticlimactically, (Seriously Ichigo just cuts him in half and that's it)

We cut to 10 years later, Ichigo and Orihime are married and so are Rukia and Renji... I'm pretty neutral on this... Ichigo and Orihime have the same problem of Naruto and Hinata which is in that there was plenty of stuff that showed that she liked him, there wasn't much that showed he felt the same way... and this time there's no movie to explain it. (Though considering how THAT turned out, maybe that's a good thing)

Poor Rukia. She doesn't even get to do anything in the final battle. Kubo did her dirty (not as bad as Kishimoto did Sakura but still pretty bad)

AIZEN is the one who gives the summation of the series theme... (not quite as surreal as Orochimaru being allowed to do whatever he wants but it's up there)

Overall, did I like it better or worse than Naruto's ending?

Eh... it's about the same honestly. On the plus side though, Kishimoto and Kubo set the bar pretty low so Oda doesn't have a very high bar to clear for One Piece's ending.

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Im hoping the anime adaptions fixes it Kubo was rushed in the end so he had to just wrap it up.

 

[Imperfected]

Im hoping the anime adaptions fixes it Kubo was rushed in the end so he had to just wrap it up.

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I suppose it might. The Ninja World War is better remembered than it really deserves to be because the last real thing about it that sticks in people's minds is the Madara vs. Everybody burly brawl from the anime. It's pretty much entirely riding on the strength of the animation; the manga version is, frankly, strictly inferior and kind of uninteresting.

So, give a sufficiently talented animation studio permission to fill out the last battles of Bleach to the best of their ability (rather than slavishly following the manga panels as storyboards) and you might get decent results.

 

[Deleted member 33533]

Honestly if I was to sum up Naruto's ending

It may not be TERRIBLE, but it's not anywhere near as good as it could've been (and probably should've been)

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I thought Naruto's ending was pretty good. I feel like everything ended up where it was supposed to unless you're involved in shipping wars lol. With the whole Hinata and Naruto thing, I honestly didn't feel like it was a big deal that they didn't explain exactly how they got together. Like it was a 10+ year time skip, people end up together for all kinds of reasons and it didn't need to happen during the story. Naruto and Hinata had enough of a foundation that it would be believable in that time frame. I actually thought the movie really awkwardly forced an explanation that wasn't really satisfying as just not knowing. I feel the same about Ichigo and Orihime. I think there was enough there to believe these two people could end up together after a timeskip. But idk, I never got the people who saw something romantic between Ichigo and Rukia.

The fact that the first thing Yhwach did when he went to Soul Society was visit Aizen to try to recruit him spoke volumes to his threat level. Letting his clone take a beating and one shotting the CC was an afterthought.

And it was even hinted back then that Aizen could influence his perceptions:

Click to shrink...

Yep that's the part. Aizen was setting up his hypnosis for later.

 

[Nocturnowl]

I can't imagine reaching Bleach's ending with any sort of hopeful expectations from the halfway point of Hueco Mundo, let alone this late into the game.
But that's kinda what I enjoyed about it, perfect car crash manga, hyped for the returning anime to get the stupid onto the screen.

 

[ILikeFeet]

I can't imagine reaching Bleach's ending with any sort of hopeful expectations from the halfway point of Hueco Mundo, let alone this late into the game.
But that's kinda what I enjoyed about it, perfect car crash manga, hyped for the returning anime to get the stupid onto the screen.

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the Aizen fight and ending was a pretty enough bow tie as it could have gotten. Ichigo's powerup was bullshit, but whatever

 

[Baphomet]

Bleach should have ended after Aizen was defeated , everything after that is complete shit that doesn't need to exist.

 

[Brickhunt]

As soon as the manga finished, Kubo was diagonized with a torn shoulder tendon and immediatelly hospitalized. So, for all his faults as a writer, please don't think that the final chapters were set like this on purpose.

The very final chapter (which was clearly disconnected from the preceding chapters) ended as a Kubo's wanted, but everything related to the final fights was massively rushed, but clearly for health reasons, despite much some people on this forum wants you to think was proposital and result of shit writing.

 

[Nocturnowl]

the Aizen fight and ending was a pretty enough bow tie as it could have gotten. Ichigo's powerup was bullshit, but whatever

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Actually yeah, snarkiness aside it did manage to reach a point where it could have just stopped with only a few plot threads left dangling

Though my dislike for that final powerup as well meant I was never really bothered that they yanked on those threads and kept going.

 

[Abylim]

I agree that it was anticlimactic, and i agree that Ichigo rarely ever seemed to reciprocate Orihime's affection.

I was mostly satisfied with the ending, though. They get their happy ending. It was definitely rushed, and it shows. But it wasn't the car wreck that i was led to believe it was, imo.

 

[Imperfected]

I agree that it was anticlimactic, and i agree that Ichigo rarely ever seemed to reciprocate Orihime's affection.

I was mostly satisfied with the ending, though. They get their happy ending. It was definitely rushed, and it shows. But it wasn't the car wreck that i was led to believe it was, imo.

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For those of us who were reading "live", it mostly turned to hate-reading after the Squad Zero introduction, with weeks and weeks of fuming about how bad the chapters sucked and how big the latest ass-pull was in between each chapter.

I went back and read it in preparation for the anime coming out this year, and I'll admit that it's not really that bad when you aren't stewing in those go-nowhere chapters forever. It's like how when you talk about "The Boat" people who read Berserk week-to-week fall to their knees and begin bleeding from their eyes while hollow sounds echo from within the visceral pit of their empty husk, but if you go back and read it now it's like, "Huh, that was kind of a shitty run of like six chapters, wasn't it? Felt like an anime filler, good thing it didn't last long."

 

[Abylim]

For those of us who were reading "live", it mostly turned to hate-reading after the Squad Zero introduction, with weeks and weeks of fuming about how bad the chapters sucked and how big the latest ass-pull was in between each chapter.

I went back and read it in preparation for the anime coming out this year, and I'll admit that it's not really that bad when you aren't stewing in those go-nowhere chapters forever. It's like how when you talk about "The Boat" people who read Berserk week-to-week fall to their knees and begin bleeding from their eyes while hollow sounds echo from within the visceral pit of their empty husk, but if you go back and read it now it's like, "Huh, that was kind of a shitty run of like six chapters, wasn't it? Felt like an anime filler, good thing it didn't last long."

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This makes a ton of sense. Thanks for elaborating.

 

[Banana Aeon]

I reread Bleach a couple of weeks ago and while I noticed the plot shift in overdrive the closer to the ending we got, I was mostly satisfied with my experience. Hopefully, with the upcoming anime, they can expand and fit the light novels in.

Most long runners read better when you're not waiting for the next chapter.

 

[Maximo]

In my opinion the only good part was the the soul society ark.

After Ichigo rescued Rukia the whole thing fell apart

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You aint wrong it didn't know what the fuck it was doing or going after that.

 

[DragonSJG]

It was rushed and bad as hell

 

[OtakuCoder]

Remember that one fight where one of the Visoreds has a Sternritter beat and he goes "The only way you could possibly beat me is if you did this" and the Sternritter proceeds to do precisely that and win?

 

[Kaelan]

As much as the ending is shit, I'm hyped for the anime to return

 

[ILikeFeet]

I still hate what they did to Unohana. I get the trope Kubo was going for, but it just didn't work. felt like this meme come true and just as cringey

 

[Lord Azrael]

The only positive thing I can say about Bleach is that the character names are very memorable and fun to say

 

[Soj]

As much as the ending is shit, I'm hyped for the anime to return

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This.

I still love Bleach even with all it's flaws.

 

[Imperfected]

I still hate what they did to Unohana. I get the trope Kubo was going for, but it just didn't work. felt like this meme come true and just as cringey

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You should probably keep in mind that Unohana vs. Yachiru isn't one of those like "twenty years ago" flashbacks like the ones with Ichigo's parents. It's a thousand years ago. She and Yamamoto had a hot minute to mellow out.

 

[lunarworks]

That was such a nothing ending.

The final battle is over anticlimactically, (Seriously Ichigo just cuts him in half and that's it)

We cut to 10 years later...

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What happened was Jump had told Kubo that they wanted Bleach wrapped-up, and gave him something like a year to do so.

He continued to drag his feet and pad the battles with dumb counter-attacks.

Jump got fed up and sent him a fax saying "You've got two weeks. Finish it."

From the final chapter:

 

[Nocturnowl]

Finally getting an answer to why people found Unohana so spoopy was actually my favourite thing from the late game of Bleach.
Everyone else was always asking to find out about Squad 0 and then there was me, wanting to know more about Captain Mom and her occasional sinister aura.

 

[kurahador]

I hate how the fight in the series after Soul Society arc always won with Ichigo having sudden power ups out of nowhere.

It was clear Tite Kubo never has any plan for the series after Soul Society arc. His previous series, Zombie Powder ended prematurely as well and just rushed as hell.