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Revisiting the First Time Bleach Ended

the staff decided it would be best to stop the anime rather than do potentially the longest stretch of filler they'd have to do

So there actually is a reason as to why the Bleach anime ended. YouTuber Clyde posted a video a year or two ago citing an interview with the director Noriyuki Abe who said that as they were animating Fullering they had to ask Kubo what was going to happen next because they were getting way too close and with there being I think only 3 Blood War chapters released the staff decided it would be best to stop the anime rather than do potentially the longest stretch of filler they'd have to do

I managed to watch all of it on TV back then, and it could get kind of hard sometimes with the filler. I didn't necessarily mind the season-long fillers since they could tell their own littler stories and give the wider cast something to do, but things like a fight stopping dead for a couple of weeks for filler pulled a lot of the hype out of it towards the end.

If the decision was made to stop and come back to it later, I can't say it was a wrong call. I think the prospect of going straight through with no filler episodes is responsible for at least some of why people seem to be genuinely excited to see this comeback.

I have to think one of the ways Bleach ended up being unintentionally influential is that the decision makers came around to the idea that it was ok to take the seasonal approach or take breaks with some of its properties. I think that Black Clover is following suit here, for example. It had lots of episodes and right around where it was at a point of catching up and having to resort to filler, which it largely avoided, to keep going, it simply stopped.

Honestly, I don't get how people stick with these long running shounen so long. To me, nearly all of them reach this point where it feels like they lose sight of any real forward progress on the plot, and it's just challenging and fighting over and over.

Greed1914 wrote:

I managed to watch all of it on TV back then, and it could get kind of hard sometimes with the filler. I didn't necessarily mind the season-long fillers since they could tell their own littler stories and give the wider cast something to do, but things like a fight stopping dead for a couple of weeks for filler pulled a lot of the hype out of it towards the end. If the decision was made to stop and come back to it later, I can't say it was a wrong call. I think the prospect of going straight through with no filler episodes is responsible for at least some of why people seem to be genuinely excited to see this comeback. I have to think one of the ways Bleach ended up being unintentionally influential is that the decision makers came around to the idea that it was ok to take the seasonal approach or take breaks with some of its properties. I think that Black Clover is following suit here, for example. It had lots of episodes and right around where it was at a point of catching up and having to resort to filler, which it largely avoided, to keep going, it simply stopped.

Yeah, I'm assuming once Black Clover comes back after the movie that they'll go for a more season approach. Like Bleach is going to be a 4-cour split cour, so I can see them doing something similar with Black Clover.

Almost like how Bones handles MHA.

meruru wrote:

Honestly, I don't get how people stick with these long running shounen so long. To me, nearly all of them reach this point where it feels like they lose sight of any real forward progress on the plot, and it's just challenging and fighting over and over.

I don't see this problem. I mean, obviously, there's a lot of fighting, that's the point of a battle shonen, it's the draw. But I've seen very few series which have actually stalled its forward progress outside of, like...Bleach. Dragon Ball, One Piece, and Fairy Tail are all more or less set up to be a continuing series of adventures rather than one continuing story, and there's something nice and comforting about watching your favorite characters going out on new adventures. Sure, there's a (usually distant) goal out there, but the draw is the journey, not the ending.

I think the problem is with Bleach, specifically. The series had an interesting hook, sense of style and cool factor, but it lacks any kind of identity, purpose or general intent behind the story itself. Unlike many other battle shonen, Bleach quickly becomes exclusively about tons of characters engaging in fights repeatedly with not much else going on. After a while it becomes tiresome for some people who aren’t interested in the power system and character abilities or aren’t invested in much of the massive cast. This is probably the main reason for declining popularity and why the series is so divisive.

I think the problem is with Bleach, specifically. The series had an interesting hook, sense of style and cool factor, but it lacks any kind of identity, purpose or general intent behind the story itself. Unlike many other battle shonen, Bleach quickly becomes exclusively about tons of characters engaging in fights repeatedly with not much else going on. After a while it becomes tiresome for some people who aren’t interested in the power system and character abilities or aren’t invested in much of the massive cast. This is probably the main reason for declining popularity and why the series is so divisive.

What really frustrates me is how so much of the fanbase seems to rag on the Fullbringer arc, when for my money it was the freshest the series had felt in a long time. It was a nice callback to the mood at the very beginning of the series, which had a very Yu Yu Hakusho vibe to it (okay, let's be real, Kubo cribbed pretty hard from Yu Yu at the start). Granted, it had a profoundly dumb ending, which was almost a given, but for a little while it almost felt like old times.

Top Gun wrote:

What really frustrates me is how so much of the fanbase seems to rag on the Fullbringer arc, when for my money it was the freshest the series had felt in a long time. It was a nice callback to the mood at the very beginning of the series, which had a very Yu Yu Hakusho vibe to it (okay, let's be real, Kubo cribbed pretty hard from Yu Yu at the start). Granted, it had a profoundly dumb ending, which was almost a given, but for a little while it almost felt like old times.

I totally agree, I find the fandom distate for the FullBringer really odd. It was like answering all the problems of the Arrancar arcs (well paced, shorter and more focused, more focused cast, clearly planned out rather than written from week to week). If the ending hadn't have been the typical meleé, it would have been great.

I guess it's got a bit of the stench of anime filler arcs, a bunch of original characters competely outside the main series thread, that people couldn't hold their noses over it.