Bleach was what really introduced me to the concept of digital fansubs. I saw episode four or so in an anime club meeting, loved it, went home, and jumped into the whole avi fansub scene. I remember having to work it out for myself, since I had absolutely no idea how the entire torrent thing worked or that I needed to install extra software for avi’s to run. I think I stopped watching in the 130’s or so of the episodes, and I haven’t read the manga in ages.

Naturally the realisation that Naruto was Art put me into a state of shock. I swear I nearly vomited.

One Piece I read the first twenty or so chapters of in the vain hope that it would somehow get good, and Bleach I didn’t even start with. Though I might try it on the strength of that race thing alone. :p

The best manga in Jump is still Bakuman, though.

Naruto and Bleach strike me much more as an author starting something out of a handful of ideas and inspirations and then really making stuff up as they went along. For Naruto, I feel it was good while it could ride on the strength of it’s drama and inherent manhood. Naruto himself was a highly dramatic and believable character and the coming-of-age themes were resonating well, but the series took a turn when there wasn’t much left to be done with that good boyhood drama and it became more of a fun-dumb pandering plot more about pleasing readers than about artistic vision (possibly because the ideas were already dead by the time Orochimaru was introduced, no doubt at the command of an editor who wanted a central villain.)

I haven’t read Bleach so I still can’t say where I think it goes. I’ll just have to ride along until I can say anything. As of volume three, though, it seems like the author is mostly biding time with fairly generic plots to flesh out his characters while tryingt o decide where to go.

Out of the big shonen trio (Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece), Bleach is actually my least favorite. I don’t read manga much, but I’ve seen a good number of anime episodes for each. For me personally, the characters in Bleach just aren’t as lovable, nor do they have such intricately woven self-histories as Naruto and One Piece. I still like Bleach, I just don’t love it like I do the other two. I continue to watch it mostly for the characters I like such as Rukia and Chad =) It does have a handful of awesome fight/action sequences as well.