Honestly Cid, I think you’re a tad unfair to Bleach. Bleach is a Shonen fighting series, it has been from the start. And complaining that a Shonen fighting series has too much fighting is like complaining a Romance is too sappy.
Bleach is not DBZ, it’s not even close. Yeah, there’s fighting, yeah, it’s measured in ‘levels’ (Shi Kai, Ban Kai, WhateverIsNext Kai), the hero goes by the ‘fights, loses, trains, gets stronger, fights, wins, rests, repeat’ pattern that every other Shonen fighting series in existance uses. DBZ did something like this too, but so did a lot of other series.
It took over 20 episodes to fight Freeza in DBZ, the standard fight in Bleach lasts 2, maybe 2 and a half episodes, tops.
And, you gotta admit, The whole thing with Aizen was pretty clever. If you weren’t spoiled about it beforehand it’s unlikely you saw that coming. Does DBZ have anything like that?
If fighting series aren’t for you, that’s fine. But Bleach will be getting back on track to the manga’s storyline once this filler arc is over. To be honest, I’m a little tired of people smugly defaulting to relating Bleach to DBZ in order to criticize it. DBZ wasn’t the be-all-end-all of fighting anime, it’s just the most popular over here, which is a damn shame, because the anime was an over-extended pile of nasty.
I agree that the character interaction in Bleach is awesome. The SS arc could have been more enjoyable if the party wasn’t split up, and much of that interaction was subsequently lost. Though I disagree that the SS arc was ‘unnecessary’, introducing all the Shinigami Captains and Vice Captains was important, and showing the backstories of all of them, particularly Renji, Rukia, Hinamori, and Kira, was also important. Since it all ties to who appears to be the ultimate baddie, at the moment. The manga ties things together better, as there were subtle details from the early chapters that were left out of the anime which hint at the larger plot. Hell, the very first volume of Bleach has an image of Shinji, a character only introduced after the SS arc. Kubo Tite had things planned out THAT far in advance, I’d give him credit for THAT, at least.
Anyhoo, criticize Bleach, fine. But at least stop with the ‘DBZ, lol’ comments, kay?