Anime: Bleach

When someone says the word bleach, normally only one thing comes to mind right? However, now that an anime called Bleach has hit the shores of America, for any household with an anime lover Bleach is now a recognizable series. For those of you that know anime well, you would know that most anime start out as Manga, Bleach is no exception to this rule and first started out as a Manga overseas in Japan.

Bleach was turned into an anime and first aired on late 2004 in Japan, and two years later it came to America and is still being aired on Adult Swim. Needless to say, Japan is very far ahead of America in terms of anime releases, if new Bleach episodes stopped being aired in Japan it would still take about a year for them to be English Dubbed and aired in America.

Typically I watch Bleach in Japanese with English subtitles, however I also watch the English dubbed version. This sneak peek is for those of you that are not so familiar with the story of Bleach and how the story starts to unfold. Let me first explain the main storyline of this before I continue on to talk about whats to come in the English version of the story.

Most of the story is geared towards male teenagers, you will find plenty of cute bouncy girls in Bleach, you will also see tons of blood and fighting. The main character is a boy named Ichigo Kurosaki, who is a 15 year old high schooler. Ever since he was a child he had the ability to see ghosts, which leads him to seeing a female shinigami named Rukia Kuchiki.

Basically Rukia gets beat up by a Hollow spirit, which is a creature that lives in another dimension but comes to the human world to feed on souls. Hollows are themselves departed souls that have been taken over, in order to save his family from this Hollow creature Ichigo makes a deal with Rukia to borrow her powers and kill the creature.

Rukia eventually gets a human shell so she is able to be a part of the human world, where as when she was in shinigami she is unable to be seen much like if she was a ghost. She enrolls in school with Ichigo and the two protect the town from Hollows, all while helping out souls. One day two other shinigami's come to the human world to search for Rukia, one is her brother and the other is a friend of hers.

They explain that her giving her powers to Ichigo was illegal, and she has stayed too long in the world. Ichigo attempts to fight the two, but only manages to defeat one as he is cut down pretty fast by Rukia's brother. The two take her back to the shinigami realm where she is to be killed for her "crimes" by the Soul Society for her crimes.

Of course Ichigo and some of his other pals him and Rukia met along the way train so that they can rescue her. Eventually they end up rescuing her, but only after revealing an entire conspiracy within the Soul Society with threatens the human and shinigami realm. Thats the end of the second season, or the second Arc you could say.

In the season after that, I wont say much, but I can say that it has some strange creatures and people that stray from the main storyline. We get to see Ichgio and friends get stronger, while they help save human souls. After that they get back to the storyline and start battling again, so as you can see the formula to the anime series is kind of like Dragon Ball Z.

Ichigo may be a human, but somehow he exceeds the limits and is able to fight against captains of the Soul Society. This has not been explained, but some think Ichigo's dad is was high ranking in the Soul Society himself. So you can imagine how many twists this story actually has, around every corner is a new betrayal or new powerful enemy for Ichgio to fight.

Nevertheless, Bleach is one of the greatest anime series you will ever get the pleasure to watch. I recommend it to any anime lover, not just male teenagers and so on. This series gets a two thumbs up in my book, and I will continue to watch this series as it is aired. I am looking forward to the next story twist in the series, which are always top class themselves.