i love watching well animated duels between powerful characters. i love watching tremendous amounts of power be thrown around. i love sword fights. so, why do i dislike bleach?

okay so after the soul society arc i pretty much tuned out. i've seen a lot of the arrancar arc and know the story there, but after that i know next to nothing. so anything i talk about here is only covering up to the end of the arrancar arc.

a couple problems really stand out with this show. the first one is very common in shonen anime: talking while fighting. it happens in every shonen show, but bleach takes it to an extreme.

because every character with strong riatsu has unique powers that wouldn't make sense unless they were explained, every - EVERY - fight is roughly 80% dialogue and 20% actual attempts to kill each other. and i'm not talking about dialogue that progresses the plot or displays the character's intentions and emotions. that 80% is strictly dialogue used to explain what a character's power is in detail. the impact of the fight is nullified because almost every character that fights in this show is far more interested in talking about their powers than actually attempting to kill their opponent. SNORE!!!

speaking of fights, it seems to me that in every fight, one character has a power that will immediately win them the fight without effort, but they don't use it until half an hour later. the more powerful character will toy with their opponent, letting himself get beat up and cut, letting the weaker character think he has the upper hand, and then, inevitably, say something like "i didn't want to have to use this... prepare to see - MY TRUE POWER!!" and then a second later the fight ends. i rarely see a duel in this show that is won with strategy, skill or cunning. it's always a hidden trump card. SNORE MOAR!!

another thing i've noticed.almost every character that thinks they're powerful has the same facial expression - dull, bored and disinterested. just a completely flat, expressionless face with dull eyes. every now and then when something happens that they didn't expect, their eyes will widen for a second and they'll gasp (i can actually predict these eye widening moments with great accuracy now), then it's right back to "can we get this over with, i'm BBORRREED." even in the heat of battle when they should be getting worked up, their expressions remain the same. this rule applies to almost everyone, good or bad, with only a few exceptions. why should i care about a fight when even the combatants don't seem to care? it's like sword fighting with magic swords is as exciting as watching an episode of Frasier to these people. would it KILL the producers of this show to introduce a character that isn't a flat, boring a**hole?

i think that about covers it