YoshiKyon

The Bounts themselves are mostly fairly forgettable, and there are elements to the plot here that just make zero sense - the Bitto in particular are both absolutely unnecessary and make zero world-building sense in something that's not meant to directly impact the main story. This is also the first arc to introduce a solution to the main story's removal of someone's powers, only to have to immediately find a way to make it not work again. sigh.

Honestly, though, this is the filler that best plays to Bleach's strengths. There isn't as much to work with as later arcs, and yet they managed to find ways to introduce new characters, keep the main cast all relevant to both the plot and the combat, and just put enough action in that they didn't write themselves into too many corners. Only, like, 3 or 4.

The battles themselves are mostly good here. There's a lot of innovation in how the fights play out, and it serves to slowly introduce new tools to everyone's arsenals as well as the abilities of some of the newer characters. The newer characters, though, are irritating as all hell - I already mentioned most of the Espada being boring, but I'll take boring over whatever the hell Nel and her companions are.

Anyways, things really start to pick up towards the end - the scenes surrounding Ulquiorra and Grimmjow move the plot in a far more interesting direction, and do a fantastic job of really engaging people in the story... just in time for more filler. :')

The characters are mostly awful - Rurichiyo herself isn't awful, although she's definitely not the kind of character everyone will like (or even tolerate), but her two retainers & the new captain and lieutenant are all painfully bland, to the point that it's a constant reminder that this is irrelevant filler content. I'd give credit here for allowing some of the Shinigami with less focus a chance to be in the spotlight, but the characterisation in the filler tends to be pretty awful, whether that's being jarringly out-of-character at times (Hisagi) or just making them really dull (in this arc, Kira).

Beyond that, though, having the two stories run parallel to each other and intertwine towards the end is good, and the existence of the Bakkoto becoming a potential problem to the main story writes itself, as resolving the conflict also (arguably) prevents them from being relevant later. It's just a shame that both the characters and the action - in a shonen that typically excels at character - are pretty terrible.

The fights are typically fine, although nothing special - even basically tripling the size of the relevant cast adds fairly little here, as fights go from an interesting underdog situation to a raw display of power, intellect, etc. It feels a little deus ex machina in some places, mostly in Hueco Mundo, but picks up pace a little in Karakura Town.

This is the filler pacing at its most egregious - the Rurichiyo stuff hit at just the point where the Arrancar plot was start to pick up speed, and this cuts at exactly the worst possible point. It's mid-fight, with unresolved plotlines everywhere, and almost unashamedly cuts away with "this is another story that happened in a different time and place". It's terrible, and I get why people complained about Bleach filler so much despite other shows being worse on the amount of filler they had.

Those post-arc episodes really highlight the biggest problem with Bleach's filler all over again - so much of it is centred around characters who not only aren't interesting, but also have zero bearing on anything. In this case, it's the Zanpakuto spirits, where it's difficult to care about Haineko's love interests (as an example) when not only is it fairly nonsensical in terms of the setting, but also known to be pretty irrelevant beyond that because it's entirely filler. One of Bleach's strength is in the writing of characters, and it'd be easy to write those characters into new scenarios, but the filler eventually eschews that entirely to just write in new characters who aren't anywhere close to as likeable or interesting. Combined with the pacing and some questionable main story choices - we'll come to that soon - it makes it more than clear why Bleach really fell from grace.

The Espada fights in Fake Karakura, for what it's worth, are really good. The Visoreds appearance changes the fights drastically, but not to the point that they feel trivial (as the captains' appearances in Hueco Mundo did), and some of the methods used to defeat the Espada feel creative in the good way, like they're a character finding a way to one-up their opponent and not a writer finding a way out of a hole (again, like in Hueco Mundo). That follows through into the grand finale, which is the point that made me stop reading the manga to begin with. I was almost braced for impact watching it - I knew I disliked it the first time, so I went in expecting the worst - but I wasn't prepared for just how much the relentless filler around it made it feel even worse.

More than anything, this arc highlights all the weaknesses of Bleach filler - Kon being central to everything is infuriating when he's such a drastic departure from the majority of Bleach's character styles (and just an irritating character in general), the new characters feel bland and emotionless, the story is reused from previous filler, and even the previous filler felt kind of cheap there in that it used existing abilities to seemingly avoid having to develop anything new and creative. The conclusion to the arc is pretty unsatisfying too, not in the sense of an ending that feels bad, but more that it feels like they had no idea how to end things and just took a shortcut out. This was an absolute slog to get through, and I'd honestly not recommend anyone put up with watching this unless you're as determined to fully complete things as I am.

There are probably people who would get frustrated with Bleach's cycle of growth at this point - new power appears, Ichigo trains to get the new power, ends up becoming more powerful than every single person who's been using that power for years - but honestly, I can't even be mad about it. Bleach leans so hard into Ichigo being phenomenally overpowered, mostly in that he can seemingly pick up any ability in a fraction of the time of anyone else, that it's honestly a part of the fun. It's silly, but that feels like it's kind of the point.

Of course, by this point, they knew the initial anime run was coming to an end, so the conclusion is unsatisfying. We'll see how I get on with Thousand-Year Blood War soon, I'll probably start on that soon, but I'm honestly glad it got picked up again. For all that Bleach has some fundamental flaws - and really suffered from mid-2000s shonen pacing - it does so much well that it would be a shame for it to have fallen from grace so far without any redemption.

Most of the one-off episodes (even if often grouped together) are just obnoxious comic relief stuff. A ton of these focus on Kon, which I've already talked about being a problem, but there are so many that focus on the lieutenants as well, and those are frustrating for a whole other reason. Most reduce the lieutenants to really bland and basic characters - Matsumoto becomes entirely about fashion, Ikkaku is just loud and angry, Yumichika is lazy and egotistical, Hisagi is horny for some reason??? It's frustrating seeing good (or at least decent) characters reduced to almost nothing.

There are a few that pick up on earlier filler characters - the Mod Souls from the Bount Arc or Rurichiyo from the New Captain arc - but these are all comic relief nonsense more than any typically shonen content. A couple in particular are just baffling, with the main cast being put into other fantasy settings; I'm not really sure why they thought a filler episode of mythical demons or Aladdin was a good idea, but they're some of the worst episodes in the whole show.