I read and watched Bleach. I liked the start, the characters, their distinctive looks, personalities, the excitement of them getting closer and entering Soul Society, etc. But I started to lose interest when it started to use a few of the bad elements of shounen. Like powering up into infinity.
You generally can't win a hard or boss fight in Bleach by playing it smart, tactics, teamwork, being skilled with the limited power and resources you have, etc. You need to get more powerful. Similar to Dragonball.
Ichigo's friends are for the most part fairly useless (Orihime becomes the damsel in distress, Chad always gets defeated, etc.) and get conveniently unique powers assigned to them. I find it odd and not very good storytelling if almost everyone around Ichigo at some point gets some sort of power, like spiritual awareness and so on.
In the anime you have silly filler story arcs like those about the Bounts.
Ichigo gets assigned way too many roles and backgrounds; Shinigami...
*SPOILERS highlight*
...Hollow, Fullbring, Quincy.. His father was a Shinigami, his mother a Quincy, his sister has spiritual awareness, etc.
*SPOILERS end*
It gets kinda ridiculous, how many things the author makes up for one character to keep it "interesting". It feels kind of similar to the stages of super saiyan, only more creative. Apparantly the character can't carry the story and keep it going unless he has super awesome sauce powers..
It also makes the regular Shinigami seem less competent, less powerful and more dull, if one guy is this versatile and powerful. The regular Shinigami are delegated in a support role (keeping some other enemies busy) or as trainer. For me, that took away the illusion that the Shinigami are strong, when some teenager who just about knows how to use his powers, is more powerful.
Another bad thing of shounen which is incooperated, are the fights. But that is more a personal pet peeve of mine, because to me it feels like a soap; events get dragged out to fill up as many episodes (or chapters, in the case of the manga) as possible. The reader/viewer has to wait until Ichigo has gone through a few fights and a mini-boss, before he solves it all in a boss fight.
Not a bad manga/anime, just that it made me realize I prefer different shounen more.
