Bleach is a story about a teenager named Kurosaki Ichigo (Kurosaki being the last name... since in Japanese you saw last name first, but it sounds retarded if you convert it to a proper English way of saying a name), who is able to see spirits. One day an evil spirit called a hollow, attacks his family. A shinigami (death god) named Rukia, comes to save Ichigo and exterminate the hollow. However, the course of the battle forces Rukia to transfer almost all of her powers to Ichigo, who then becomes a shinigami himself.
The shinigami dwell in a place called Soul Society, and they are trained to exterminate hollow and also to help lost spirits move on to Soul Society (so in a sense, its like heaven). The hollow live in a separate plane of existence called Hueco Mundo, and they are created when a soul has died for too long without having gone to soul society. Hollow consume spirits or each other in order to live and evolve. Thus they enter the human world when possible to hunt for food.
The story is set up into major arcs. The first is the Soul Society arc, which starts off with a major intro to the story background, and also to show some of the history behind the major characters. It also introduces an incredibly large cast of characters both from the human world, and Soul Society. There are far too many characters to explain, so I'll just focus in the primary ones from the human world:
Kurosaki Ichigo - as explained earlier, he gained shinigami powers from Rukia. He is an extremely stubborn person, who does everything in his power to protect his comrades (so typical of every anime... I get tired of those sorts of characters to be honest). He is the type that is hard to approach, and early on you find out that it's because his mother died when he was very young, and he blames himself for it (you'll see why). After the death os his mother, he changed from a bright young kid, to a bit of a lone wolf. This changes once he gets his shinigami powers and gets closer to the other characters.
Hollow Ichigo - I don't think theres actually an official name for this personality, but that's what I refer to him as. Hollow Ichigo is the hollow version of Ichigo that resides inside Ichigo's soul. He occasionally tries to take over Ichigo, to fight his enemies. He is far superior to Ichigo in terms of fighting ability, but is also a bit crazy... especially in battle where he'll become quite bloodthirsty.
Kuchiki Rukia - she is part of the Kuchiki family, which is a noble house in Soul Society. She likes to draw a lot for whenever she explains something (abysmally) much to the dismay of Ichigo. She teaches Ichigo the ways of a shinigami early on in the show. As a shinigami, she is very gifted at 'kidou' which is a shinigami's magic powers, and she usually uses a spell that fires a blue fireball.
Inoue Orihime - she is a classmate of Ichigo, and appears to have a crush on him but is too shy to admit it to him. She has inhumanly large breasts, which prompts some jokes like 'the nutrients that were supposed to go to her brain, went to her breasts instead' being the most common one, because she's pretty dumb a lot of the time. However, she is a very caring person and wants to do whatever she can to help. She manifests special powers that are unique to her, that gives her the ability to heal, create a magic shield, and also to attack (though she seldom uses her attack).
Yasutora Sado - sometimes known as 'Chad' because Ichigo calls him that. He is another classmate of Ichigo's. He is part mexican, so sometimes you will hear him refer to his grandfather in mexican, rather than in Japanese. He is very tall and well built, yet he is a very gentle person and dislikes resorting to violence. Like Orihime, he also gains unique powers, where his arm will transform into a strange armour, and it enables him to punch much harder than normal, and he can also fire off some sort of spirit blast.
Ishida Uryu - he is a descent of the Quincy clan, who were a group of humans that were able to manipulate spirit particles to form bow weapons. They used their powers to fight off hollow, but were annihilated by the shinigami. For this reason, Ishida bears a grudge against Ichigo, yet he still ends up helping him and seeming to become friends.
Rating - 8/10. The actual storyline is fantastic, especially when you get to the end of the Soul Society arc, however the fillers have ruined it for me generally speaking. The first filler wasn't too bad, because it began after the Soul Society arc and seemed to fit into the timeline reasonably ok... and it had some nice fight scenes. But the more recent ones which have been occurring during the Hueco Mundo arc, make absolutely no sense because the filler will begin right in the middle of the storyline. So it will be like... at the end of the episode, they're still fighting someone in Hueco Mundo... and then the next ep will start a random filler back in the human world. So it loses points for that... but I really enjoy the main storyline. If it wasn't for the fillers, I probably would've rated it a 10.
Below is a pic of Orihime. I didn't really have time to find a better one, so this will have to do.
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