Bleach 1: The Death and the Strawberry

This manga was first published in 2002 and it shows. It's light-hearted enough but chock full of shounen tropes that may have been the rage 20 years ago but feels a little exhausting to read today.

Ichigo Kurosaki is a 15 year old teenager who can see ghosts. Upon seeing an invisible girl in his bedroom, Rukia Kuchiki, who introduces herself as a Soul Reaper, Ichigo also learns that he is somehow imbued with a massive amount of “spiritual energy”. There are two types of ghosts in the world - Wholes and Hollows. Soul Reapers are in charge of sending all these spirits onwards to the Soul Society, although it usually ends up with lots of action chasing down and slashing Hollows, who appears as gigantic monsters.

Firstly, there's the trope of the OP self-insert male protagonist, a classic of so many shounen manga. Ichigo almost from the very first page is overpowered af, just clueless about how much power he possesses. We don't know anything about his background, history, etc. but are immediately asked to believe that he's basically the second coming. The whole first episode with a Hollow attacking his family is solely there to blatantly hammer in a few points to readers: 1) Ichigo is morally upright and, despite his prickly exterior, will do anything to save his family; 2) Ichigo is exponentially more powerful than the only actual Soul Reaper we've met in the story, Rukia. We don't know why, but we just need to accept it anyway; 3) With no training whatsoever, Ichigo is not only able to drain Rukia's entire “dark force” to fight the Hollow, but also able to flawlessly and intuitively do what even experienced Soul Reapers do everyday; 4) It's all a very convenient scene for Rukia to basically info-dump all the lore about Wholes, Hollows, Soul Reapers, Soul Society, etc. etc. to Ichigo and therefore to us, the readers.

Now, all of this might be pretty standard fare in manga of the time but I'm almost certain that there are plenty of manga out there that tell their stories in a better and more immersive way. This is all not to say that I'm DNFing Bleach - I may continue it because there's some comfort in the fairly standard but still interesting magic system and lore here - but the first volume really isn't the most mindblowing piece of manga ever written.

After watching (and loving) the Netflix film for Bleach I finally picked up the first three Mangas and I have to say, I have not been disappointed!

Great artwork, original story with well defined characters, onto Vol 2! ⚔

Still a 4 star enjoyable read as when I first read it in middle school. Made me a little bit emotional .