Quote Originally Posted by Psyren View Post
Definitely, and we're not the only ones who realized it. Hence its rather precipitous plummet from SJ. But I won't rehash that when folks like Super Eyepatch Wolf, Mother's Basement and Gigguk did a much better job than I would have.
I recently (well, within the last couple years) saw a Youtube video that analyzed the plummeting popularity of Bleach. It first discussed the Soul Society arc and the themes it incorporated that made it popular. Then the Hueco Mundo arc comes along...and it's the exact same story with the exact same themes. The only thing that changed was the Damsel getting swapped and the Arrancar replacing the Shinigami. Except the Arrancar were nowhere near as interesting - the Soul Society arc had at least half a dozen different factions struggling against one another, while the Arrancar arc...didn't. So the popularity dropped, and as the plot became less relevant it dropped further and further until the time of the Fullbring arc where only the die-hard fans were left.

All of this is why Bleach is a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine. If someone tells me its terrible, I can't really argue against it. But damn if it didn't keep coming out with really cool moments whenever the story paused for an action sequence.