ANIME: Bleach

Bleach is a Japanese manga and anime, a kind of comic book. Its Shonen Jump, which specializes in "furious hidden inner power" stories, which are essentially about unfairness leading to temper tantrums, and usually require absurd villains I would describe as American servicemen's kids, which remains a huge social issue in Japan since America is still occupying Japan to defend it from Korea, Russia, and China, because they are constitutionally unable to extend military power beyond the islands' defense. Japan is also rigidly racist, which explains why half-bloods are considered subhuman monsters and creates a various underclass of outcastes (the appropriate literal term). The punk-rock outfits of Bleach, and the absolute absence of any real adults in the entire series, makes their choices more important but its really off-putting.

The first two arcs of the story are worth watching or reading, but after the events in the afterlife the story seems to largely run out of ideas and the author is famous for offending most of his audience with a two page print of the Japanese kanji (word-symbol) for Heart on a big white page at a crucial moment of the plot. Like the author was high and just didn't know what to do next. You can offend your audience. And they will remember it, and NOT forgive you for it.

Bleach is famously mocked for penis envy in its second episode with the reveal of the hero's hidden inner power which creates a huge sword taller than he was, which says more about the series than most any review, including this one.

Note that hair colors other than dark brown, sometimes depicted as purple, are strong indicators of half-blood "change" as in spare change which is meant to be a deadly insult in Japanese exclusionary racist culture. Having a different hair color is reactionary, and essentially dares people to mention it and start a fight. Unlike how Japan depicts itself, in Anime, bullying and fistfights are common. As I know some Japanese English teachers in Japan, actual Japanese schools are vicious, violent, and suffer badly from ADHD and ADD. Japan is not kind or peaceful or polite. They just say they are. They are to tourists. But not to each other. Japan has real problems with inbreeding in their history and has only slight objections to siblings marrying. They only recently outlawed families adopting and raising minor orphan girls to be wives to family members. In most Japanese states (prefectures) age of consent is technically 13, abortion is free, and rape isn't treated as a proper crime by the authorities since the maximum punishment for a pure japanese rapist is 2 years and $2500 fine. For a halfblood or foreigner the crime is life in prison or death penalty. Keep that in context when you consider the really different values and treatment of people in japanese teenagers. The consequences are so very different depending on who your parents are. So when a person meets you, the immediately say "pure japanese" if they are, which is pretty much a free pass on any crimes they commit. What this means in America is that Bleach characters commit criminal acts that they justify by their temper tantrums. These are not good role models, and responsible parents would object to their kids reading about these people. I just can't recommend this series for that reason. It is too violent and teenage boys reading it may mimic the actions in the series.