I am one of Bleach's biggest fans (I write fan fiction for it). I am also someone who saw the fullbring arc as an ill omen of things to come when it first came out. And boy does it choke hard!
Initially, Bleach is one of the best shonen manga in existence. Complex characters, decent comedy, great world building and a plot that, while not unusual, pairs with themes that make some of the best moments in manga. Memories in the Rain, and the fight with Grand Fisher, was some peak storytelling.
And then the world expands, and expands, and expands. New enemies, new kinds of conflicts, and one of the most densely packed foreshadowing sections I can remember. Before Ichigo even sets off for Soul Society, certain things have already been established that we won't truly understand until well over 600 chapters later. But....
While Tite Kubo is a master at drawing, character design, coming up with cool ideas, and even planning some things well in advance, he is a poor storyteller beyond one villain arc.
Bleach has several smaller arcs under an overarching villain arc, and for that one big villain, it's a great plot. The biggest issue the first overarching arc has is its inconsistencies with power levels. Flash step is incredibly useless or incredibly overpowered depending on what the story wants, for example.
But that's not the biggest issue there; that would be Ichigo's fluctuating strength, which seemingly makes no sense until it's explained halfway into the Thousand Year Blood War (the second major overarching villain arc). And honestly, that was a brilliant reveal... that was subsequently wasted and simultaneously turned the next villain encounter into a gaping plot hole.
And that's the issue, after one good villain arc, Tite Kubo couldn't write a lion out of a wet paper bag without expecting us to believe a cave man developed a teleporter for the lion to use despite the story being a documentary that's supposed to be accurate to real history.
Not that Bleach is real history or has lions in wet paper bags, but I hope that sums up the severity of the issue before I elaborate on it. Kubo insists on doing something cool even if it breaks the story... over and over and over and over and—I think you get the point.
Oddly enough, Ichigo is not a Mary-Sue/Gary-Stu character. That would be the villains. You see, the villains get to break the Bleach laws of nature when they feel like it, but the heroes have to follow them. The universe bows down to make the villains overpowered, and so they are some of the least believable villains in any manga, anywhere.
This results in the heroes needing equally unbelievable power ups, which makes it seem like the heroes are only winning because of plot armor—and they technically are—but that was only necessary (and the plot armor is necessary) because the villains were so broken to begin with. For example:
Ichigo gets introduced in a scene by moving a few kilometers in such a short amount of time his 3 future quincy opponents shake in terror because they couldn't even see him move. He also casually deals with their strongest moves. But literally, 3 or so chapters later, when Ichigo gets a chance to confront the big villain Yhwach before Yhwach gets his power up, those 3 quincy suddenly become fast and strong enough to block Ichigo and delay him long enough to let the villain get away.
That's right, the main villain would be dead (he should have died one already) if the story didn't cheat and give the villain the advantage without ever having written a logical reason for the villain to have that advantage. The bad guys are consistently Mary-Sues, and this not only breaks suspension of disbelief, it means the protagonists have to break suspension of disbelief in order to win.
That hurts the story so much, and wastes the good things it had. For example, in Bleach, no one—not even Ichigo—gets stronger through the "power of friendship". No one magically heals, either. All power ups and heals have a cause that doesn't come from friendship. The protagonists in Bleach earn their power ups and require outside help to heal... and it's all wasted.
The fullbring arc can be summed up as follows: contradictory cause and effect.
Ichigo, without his SR (soul reaper) powers, is contacted by Xcution. Their secret plan is to train up his FB (fullbring) powers, which work by connecting to the memories of objects, to then steal his (nonexistent) SR powers by stealing his FB powers. It's a literal oxymoron of a plan.
Not to mention, a captain class soul reaper is somehow affected by someone with powers that, admittedly, can't compare in potency to a captain class soul reaper. The Kenpachi fight clearly established that such an unbalanced matchup will only hurt the weaker individual, and the stronger one wouldn't be affected.
Well, actually, fullbring powers are fragments of the soul king, and as a result can do some weird bypassing of the greater power laws. Rangiku Matsumoto had her FB powers stolen by Aizen to create the Hogyoku. But we only find that out in the written novel that came into existence after the manga ended!
Characters actually get killed off... but that's wasted, too.
The manga becomes so much about cool moments it stops worrying about consistency, plot holes, characterization, world building, etc. Just keep bolting on the latest shiny thing.
The magic system in Bleach is broken beyond repair without a rewrite.
And then we get to the ending. There was no foreshadowing, nothing was shown (it was all told), and one of the two major relationships was never earned.
I'm sorry, Kazui, as soon as you go off to college or marry Ichika, your parents are getting a divorce.
They love you, but your mother's hero worship of your father really did neither of them a favor.
TL;DR: For most people: read until the Fullbring arc starts. Don't actually read the Fullbring arc, just use it as your finish line.
Also, if all you can remember about the female characters is they have large breasts, that's because you're only looking at female characters who have large breasts. There are so many without.
Sui-Feng, Momo, Rukia (more important than Orihime), Yuzu (when she grows up), Tatsuki (C cup—not small, but not unrealistic), Kiyone, one of the royal guard members, the female soul reaper who was one of two soul reapers assigned to patrol Karakura Town at the start of the Thousand Year Blood War arc, Ryo and Michiru (classmates of Ichigo and Rukia), Manaha (like Tatsuki, not small, but not unrealistic), lots of the arrancar, several quincy.
And more!
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