Bleach by Tite Kubo was a fun read. I look for­ward to read­ing more in the series which has 17/26 vol­umes cur­rently avail­able. Bleach Vol.1: Straw­berry and the Soul Reapers intro­duces us to Ichigo Kurosaki. His fam­ily runs a clinic. Life is inter­est­ing for Ichigo. He’s a high school kid who has a spe­cial gift: he can see ghosts. This abil­ity allows him to meet  death god, Rukia Kuchiki. Rukia is a Soul Reaper and a mem­ber of the mys­te­ri­ous Soul Society. She meets Ichigo while track­ing down an evil spirit. She is shocked that Ichigo can see her. Their con­ver­sa­tion is abruptly cut short by a “hol­low” or evil spirit. Ichigo’s fam­ily is tar­geted by this evil spirit because it was search­ing for Ichigo. Hol­lows are attracted to humans who exert strong spir­i­tual energy. Thus, a fight ensues and a trans­fer of power is con­ferred on Ichigo in com­bat in order to save his fam­ily. It is a respon­si­bil­ity he is stuck with and one that he reluc­tantly accepts. His job as a Soul Reaper is to pro­tect the liv­ing and the dead from these Hol­low spir­its. What are hol­low spir­its ? Hol­low spir­its are dead souls who prey on humans and spir­its alike. They eat souls because it eases their pain. Will Rukia get her pow­ers back? What else is in store for Ichigo? I can’t wait to find out.  

I really enjoyed this install­ment and am glad that I had the fore­thought to have vol­ume 2 on my shelf ready to read after this one. I am ready to read more of Ichigo’s adventures. This series is pretty expan­sive and very pop­u­lar. I’d always had the first two vol­umes here but never read them. There’s bits of humor as well as sus­pense.  Dia­logue and action sequences were pretty easy to fol­low. The art­work is some­what clean and easy to fol­low. There are sound effect sequences that were a bit con­fus­ing at first.   Ichigo is a rough and tum­ble kid who doesn’t want to be both­ered by “respon­si­bil­ity.”  How­ever, he is loyal to fam­ily and is slowly step­ping into his new role. This is a great manga to start with as it helps new­bies who are are not used to the “right to left” for­mat. I know as a new manga reader start­ing out, I was averse to this but now, I pre­fer the right to left for­mat. This is a wildly pop­u­lar series that has expanded to musi­cals, film and TV. World­wide ‚this manga has sold over 34 mil­lion copies. It is rated T for Teens. Check  this one out. My grade, B+.

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