Bleach vs Naruto

[SSJ2]

Which one is better?

 

[Captain Cadaver]

Whilst both fell to shit, Naruto at least had some interesting factors to keep people engaged during its start with a protagonist that had justification for his goals and some level of strategies to the early fights. Though taking some elements from Hunter X Hunter, the Chunin Exams and the like were at least only stealing the premise and went about their execution in a unique way. Even after the series became shit with the timeskip, it still at least bothered to have its characters drive the plot for the most part and each major incident had a notable effect on the world as a whole.
Meanwhile, Bleach was worthless from the start, being a Yu Yu Hakusho clone that quickly turned into the poor man's Saint Seiya, with each of its characters being bland archetypes, one of the most predictable fight structures in Shonen and the majority of its major conflicts ending in what could be considered soft-resets.

Both are pretty terrible and there are far better Shonen to invest your time in, though Naruto at least had some elements to give it some worth beyond its initial arc.

 

[sei'taer]

Naruto by a mile. Naruto at least always had it's major end game story events and goals set up at the beginning and followed through with them. Bleach didn't even seem to have any long term plan. That and bleach plummeted in quality and was eventually cancelled where as Naruto ended on it's own terms. The first 200 or so chapters of bleach are pretty good though.

Like all long running Shonen both are bloated in places and there are whole arcs that really didn't need to happen.

 

[Kyo]

There's a truckload of reasons Naruto is better but these are some of the most important imo:

- The titular character, as lame and annoying as I found him, actually had a motivation to shape his character and followed through with it. Ichigo just stumbles into his powers and after that there is nothing to him except wanting to protect his friends.

- Significantly better world building.

- It had better action, more well thought out fights, and a better escalation of stakes, even though it starts to suffer in all these areas as well eventually.

- Bleach's consistency and ability to follow up on the things it sets up are way way worse.

 

[Yoshi]

I believe that Naruto and Bleach are both very good during Part I and the Shinigami/Soul Society Arcs respectively and are both certainly better than One Piece is during East Blue. Both of them drop in quality during Part II (before the War Saga) and the Arrancar Saga, and One Piece is much better than them for the rest of Part I, but they still maintain your interest until the War Saga and Part II of Bleach, which both milk the cash cows dry.

Bleach is a little underrated in comparison to Naruto. I don’t find it that much worse than it, personally. The only real issue is the pacing in Bleach is worse than it is in Naruto.