When I first watched the anime, I totally fell in love with it. It had the right amount of comedy, story, sadness, friendship and most of all violence. (Come on, it has zanpukutos (swords), bow/spirit arrows and human might what were you going to expect?). But then I realised something: there are a lot of plotholes, filler arcs which are bland and then as you get to the later arcs, the story is something that we have seen before and thus loses that original feel that Bleach first had at the beginning.
I know that when drawing the manga, Kubo Tite is amazing and his artwork is sublime but storyline is not his forte.
Beyond the weapons, status of the characters, there is no way to see them in a different and deeper light or even shade when a revelation occurs. If I think of an anime that does that very well, it would be Cowboy Bebop. I think that it may be due to the large ensemble of characters in the story. We may never get to see the final Thousand Year Blood War arc but Bleach deserves better. What Bleach desperately needed to make it an epic story was literally a soul.