Bleach SOULs. Official Character Book Paperback – November 18, 2008

There are a lot of character infos also artwork plus interview with the author in it. Good choice if you want to know each character’s birthdays and stuff.

its so amazinggg

First let me state that I am a fan of Bleach. Having said that the book is a perfect companion to Bleach its full of fun facts great artwork ! and you may even find something's you did know. The included stickers and poster are fun as well I've seen some complain about them but its ment to be fun. I very much enjoyed Bleach SOULs and highly recommend it to even moderit fans of Bleach.

This book is amazing, the quality, the info, everything is great.

Got this for my husband and he loves it!

Good

Great product

This is the sort of book you want if you're bent on 100% completion for your BLEACH collection. There is lots of good content and art to be had, but is probably better for the fan rather than the beginning BLEACH reader.There is color art from selected volumes of the serialization, and a cool little sticker sheet. Some of the stickers are in Japanese with no translation, but are still a neat bonus (purification charms, including the famous "Bohahahah!" and Renji's trademark "Mi~tsuketa!" are what I can manage to read). The lack of translation kind of bugged me since Viz is usually good about slipping in translations with the terms they don't translate, but it's just a sticker sheet, so no big deal (more on the editing later). There's a good interview with Kubo Tite and the Japanese voice actor for Ichigo at the end, and a smattering of bonus content featured in the serialization that isn't printed in the bound volumes.The book consists of what one reviewer described as "Cliffs notes." I think that's a fair description. That being said, I had the impression the book is written for the reader who's gone through the series and paid attention, and not for someone looking to get into the series for the first time. A newcomer to the series will probably find this book less interesting. It's the difference between show and tell: The book tells details of the plot and character traits and relationships, but this format lacks the dynamism and active development of the actual manga. Not to say a newbie couldn't read this book and get a good summary of the first story arc (vols. 1-21), but a reader will probably derive more enjoyment reading this book after reading the manga at least once.I thoroughly enjoyed the way this book brings little nuances in the plot and characters to light, and liked all the little 4-panel extras interspersed through the volume. The one-shot pilot manga is particularly fun, both to see how BLEACH might have been (mini-Rukia?!), and how far the style of the art has progressed. One particular connection that never occurred to me and that I was excited to discover, was how the relationship between Ichigo's father, Isshin, and Uryu's father, Ryuken, comes to light as early as the end of volume 2. These bits of "Aha!" info are what I really loved most about this book.The overall editing of the book is just a bit dodgy. As I mentioned, Viz doesn't always provide the English translations for the terms for which it uses the original Japanese, unlike in the manga. So you may find yourself wondering, "What's the Soukyoku, again? What's Sogyo no Kotowari mean?" You can easily figure out the terms in context, but it would've been nice for them to include the English equivalent (even if Viz's translations are a bit iffy sometimes... see the list of original Japanese titles and their English equivalents in the back of this book for examples...). On top of that, there are words missing from panels from time to time, some inconsistencies with the manga details, and one glaring instance where a whole paragraph is duplicated on two different pages. It looks like someone copied and pasted and then forgot about it, and I kind of doubt that was a mistake in the original that Viz just translated and ignored. It's mostly a personal nit-pick - but having lived through the years when a good library of licensed manga was nearly impossible to come by, it's kind of disappointing when these "new-fangled" publishers turn out errors like that.In spite of that, this is a fun book, especially if you've already read the first arc and enjoyed it. Definite must-have for you completionists, and you'll have a lot of fun pouring through it.