[Thess]

Good ideas, poor execution. It was rushed because of cancellation. Also they really should have focused more on Rukia as Shinigami protagonist.

I may be a minority, but I never saw anything romantic between Ichigo and Rukia, rather they were two POVS from two sides of the story. They met and helped each other to fix their world, but their respective love interests were obvious from the start. The manga further drove this point, they live apart and had their own family and are content like that (unless Ichigo loses his power and always goes angsty about that). Thanks to that meeting, they can go on and enjoy their lives and family the fullest because they moved past of a trauma and were able to reach out the people they wanted to reach, but it doesn't mean they enjoy each other's company the best. So that as basis worked for a while until... Rukia vanished.

The problem is that it focuses exclusively on Ichigo and we barely saw Rukia's side of things after Hueco Mundo, that's okay but she felt less and less as Soul Society World POV and just part of the cast there. Yeah, the tie in novel helped to fill the gap in Fullbring arc but was still a bit underwhelming.

Kubo should have divided and organized his POVs better.