I rarely do reviews for anything and I've always been the proudly belligerent type who shuns anime as a whole - Honestly, all I could ever bear to watch (since the pokemon days of yore in my middle school years) was Avatar, which as any true anime fan will tell you, isn't really anime at all.
So, as a relative anime virgin, I heard some of my more open-minded art major friends discussing the plot of Bleach, which, aside from having an instantly intriguing title, apparently had a cool plot as well. I put down my preconceptions and gave it a go.
In this episode we meet Ichigo, a slightly smug pile of attitude who gets a rude awakening when he discovers that there's more to the spirit world he saw as exclusively his own when he meets a Reaper named Rukia.
To give more detail on such a short episode would be spoilerific, so I'll stop. Here's what I'm getting at: Speaking to non-anime fans, like myself: this pilot episode may force you to concede that anime IS a valid art form, if occasionally sketchy. Some of the humor in this pilot is slightly off in timing and some of the lines are a bit negotiable, but overall it's an entertaining opener that makes me want to see what happens next, for better or for worse. Coming from someone who had little patience for this animation style, that's no mean feat. Give it a try. You may be surprised.