Well I mean the main school characters from the first season, Chad, Orihime, and Ishida, all remain important and join him. The only ones that really get left behind who have any importance to all that are Orihime's friend the karate girl, and the two kids that hung around with ichigo fairly often back in middle school. None of those characters were really all that important though since the karate chick was a supporting character to a supporting character and the other two basically just ignored all the quirky **** that ichigo did without getting themselves to involved. They were more like the kids you sit with during lunch at school and walk home with sometimes rather than anyone really all that close to him.
Im starting to be generally interested in Bleach, but I dont know. I gave Naruto a ~70 episode chance and just dropped it out of shear boredom. I love Gintama, and its made by the same studio I hear, will Bleach be able to hold my interest if I give it a ~70 episode chance?
If you like shounen battle anime then give it a shot, some pro's:
+Brilliant fight scenes
+Funny
+Cool characters
+The soul society arc is really good
Cons:
-The anime cuts off with not much of a decisive ending
-The anime is 45% filler, it's packed with it but I will say that some filler are good and have some relevance to the canon sotry. One filler arc was originally supposed to be in the manga. You could just skip the filler anyway.
-The anime has a pacing issue like with one piece and naruto, the fight scenes get dragged out for way too long sometimes
-Kubo has a knack of adding too many characters at once, half of the characters introduced are never introduced again
-A lot of people say the writing really goes down hill after the soul society arc
All in all I'd say give it a shot, despite the sometimes poor writing, filler and **** pacing, the anime is funny, enjoyable and has some kick ass fight scenes. Don't go into it expecting some brilliant, intricate anime because you'll only be disappointed.