@Cockycent:
Chad and Orihime were always outmatched in personality by the captains. I don't get this expectation for them to demand more attention when they consistently were shown to be lesser than the Captains and Ichigo clearly being the exceptional "human". Ichigo even became the exceptional soul reaper. exceptional everything.
This is like expecting Koby to get as much focus as Zoro. Yeah, he started with Luffy and the writer strings him along for a purpose, but Koby is mostly used to show another dimension of the Marines. If Oda wants Chad/Koby to be on par with Chopper, Sanji, Zoro, then he would make him a Rear Admiral or have him pop in a few more arcs like Smoker. Even Smoker proves to be useless and he's a VC.
@pRopaaNS:
Bleach is a story based on death, vulnerability, limitations, harsh realities of the world. Certain characters being stuck at certain level of strength is just appropriate.
The story was consistently giving Ichigo all manners of underserved power-ups through highly contrived reasons and retcons, so this is rich.
This just goes to show that Kubo could've easily made up reasons to have Ichigo's friends stand with the Soul Society cast. He did this with Orihime, whose healing powers were actually the power to reject reality, which is insanely broken and useful, yet it barely matters besides healing.