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gallusrostromegalus · 10 months

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AEIWAM question:

The Soul Society has the ability to interact with the human world physically, and wildly more firepower than pre-dead people have. Is there a particular reason the world of the dead hasn't pulled a colonialism or other form of resource extraction on the world of the living? Is there a reason the warlords on the fringes of the rukongai don't set up in the world of the living instead of the spirit world's most marginal land?

Why haven't the dead colonized the living? The dead have not pulled a colonialism on the living world because (and IIRC this is canon but it's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment) while Shinigami, Arrancar and other dead spirits CAN go hang out in the living world for brief periods of time, if forced to STAY in the living world, their superpowers rapidly degrade because the ambient spiritual energy in the living world is so low. That's why Rukia wasn't *immediately* suspicious when her powers weren't coming back after activating Ichigo's, and why the shinigami that visit Ichigo's school during the aarancar arc don't stay after the battle- they can't heal effectively. There's also the whole "Balance the total number of Souls between the living and spirit worlds" thing. I'm not sure what the dead having permanent residency in the world of the living would do to that balance, but it's probably Not Great.

Why aren't there fringe district warlords or other countries? Great news! THERE ARE. They're just not human. Hueco Mundo used to be the bulk of the West 80th disctrict, but then it got lightly dimension'd off by the noble houses after they stole the Soul King's bodyparts, and the partition between Hueco Mundo and Soul Society is made of the Soul King's toes. Heck, it's even got a capital city- Las Noches! Las Noches used to be drastically more populated before Barragan took over and murdered the shit out of everyone he could find, because there's a BIG difference between not being able to let go of the living world and actually resorting to cannibalism, and I think there used to be a TON of hollows like Dondochaka and Pesche who just subsist off the ambient Reishi and do whatever instead of eating people. The Eastern 80th district is the land of the Beastfolk- Spirits like kitsune and tanuki, the ghosts of ancient and venerated trees, the sort of thing that appear in Mononoke/Mushishi/Princess Mononoke etc. and the wolves that Komamura is descended from. They're not as organized as the hollows so they didn't get ghetto'd like Hueco Mundo, but neither is the Soul Society able to tangle with them,. See, the entire Court Guard System and Central 46 was founded SPECIFICALLY to end and prevent the warring clans that had dominated Soul Society for so long. So the Central 46 and yamamoto are very much erring on "Don't let any extant clan or district or whatever political org gain too much power, and for the love of god, don't start a war", so the East is heavily protected by the sanctions that keep any clan from raising an army to invade another clan (much smaller than what would be needed to invade the east), the fact that the gotei-13 recruits very nearly all spiritually powerful people away from joining that kind of force, and Yamamoto's personal connection to Komamura's wolf clan (Major spoilers for the fic but the upshot is that he will NEVER tresspass on Wolf land, and the shinigami are also forbidden from doing so) The North is uncolonized for roughly the same reason antartica is uncolonized- most of it is straight-up inhospitable to human life, or all but a handful of beasfolk and hollows. In fact, the only thing that "Lives" up there are Kami- Serious Kami, like The Firebird and other personifications of Major natural disasters or philosophical concepts. The ONLY reason to go to North 80 is if you want to pick a fight with a God, and why would you do THAT when one of them just moved into the court guards? (That isn't quite true, actually- there are quite a few humans living on the southern edge of the Zaraki District- but they live in isolated villages that change locations every few decades and don't appear in Soul Society census data. They don't pay taxes, but neither do they demand services. The court guard is aware of the tribes living up north, but so long as they don't start shit, the gotei-13 is willing to ignore them.) The South 80th district is... well, it's 95% ocean, for starters, and many of the lovely tropical islands in there are active volcanoes and/or hellmouths. There's quite a few humans living in South 80, but the overall population is even smaller than the tribes in North 80, and many of the islands are "Uninhabited". I use quotes because those volcanoes are the result of Hell cracking under the strain of not being able to pass souls through it fast enough, and making incursions into other dimensions. The Demons that live on the spirit world side of these cracks have no beef with soul society- if anything, they're very pleased with it!, but they're busy trying to prevent a dimensional collapse or mass prison break, and tend to chase off any curious humans, so the closest thing to a "real" government is the Dimensional Crack Stabilization Project Manager, and the Law of Hell is mostly OSHA.

Thank you, that was a very helpful question!

#AEIWAM #An Elephant Is Warm and Mushy #Bleach #Bleach fanfic

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zabiume · 7 days

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What made you start shipping IH? :) (if I can ask)

i got into bleach a little late, so by the time i was watching the hueco mundo arc, the manga had just about wrapped up the fullbring arc. BUT, i was binge-watching so many episodes a day that i ended up catching up to where the manga was a lot faster than i had anticipated 💀 the reason i mentioned this is because the way i binge-watched the series really affected my perception of the pacing, where yammy's attack and orihime saying goodbye to ichigo all happened within like. 2-5 days of each other in real time, just like in the anime. i remember going from not really paying attention to orihime all that much to having her be my favorite character overnight, simply because her lack of self-worth and her insecurities really resonated with me! i kind of had a gut feeling that ichihime would be canon when orihime had that talk with rangiku, but the moment i became really hyped about the ship was during goodbye halcyon days! orihime's speech really floored me, i replayed it like 100x times, i watched 100 AMVs of it, and i was excited to see ichigo go feral when he finally heard the news about her kidnapping, because that's like. a classic romance trope, right? one character not realizing how much the other cares about them? and then the other character proving them wrong in really dramatic ways? my brain had kind of divided the arc into two parts - a) orihime's confession and b) ichigo's response, so i did guess that they would get a lot of moments from here on, but boy i did not anticipate just how many moments that would be. bleach until that point had mostly just been about the plot for me, but that's when i started caring about the ship.

it was around this time that i got curious and went online to see if ichigo and orihime would have any more moments (i was so excited about the possibilities that i didn't mind seeing spoilers) and that's when i saw a clip of the infamous tower scene on youtube and i was like....wow....are you joking rn....is this for real....and then i continued watching the anime and i was like....it is for real and it's actually sooooo insane? my best friend at the time had told me to stop watching bleach after the arrancar arc ends because it gets really bad after, but i wanted to know where ichigo and orihime's relationship was going to go from here (after lust arc). i didn't have a tumblr account at the time but i did lurk around a lot of blogs for other fandoms (this was back when you could take a look at any blog without having to sign up), and that's when i realized that a) the manga was ongoing and i could read that and b) the manga had a lot more moments from earlier arcs that i had either completely glossed over or the anime itself had cut. as you can imagine, this delighted me, who casually shipped ichi/ishi because they were funny together but had no stakes in canon romances. i wanted to see ichihime grow, i'd become very fond of them almost overnight, and in the in-between periods where i waited for the manga to update, i read a lot of fanfic on fanfic dot net and began following people who liked the ship, but i was too scared to post/interact with anyone because the fandom was very different pre-2016 and i was scared of being bullied for liking ichihime lol.

#eventually i did give up reading the manga weekly/monthly because i preferred reading the story in long chunks #it was frustrating to have to wait for updates and the waiting periods were hell because people were always nitpicking things #but i WAS around on tumblr for horn of salvation and 686 and i did eventually go on to read tybw in its entirety #so you can say i was here from 2012-2016 and then from 2019-now :D #asks #ichihime #back then i loved bleach sooo much it was the only thing that kept me going in my miserable life i mean.#i had an undiagnosed ED my life was shit and the only constant joy was this series that i genuinely enjoyed watching #you won't believe how many miserable days i pulled through bc i told myself i'd have this show waiting for me at the end of the day #i met an ichigo cosplayer at comic con towards the end of high school and he was soooo nice to me that i literally cried after meeting him #you know that post that's like 'i only wake up in the morning bc it's what naruto would want me to do'? that was me with ichigo #ed mention

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gableforks · 10 days

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In defense of Captain Kyōraku vs Coyote Starrk

I recently saw a creator say that Zaraki Kenpachi would have been a better match for Stark than Shunsui due to the parallel between Yachiru and Lillinette, which is fair but I want to throw my support behind the fight Kubo decided to give us.

My first watch through Bleach, I was underwhelmed by Stark. He didn't have Barragons hax or Ulqiorra's showing and he was the only espada besides Aaroniero who was beaten without bankai. Upon reading the manga, however, Starrk has come to be my favorite of the espada due to Kubo's great characterization.

Starrk's backstory starts in Hueco Mundo, after he split his soul in two, creating the separate characters that are Starrk and Lilynette. He did this to cure his lonliness as no other hollow could retain their reishi body in the presence of his immense power. Eventually he's approached by Aizen who stretches out his hand to Starrk, asking him to be his ally.

The espada contains nine other hollows that are able to withstand Starrks spiritual pressure, finally giving Starrk a shot at friendship. He is one of four vastolords, along with Barragan, Harribel, and Ulquiorra, who's aspects of death are aging, sacrifice and emptiness. There seems to be a rift between the vasto lords and adjuchas who have more primal aspects atributed to their persons; despair, destruction, ecstacy, insanity, greed, and wrath. We see Nel's relationship with Nnoitra and Ulquiorra's with Grimmjow. in both of these we're shown the gap in power, the lack of regard and relatability a more human vasto lord shows to an adjuchas. Stark and Ulquirra have an added degree of seperation being naturally occuring Arrancars.

Jushiro and shunsui are among the only people that Starrk would have been able to see as an equal. Starrk as the espada representing lonliness in death, didn't need the soul-king killed; he did not need soul society destroyed and he especially did not need the captain of the 8th company dead. Starrk even tries to get the captain to pretend to fight till the battle is over, a scene reminiscent of Kyōraku asking Chad to stay for tea till the end of the Ryoka invasion in the Soul Society arc.

Starrk is so powerful, that in Hueco Mundo, no one could even approach him until Aizen, and even when he did, it must not have been lost on Starrk that he was but a tool for the Soul reaper. The only time in Karakura town where Starrk is touchable by anyone besides Kyōraku is when he's jumped by Love and Rose taking advantage of him mourning the death of Barragan.

Kyōraku approaches Starrk with a calmness he must've only seen before in Aizen. (and would most definetly not have seen in Kenpachi) I can't think of a scenario in which Starrk would have had to fight before this encounter. The captain and the espada continue to surprise each other with their speed, strength, and battle instincts. They are feeling each other out as one would a new dancing partner.

There is a reason that Lilynette is Starrk's counterpart. She is bratty, uncooperative and ignorantly unhindered by the gap in power between Ukitake and herself. Despite the indifference the captain shows to her attacks, and the ease with which he swats away her cero, she does not stop trying to reach him. She is the face of Starrks desparation and lack of opportunity for growth.

Starrk's ability to split his soul is how we get both lillenette and the wolves used to defeat Love and Rose. When Starrk wants to get serious he absorbs Lillinette back into himself.The wolves he sends out do not return to him. He himself cannot cure his own lonliness, forced to retreat into himself when push comes to shove, and self destructing when that is not enough.

Kyōraku's shikai forces his opponent to follow the rules of children's games. Who better to come up against him than the man who's lonely, unfulfilled inner child is shown to us. Bleach is full of characters who blur the line between battle and sport; Kenpachi, White, Ikkaku, Grimmjow etc. Starrk is less expressive than these guys but for the first time ever although for a criminally short time, he and lilynette are able to experience high stakes, forced to get creative, and most importantly, they Play.

#bleach #coyote starrk #espada #bleach manga #shunsui kyoraku

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takibikaen · 8 months

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My top 5 Bleach women and why I love them: Part 2

If you haven't seen Part 1 of this, here's the link. https://www.tumblr.com/takibikaen/725767150684520448/my-top-5-bleach-women-and-why-i-love-them-part-1?source=share

2/5. Orihime Inoue ~ The Princess

Why?

She’s ridiculously quirky and really wholesome, which really added a layer of emotion to the series as the character who could be empathic with so many individuals. Her struggles and belief she builds within herself in her friends and Ichigo is beautiful to see through the show. She’s a human teenager who wasn’t built for fighting like her friends but she still tries her best to help out and genuinely has a good heart void of killing intent.

The Orihime/Riruka interaction is even wholesome when you find out Orihime calls Riruka multiple times after TYBW lmao

Showing compassion in front of those who wronged you or are against you is hard to do. For Orihime, it’s her nature to be kind and non-aggressive even to those who hurt her. It’s a sentiment that one would usually discard especially in a lot of shows. However, I see Orihime being this way as reaching out to them because she knows they’re hurting on the inside like Sora and Riruka, or that they need to load power over her like Loly.

Throughout those experiences, she’s been able to keep her compassionate nature even in the face of all this. Obviously, I could keep on harping on how this makes her stand out from multiple other characters, but I’ll try not to. Her Fullbring powers are to reject phenomenon and I see her nature as an symbol of that, where outside events don’t get to her even in dark times, that she keeps true to herself no mater what.

We As one: are not intertwined. As two: do not share the same form. Of the third: we simply don't have eyes. Of the fourth: we have no hope in that direction. At the fifth therein lies the heart. - Bleach Vol. 27

Ichigo’s conflict in the Arcancar Arc was centered around protecting his friends to the point that he wouldn’t trust them to fight with him or confide with them. Orihime also goes through something like this, which that she goes to Hueco Mundo without telling them, so Ulquiorra wouldn’t hurt them. However in her heart, she was glad Ichigo and others came for her and even had a moment where Ichigo’s mysterious Hollowifaction scared her. The very thing Ichigo strived work towards to protect her and those they loved.

I especially look towards her pacifist nature being clear when Grimmjow demands she heals Ichigo so Grimmjow can kill him at full power in a new fight. Complete opposite of Unohana learning healing Kido to extend her fights, right? That’s why it ends beautifully when Orihime realizes Ichigo’s Hollow power shouldn't get in the way of her trust in him to end the fight. She comes forth to listen to her heart and gets past the idea of no hope, the Hollow eyes she stared into, Ichigo’s masked form, and believes in those she cares about. She doesn’t despair.

To finish it off, her growth in the Fullbring arc is good to see pay off especially where she has faith in Ichigo to make it through, that she’ll heal him even if it gives him the opportunity to get hurt again. Plus, she even develops her Fullbring ability to the point where she can defend and reactively attack at the same time, thus keeping true to her nature while fighting back. Orihime is genuinely a character who I love from her quirky & kind nature but to also how human she is in dealing with things outside of her control, and her internal growth towards her friends.

Pink background art belongs to @rakusakugk on Twitter. High School Orihime art belongs to @srkbom108 on Twitter, and the black-white background art belongs to @Mak_ai_ on Twitter. Absolutely talented artists.

Sorry, but Tumblr only allows 30 photos per post so there's a Part 3 of this mini-series.

Check me out on Quora: https://www.quora.com/profile/Kirun-Uzumaki

#bleach characters #bleach fanart #bleach #orihime inoue #bleach orihime

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darkspace7 · 4 months

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[That Which Protects The Falling Rain] Pt.1

[A Sort of Synopsis, if you will]: Okay so the other day I was just faffing about and watching some videos discussing some of the Bleach Brave Soul character design choices as you do and then I got to thinking about how there were so few decently good fics featuring our good man Ishida and then that somehow led into wondering why there weren’t hardly any detailing the situations of how one would even come about to wear those alternate costumes in the first place and then that somehow devolved into contemplating time/dimension travel and fusion (as in literal fusion –not crossovers- although those are nice too…) fics and what-ifs involving rather creative semi-roll swaps and we all know that canon is basically just a suggestion at this point so anyway-

Here’s my-

“Through An Exceedingly Convoluted Series Of Events Spanning The Course Of About Roughly Two Weeks Uryū Ishida Gets Yeeted To An Alternate Timeline/Dimension Thing With An Imprint Of Ichigo Camping In His Soul As A Sort-Of Bastardized Zanpakutō And Now He Must Wage In Shadow Espionage Bullshit Because At This Point Aizen Is Still A Problem And Tipping Off The Quincy While Everyone’s Even Weaker Than The Timeline They Left Would Be Bad. (Also Having Two Instances Of The Almighty + Antithesis In The Same General Vicinity Is Apparently Bad For The Continued Existence Of Reality) And Somehow Not Potentially Fuck Everything Else Up Even Worse Than Last Time As Well As Try Not To Have A Complete Nervous Breakdown In The Mean Time.”

-AU…

But that’s kind of a mouthful so imma just call it [That Which Protects The Falling Rain] AU

So yeah…

As you can obviously tell from the prior blurb this is more or less canon divergent starting from the point that Ichigo got his powers back after the timeskip (which –in my completely honest opinion- was a bullshit arc anyway for a number of reasons that I refuse to go into at the moment) with the main kicker of it all being the things that happened with the whole Quincy ordeal went significantly worse off than in canon and basically a bad time was had by everyone.

[Unwind the World and Your Nightmare’s Gone]

Turns out that if you have a crumbling pillar that props up what is an already heavily destabilized world murked on top of everything else tends to accelerate the wholesale destruction of everything in existence. The first of this was quickly realized when Hueco Mundo, the Wandenreich, and the Soul Society all crashed and began to bleed into one another. This mockery of a union only served to further tip the scales to such an extreme that Hell itself –which at this point was still puttering along as the sole remaining pillar of reality- began to develop cracks in the framework before eventually just giving way entirely. And thus things started to bleed indiscriminately into the World of the Living.

Which, I don’t need to tell you, was bad news bears.

In the chaos and calamity people were dying in droves and –because the reincarnation cycle was wholly and utterly fucked- they were staying dead. The very few individuals that had been smart enough to dip when the water hit the wall or were (un)fortunate enough to dodge the first fires of the literal apocalypse managed to bunker down, sustaining themselves on the heavily overly-saturated reishi of the atmosphere as they waited for the inevitable end tailmarked on the hands of the three souls that still carried on. These three –the False King tainted with the spark of divinity, his Heir who sought to put an end to his reign, and the Hybrid who felled God Himself- who fought on even though everything and everyone they had once stood for having fallen ages before them; their hands grasping for that last pyrrhic victory because what else is there at this point?

But –much like the moon for which his blades were named- even the powers of god-slayers must wane and on the field of battle enemies will use any fault to their advantage. And so, with a decisive slice of the blade, the False King went Off With His Head and the prodigal son made his way back home like the rest of his children. But it was here that Yhwach, made a Mistake™.

For all that Ichigo Kurosaki was a hybrid of both Quincy and Soul Reaper, he was also part Hollow as well.

And Hollows are poisonous to Quincy.

But the imprudent ruler was past caring at this point -was confident he could weather the poisoning of his soul- that he just had to stop for a moment to allow the restless stubborn child to settle down and from there he could then adapt and adjust. But to do such a thing on a battlefield where there was still one other active combatant left (no matter how you have dismissed the other boy as being a non-threat at this point) was pure hubris in of itself.

Enter: Uryū Ishida.

Armed with a silver arrow crafted from the bodies of his kinsmen that he lifted from the corpse of his estranged father and the sheer and utter spite of someone who has seen every single last one of their friends and family be killed and subsequently has no more fucks to give decides in his exhausted state to pull an Ichigo and lets the fly.

It hits.

At long last, the Old King was dead.

But it wasn’t enough.

Because the being named Yhwach was a great number of things, however, unprepared was not one of them. Being able to see possibility after possibility was indeed a great boon when it came time to sketch out an action plan for such eventualities. Case in point, when faced with the surefire destruction of your own physical and spiritual being it is perhaps okay to latch on to and borrow another. And what better source than your treasonous Heir not a stone’s throw from where you currently were?

Long live the king.

Or so you thought bitch.

Turns out neither did the Quincy child nor the rebellious echo of the hybrid boy much care for his attempt at bodyjacking. So unanimously they decided to say –fuck that- and pull off their own sort of deus ex machina using Uryū’s Shrift in conjunction with Ichigo’s kind of admittedly bullshit hybridity powers to throw a wrench in things and swap the Fate of not only himself the other late teen’s echo as well so that in the end it was Ywhach who would be the one subsumed.

And by some fucking miracle, it worked.

They successfully managed to topple the Quincy King from his position to allow for Uryū to then supplant himself on the vacant throne as the King as the remainder of Ichigo’s unique spiritual signature securely subsumed the rest of Yhwach’s essence and then somehow used it to stabilize the burgeoning fuckery that was now his (and apparently Ishida’s???) soul.

Long live the King (and his new and only somewhat unwilling headmate) indeed.

Just in time for reality to start falling apart.

With the weight of the final battle having finally given way to bone-deep exhaustion he –(or, rather, was it they now? Truth be told, neither boy was entirely sure what to make of their current situation and the sheer number of existential issues that simply arose from their paradoxical state of being. But then again that sort of thing wasn’t exactly a new thing when it came to his whole impossible existence now was it? Hell, he’d had so many ‘impossibles’ tossed at him that at this point the very word was starting to lose all meaning, honestly. And this current bit of what-the-fuckery was just another layer to the botched clusterfuck of a cake now wasn’t it? ‘…Good god Kurosaki do you think you could save your little existential crisis for later? Neither of us have the energy for it and I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I’m pretty sure that at least one of us currently has a fucking concussion.’ No, fuck you man, I don’t know if you’ve noticed but the world’s fucking ending. This is a good as time as any, man. ‘I just want somewhere we can get a chance to rest.’)- leveraged their worn body up on unstable legs in search of an unbroken spot where they could do just that.

Sometime along the way he had noted the larger of the orange-haired hybrid’s blades among the debris and stopped to examine it. (Or rather, having sensed the echo of their wielder contained within, it had lowered itself to allow him a chance to look upon its glory. At least, that was the impression that it seemed to be giving off anyway. Yeah, like a pair of stray cats you rescued from out behind the dumpster on trash day, his Zangetsu was. But even to the end they tried to help in their own way… ‘‘Slaying Moon’ huh? What an apt name for such a blade.’ Blades. There’s two of them. Ah, that was right. But if so then where…?)

Even now, their wicked sharp edge gleamed obsidian in the light as he subconsciously let the blade rest behind in the crook of his back. Feeling the small clasp as sword seemed to latch onto his presence as if magnetic. Readjusting his glasses he glanced around and let out a soft noise when their eyes alit upon their prize.

(He did not look at the body sprawled out upon the ground as they knelt down and gently pried the shorter blade from stiff fingers. He did not look at the severed head with too blank eyes as he slid the other half of his blade carefully into the waistband of his belt.He did not look at his own corpse resting at his feet-)

He stood.

Continuing on, he trudged along aimlessly, stumbling from wreck to wreck in an attempt to avoid the ever encroaching void that slowly but surely ate at what was left of their worlds. (They decidedly ignored the shadows that lapped at their feet. The way they danced inexplicably without a clear source of light. Twisting and writhing along the rolling dark as if they were but a thousand –familiar- eyes held back behind closed lids –theirshisoursmine- as they waited there. Dreaming.)

He stumbled.

They walked on until eventually they happened upon a surprisingly stable section of what appeared the Royal Realm and what was even more astonishing was the fact that out of everyone who could’ve somehow managed to dodge the apocalypse they had the misfortune to run into Aizen of all people. And it seemed that the ex-captain was just as enthused to see them.

(Wow, yeah, no. Not surprised that you survived because you’re pretty much a damned cockroach at this point. But I am genuinely kind of surprised that you decided to stick around instead of –I don’t know- having the good sense to bail when everything started going to shit? You’d think he would. Like, scurry away to lick the wounds and that sort of shit, right? ‘Right, absolutely riveting commentary Kurosaki. Such a shame that I’m the only one who’s forced to listen to it.’ Grimace. Urgh what god did I piss off to get stuck with you assholes? ‘Probably the two we just killed.’…Ah. Right.)

“Hm, that’s certainly a pleasant expression.”

(…I wanna kick his fucking ass. ‘What? No!’ Just a single boot shoved right in his smug bondage-wrapped face. ‘No.’)

Thoroughly exasperated and just utterly done with everything and everyone at this point Uryū decided this was as good as they were going to get and sort of collapsed at the foot of the broken throne with an undignified grunt, shifting the massive knife from his back to a more comfortable spot upon his lap as to allow himself to prop their body up against a slab of rubble. The youth let out a groaning-sigh.

Aizen –having meandered over to join him- watched with a keen interest.

(The subtle shade of black bleeding into the much younger man’s sclera, the downright monstrous inferno of tainted Quincy-Reaper-Hollow reiatsu coupled with the unnatural way that the writhing shadows almost seemed to linger protectively around the bloodied child before him, and while truthfully he was rather near-sighted ((destroying his last pair of glasses in a spur of dramatic theatricality had genuinely been one of his sole regrets, especially considering later when it became wholly apparent that the hōgokyu refused to let itself be used for something as banal as correcting one’s eyesight)) he’d have to have been blinder than Kaname to miss the ease at which the other had hefted that particular blade around. Also, the singular horn was kind of conspicuous and worthy enough for him to lift a brow.)

“Your feats never cease to push the realm of possibility, why I’m honestly starting to think you don’t know the meaning of the word Kurosaki.” He watched with sharp eyes, observing how even the shadows surrounding the youth seemed to freeze. Fascinating. “Or perhaps you would prefer some other form of address more suited to the body you’re currently occupying?” A dark eye crinkled with wry amusement, “Maybe even something more befitting to that of royalty?”

(He’s not going to let this go is he? ‘Ugh, no.’ …Fuck it.)

And so the one-who-was-once-many resigned themself to a litany of awkward conversation as they waited for the world to end.

And what a back and forth it was. Some of the more notable highlights included: In depth discussions on one’s particular choice of eyewear – {“So, wait, hold on. You’re saying you actually needed those glasses and that the whole debacle with the Winter War you were essentially fighting half-blind the whole time?!”

“In the barest sense of the term, yes. Why do you seem so surprised? Did you perhaps forget that one of my compatriots was blind? It is a perfectly reasonable method to use one’s spiritual sense as a sort of complement to innate abilities during combat, as I am sure that one of your newer parts is undoubtedly already aware.”

“…Newer parts?”

“The misguided Quincy child that you once called your comrade and presumably the original owner of the patchwork monstrosity that you now call a form.”

(‘…Okay, yes, while losing your glasses during a fight does fucking suck I’m far-sighted and also mainly focused on archery so it’s not so bad but “patchwork monstrosity?” Rude, much?’)

“My, what a frightening expression.”

They flipped him off.}

–To the eventual reluctant admittance of what had occurred during their final battle versus the late Quincy King-

{it was in general agreement that the whole thing was a collective load of bullshit, however Aizen did find some note of ironic humour in the new fusion’s predicament much to said being’s annoyance.}

–To why the traitorous ex-captain was even there in the first place-

{“And where exactly would you have intended me to have gone, hm?” The man gestured broadly at the wanton destruction that surrounded them.

“Should I have squirrelled myself away like the scarce few remaining beings that tried to do so before everything fell to ruin? Don’t make me laugh. Why, I would even dare to say those poor unfortunate souls have been all but eliminated when the world pillars sang their swan song and even if they managed to survive that don’t you think the void would have consumed them much like everything else at this point?” Sōsuke leveled a dry look, letting his head fall back against the remains of a broken pillar wearily.

“So I figured this was as good as a time as any to try my hand at usurping the throne, you know, seeing as the current Soul King was indisposed.” A flicker of genuine consternation flashed across the man’s face. “But, it seems that crossing into the realm of transcendence is still not enough just so long as you’re still missing a fundamental piece of the equation.”

“Wow. So even after going through all of that you still weren’t –what- Quincy enough to take the crown? Heh, sucks to be you I guess. Wh-hey! We already have a concussion you didn’t have to throw a rock at me you ass.” With a huff, they rubbed at the new welt on their head. “Geez…”

“But seriously, I can’t believe with all that bullshit you pulled trying to get the magic death marble to make you god it couldn’t even manage it in the end.” As the hand dropped to the blade in their lap, they gave a faint scowl and then turned to face the other. “And really, what’d it even matter at this point? Figure we could use it to prop up reality –or at least what’s left of it anyway- and keep it from imploding or something?”

Aizen let out a somewhat undignified snort, “The Quincy have finally brought around your inclinations of royalty, I see. You’ve even started using the royal we. But yeah, sure, why not. Go ahead and take a stab at being the Soul King for a bit, I mean I’d say you can’t possibly be worse that what’s going on right now but somehow I think you would manage it just to spite me.”

The young being let out a snort of his own as they rolled with the bit, “No, we’d totally be an awesome Soul King. Way better than the last one and Not Unstable At All. Heck, we wouldn’t even abuse whatever the bullshit powers we had on top of everything else so we could –I don’t know- turn back time and fucking unmurder everyone. Oh! While we’re at it why don’t we try taking a crack completely unknotting that clusterfuck you guys call a politics around here. Because, honestly? Responding to every new thing that shows up on your doorstep with ‘treat it like shit’ and/or ‘try to kill it with extreme prejudice’ tends to piss people off and is probably why y’all had so many enemies.”

They nodded, sarcasm just oozing from their tone. “Yeah, all of that would be just so fun. Don’t you think?”}

Who could have foreseen that such a benignly one-off comment could have could spurred such further chaos?

(Well they probably could have. But –in their defence- they weren’t exactly firing on all cylinders at the time; what with the existential fuckery that they were still coming to terms with alongside the previously mentioned concussion that made it so when Aizen ((who had went suspiciously quiet after his little haha-funny-but-not-really joke)) proceeded to pitch the Idea™ to them it didn’t really seem to tack on as being anything worse than what the apocalypse that they were already were going through was.

But as now they found themselves trying not to squirm with a hand splayed awkwardly over the violet gem embedded in the other man’s bare chest as the other looked on with what seemed to be deep-set amusement they could not help but think to themselves: they really should’ve known better.)

(‘This is so stupid.’ There’s no way this would ever work-) Astonishingly, the gem beneath their hand began to glow.

(…Are you kidding me?)

“Huh, it seems like the hōgokyu was actually able to grant my wish after all.” The other murmured, ripping the fusion’s attention away from the entrancing glow only for them to watch as the man before them slowly began to crumble to dust before their very eyes. “Rather roundabout way of doing it though, if you ask me.” Sōsuke snorted, dark eye flicking up to meet the other’s disbelief. “Listen well Ichigo Kurosaki and Uryū Ishida, this will be the last time we meet one another as things are. Don’t squander the opportunity you’ve been given as it’s highly unlikely you will get another one.”

“…Understood.”

“Good.” The other seemed…actually kind of relieved? That was all they had time to think before his body was gone and it was their fingers clutched around the hōgokyu as it then took their wish (to fix this oh god don’t you dare drop something like this on us and then leave us aloneyou utter bastardplease I don’t want to be the last one left after everything I don’t want to be aloneand just like that there went another person that he failed to protect just like everyone elseplease I just want to fix this make it like it never happened!) and moulded it and then unwound the world from its crumbling spool, unwound them, unmade him and now he-

-Was-

but only for an instant before world reformed around himself and he was forcefully slammed into (his/their/whose?) body.

He blacked out.

#DS7's Log #[That Which Protects The Falling Rain]#Bleach Fanfiction #-carefully adds to the archive-#Ichigo Kurosaki #Uryu Ishida #Sosuke Aizen #In which the author continuously makes poor life choices and is even worse at knowing how to tag and work shit so this is your only warning #Wait so Tumblr can make strikethroughs but not underline stuff? Ugh that sucks.#Fuck it y'all are getting colours then I guess.#How the fuck did this turn into a story halfway through?#It was only supposed to be a meme drabble idea jfc... OTL #Also like lowkey Yhwach with those shadow eye-things deadass looks like a older and scruffier version of Pride from the FMA manga fr...

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love-the-purple-cat · 2 months

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God tumbles down and the characters it references

You may have noticed how the characters and situations in God tumbles down in chapter 3 are references to certain Bleach characters and situations. Of course, I have allowed my bias to colour how those characters are portrayed.

Characters

Kou – is a direct reference to Ichigo, which is one of the reasons why he is uncomfortable at the beginning reading the story. He sees their similarities and attempts to run away (taking a break from reading the manuscript) and then getting emotional as he reads along. This is why he wanted it to be published – so that his story (though modified/doctored) can be heard and known.

Fuyuhiro – he is what I remember Kuchiki Byakuya being like in the early chapters – cold and aloof, a sticker for rules that would let his sister be executed and stop others from rescuing her. Fuyuhiro does not get better and dies after his fight with Kou.

Fuyume – Kuchiki Rukia, though more refined and not in the tendency of calling others fools/idiots, and later her role is similar to Inoue Orihime. She is aware and accepting of her role and position, and after inheriting her brother's position she becomes colder. I ended up showing some of my dislike for her in Chapter 37: Eyes of the Victor.

Shino – Abarai Renji. I'll be honest, after what happened after the Winter War (and maybe before that) I do not like either Renji or Rukia. Don't try to change my mind. Shino is how I remember Renji being when Rukia was to be executed – he is hot-headed and arrogant, but tries to stick to the rules, even though he later may rebel.

Blue-eyed man – Grimmjow

Natsu – inspired by Nelliel Tu Odelschwanch. He is a hard worker with morals.

Rin – no one specific. I don't know if they would have allowed for a book featuring two men kissing to be published (back then, i.e. 2002), so I purposely avoided using pronouns and chose a unisex name.

Chapters

Chapter 5: False promise is a reference to Bleach chapter 7: The Pink Cheeked Parakeet and the ones following the mini-arc or episode 4: Cursed Parakeet.

Chapter 6: Arrows references Ichigo meeting Ishida Uryū, the words making him reframe their friendship and circumstances.

Chapter 9: Winter – the first time Ichigo met Kuchiki Byakuya (and by extension Abarai Renji)

Chapter 14: Rockrose – when Byakuya and Renji leave Ichigo after defeating him and taking Rukia. Kou is angrier and more insulted by being left for dead than Ichigo was. Kou uses his anger as motivation to become stronger, not just to save Fuyume, but also to defeat Fuyuhiro.

Chapter 17: Flower – When Abarai Renji decides to help save Rukia and switches sides. I can't remember if Ichigo was as angry as Kou at that. Kou sees the world in black and white and a few shades of grey, so he is rather pissed at Shino for doing nothing. Ichigo sympathises with the man in those moments.

Chapter 19: Beautiful night – Though sooner and with a different outcome, this is a reference to Ichigo and Byakuya's fight. From what I have seen, Byakuya grows to respect Ichigo after it and Rukiya's near execution, while Fuyuhiro dies feeling derision for Kou after their fight.

Chapter 23: Negotiation – When Inoue Orihime was kidnapped and held in Hueco Mundo and the Shinigami refused to do a rescue mission.

Chapter 27: Blue – Ichigo's fights with Grimmjow and the tension (I'm sure we can all agree) we felt.

Chapter 32: Shield and chain – When party members of the Orihime rescue team are left behind to fight the enemies. Kou is genuinely distressed by Natsu being left behind.

Chapters 34, 35 and 36 – Nothing specific (Read: No clue). Just the regular war things.

Chapter 37: Eyes of the Victor – the war is over and my dislike for Rukia (Fuyume) and Renji (Shino) rears its head.

Chapter 39: Pendulum – the war is over and Kou is forgotten. I know Ichigo gets back his powers but in God tumbles down, Kou is left alone – a sword that has done its duty and ended up breaking. Life goes on, his friends don't bother visiting him after everything he did for them. Fuyume and Shino marry, having already forgotten about the man who saved her. Their world never needed him but it was nice (easier) when he helped.

A would-be Bad End for Ichigo, if you will.

#TheCatMeows #The Past Is Never Dead AU #Bleach AU #Bleach #fake book #would like to have done a more in-depth analyses but this the best I can do #for now at least

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sunflowersandcherryblossoms · 3 months

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The omakes and filler episodes in Bleach are insane in the way that they tell us all that, logically, the timeline of the series should have been way longer!

Christmas and New Year's omakes when Ichigo never really had ONE single Christmas with the Shinigami?

Fillers that needed at least two extra years of story to make sense even if they're not canon?

It's actually insane when you think that, for example, the Lost Agent Arc takes places in less than week if I'm not wrong?!? (Timelines are complicated because we need to Google them each time.)

The first Arc takes a month... Okay, we know her mission (well, we know afterwards...) was only a month. But could have been two to three months.

Soul Society Arc makes a bit more sense that it's fast. It's supposed to reflect the half assed, cheat codes filled "training" Urahara and Yoruichi imposed on Ichigo because time was of essence!

But then there's like no time to prepare for the confrontation with Aizen and we get the long ass (episode wise) Hueco Mundo Saga that just goes on and on and on...

Theoretically it starts on the 1st of September and ends on the 2nd of December... But...

Inoue is kidnapped (not really but okay....) on the 30th of October and Aizen is defeated on the 1st of November...

Again, way too fucking fast.

The Lost Agent Arc (or Fullbringer Arc) begins on some Monday of April (at least after the first week, because Ichigo's back in school for his last year of Secondary Education) and ends on Sunday... Okay.

Makes no sense. But moving on to worse things...

THERE'S ONLY TWO MONTHS FROM THE LOST AGENT ARC TO THE THOUSAND YEAR BLOOD WAR!!!

When I was just begging my Bleach journey and I thought Kuchiki Byakuya was a damn weird name, 366 episodes were going to take months and months to finish, (two months to finish everything up to tybw cour 1) and I really wanted to hear Yuichi Nakamura and Daisuke Ono's voices, ( "So, Tsukishima is one of the good guys, right?" I asked my younger son... Who just smirked at me...) I kinda — for some reason — got into my head that between the Fullbringer Arc and TYBW it must have been two years!

It made sense to me.

Boy, was I wrong!

Now, if we'd have those two years of interval in universe, it would have given us a "logical" place to insert most of the filler and omakes. (though Byakuya was wearing the Kenseikan in those and we know he stopped wearing them, along with the scarf altogether...)

But with the canon timelines?

There's no place to insert those humorous Kuchiki Byakuya and the others giving Yamamoto letters for Santa, the one were Byakuya gifts Ichigo the Sakura Crested All Access pass and the New Year's cards with Byakuya and Rukia trying to draw a snake...

#bleach #timelines

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unohanadaydreams · 2 years

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I read online somewhere that Kubo didn't intend for Mayuri to survive to the end of Bleach and that he and Ishida were meant to have more fights before Ishida ultimately killed him. I can't help but wonder when that changed.

I would believe that, since Kubo went out of his way to have Mayuri rescue Uryu in Hueco Mundo (which comes off weird af when they interact not at all in TYBW and the interaction itself devolves into comedy salad).

Mayuri against Giselle is also so weak outside of them just being fun characters to see interact. I don’t buy Mayuri as being any less horrible than Giselle (despite Kubo’s lame cock sniffing efforts and trying to show Giselle as a Worse SS Arc Mayuri). The efforts to make him seem admirable fail unless your definition is just ‘wow how great he didn’t wanna see the world end’.

Not sure when it changed exactly, but it’s clear there was a shift towards the end of the fullbringer arc. The shinigami come in. They save Ichigo. They’re our final allies and lens for the upcoming TYBW. We are no longer giving a shit about the culpability of Gotei 13. They now have the ultimate right: either you support them or you support destroying the world. (This happened to a lesser extent when Mayuri saved Uryu and no confrontation happened.)

Ginjo’s ire was diminished to ‘isn’t it fucked up they’ve been listening to you’ RIGHT before the shinigami start talk about their intent to kill Ichigo if he showed any waver in faith towards them. The timing of Ichigo’s salvation, too, seems awfully convenient for Yhwach’s timeline (Yamamoto has kept that simmering under his beard for 1000 years, for sure). This wouldn’t be the first time Rukia wanted to save Ichigo and Yamamoto let it happen bc it lined up with an agenda.

To me the end of Uryu vs Mayuri is the end of the Soul Society being viewed as an entity that needs to be changed. Everything about change in the fullbringer arc is fucking lip service. We get three novels of how fucked things still are via CFYOW after the manga.

It makes me wonder if that was something that was fought about internally, since the shinigami are by far the most popular part of Bleach (which makes sense since they were by far the most well introduced and written).

Uryu joining the Sternritter solely as a convoluted plan to kill Yhwach doesn’t work as well imo as him joining because he’s promised a shot at the guy who bragged with photo evidence about torturing and killing his grandfather—the one adult who treated Uryu like he was a person and not a burden after his mother died—as well as Quincy at large. It can not be over stated that Mayuri was not doing this against orders

Uryu has plenty of reason to hate SS and Mayuri in particular and he’s a guy who feels pretty strongly. He likes to have the last line.

The fact that the text refuses to engage with WHY Uryu wouldn’t support the Seireitei is fucking insane. It’s right there!!!! It’s so clear!!!

It’s just weird to me that Kubo shoddily slapping some nazi imagery on the Sternritter really did make ppl go en masse ‘what Quincy genocide’.

Like Seireitei has done everything Yhwach did except try to kill the Soul King (that we know of).

Mayuri vs Uryu would have fucked. Nemu turning into an independent being and having to deal with possibly being ousted from her division now that Mayuri isn’t there to insist she stays/proving she is fully a shinigami would have fucked. Uryu finally returning the favor to a woman who has been codependent her entire life WOULD HAVE FUCKED.

I heavily enjoy seeing what we got in TYBW as far as Mayuri goes because I love him as a character and I’ll take literally anything. But story wise, yeah. Mayuri vs Uryu would have been so cool.

#i see so many ppl unironically call the sternritter nazis and I have to laugh #shinigami 🤝 sternritter doing the same shit literally being the same brand of fucked up #I would have loved to see Mayuri and Uryu fight in TYBW #seeing Mayuri suffer in the manga was great #but imagine if he had suffered against Uryu and Uryu who has canonically been a great strategist and some of the best growth #beat the shinigami who prides himself on having an out and answer for everything #would’ve been neat #perhaps I could’ve seen a tear #or a scream #or true panic #also sorry all I did was go off on tangents lmaooo

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stackslip · 1 year

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the way bleach really should have ended would have been rukia being the protagonist and fucking off with her girlfriend (orihime), her girlfriend's girlfriend (tatsuki) and boyfriend (ichigo), soul society and the king being ruthlessly dismantled piece by piece after dissecting exactly why it's a hellhole and just as awful as hueco mundo, rangiku beating the shit out of gin after he profusely apologizes for being a cryptic little fuck and then beating aizen herself with her soul intact and maybe fucking off with her now slightly-less-unhinged boyfriend and her bff (toushiro) who now has to Cope with the fact that soul society's hierarchy and expectations are in fact deeply fucked, unohana being alive and terrifying, the quincy genocide thing being resolved in a better way than a stupid drawn out war arc in which the emotional stakes never raise higher than antagonist-of-the-week is slightly sad, chad getting an actual character arc and a boyfriend, urahara ACTUALLY being relevant and morally grey, the arrancars getting a resolution especially to their obvious parallels to the gotei 13,

#i could go on and on and on and on anyhow. as usual. i'm on my bullshit #bleach #stop telling me it was like naruto. unlike naruto bleach had so much potential #it had the soul society arc and the beginnings of hueco mundo arc and the basic concepts down!!!#and then it fucked off into oblivion #eli talks

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azulawriting · 1 year

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I’m ambivalent on the ship wars, and here’s why

I probably shouldn’t be even writing this because the ship wars are back at it again with the new anime season, and my opinion will probably not make either side happy.

Full disclosure, up until very recently, I was an anime-only person when it came to Bleach. I watched the filler, but not the movies because of all the flack I got for watching non-canon content. Bleach has always been a “niche” series in my area, so you can imagine that it’s not that I didn’t want to read the manga back when I watched the show on TV and over some websites of dubious legality. Once the anime was over, I naturally found ways to read the manga from that point on.

I assumed that the anime was basically a 1-to-1 adaptation of the manga, save for the fillers. And, like many fans back when TYBW was ongoing, had my gripes on how rushed the ending came. Mind you, by the time Bleach as a manga ended, I was already a full-on weeb and I had read/watched many other shows. The magic that had captured 11-year-old me into this universe was growing thin by some of the rushed and lack-of what I thought to be key points for the arc to develop. As much as it’s interesting to have Ichigo be part Quincy, having little to no explanation as to why Uryu decided to be part of the Sternritters was…disappointing. There were good things, but by the point the final chapters were rolling by, my enjoyment of Bleach as a whole became dependent on what the ending ships became. Is it petty? Sure, but I wouldn’t go as low as to burn tomes of Bleach for not having my way.

As an anime-only, I will say this: The anime makes an extremely clear point that Orihime’s affection is completely one-sided. At no point did I get the impression that Ichigo would reciprocate her feelings, and my perception of that didn’t change much in the manga. Although I thought it was good for Orihime’s character to have Ichigo acknowledge that she can fight by his side. But as I said, at the time, I was full on board with IchiRuki and that single moment wasn’t going to suddenly change my perspective.

So, did something change?

Yes, but no(?)

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate IchiRuki for being a ship that appeals to my idealistic view of romance: a close relationship where two people build each other up and don’t give up on each other no matter what. I’m starting to finally read the manga and so far, I’ve barely reached the Fake Karakura Town arc. I won’t say I suddenly see the error in IchiRuki, and bend down to the canon for making total sense and being obvious from day 1. But I can safely say that I can see why some people are so adamant to say that IchiHime was the right end-game ship. My problem so far with it is that although I can’t definitively say Ichigo doesn’t care about Orihime as more than a friend, I can’t be sure it’s a hundred per cent non-platonic. I don’t have the panels fresh on my mind, but I do get that when Orihime’s captured, we see Ichigo get more reckless and distant with his actual friends and hurt them because he “doesn’t trust them”. I can easily take this as Ichigo caring particularly for Orihime….but I have nothing similar to compare it to. When Rukia was captured, he had a similar reaction, but we didn’t see the breakdown in his friendship with say Tatsuki, because to everyone but Chad, Uryu and Orihime, Rukia stopped existing. I’d argue I was surprised more at how Ishida was way more concerned than usual and wanted to go out on his lonesome to rescue Orihime himself. That’s something I would read as inherently more open to a romantic interpretation given what we know of Ishida’s character thus far. The anime adapted the scene between Uryu and Urahara (I think), but after an entire season of filler, this little moment felt less significant to me than it did when I read it.

But I digress.

So far the only moment where I can safely say that Ichigo did prioritize Orihime is when Ulquiorra admits to having manipulated her into coming to Hueco Mundo. You’re free to interpret it as definitive proof or some indication of Ichigo’s feelings, but I’m not completely sold on it. Again, his sole reason for being there is to save her and prove Soul Society’s assessment of her actions to be incorrect. You can call it nitpicking, but, you gotta understand that, to me, Ichigo is somebody who would probably fight to the death for any of his friends. It takes a lot for me to try to get hints of romantic behaviour from him versus just platonic camaraderie.

Another thing that, while reading the Hueco Mundo in particular, doesn't sell me into IchiHime is how Orihime thinks of Ichigo’s hollow powers as “not her Ichigo”. She is right in saying that White Ichigo is not really him, but it is still something that’s part of him. I can’t say for sure that it’s clear that Rukia would accept it and be cool with it, I don’t think that’d be right considering her story with Kaien. However, the key difference is that if nothing else, Rukia was the one to shake Ichigo’s dread over his power off him. Orihime freezes and is rightly terrified of it, going so far as to no longer believe or want Ichigo to win against Grimmjow the moment he puts the mask on. It takes Nel to snap her out of it. I wonder how this attitude will affect Orihime for his final fight with Ulquiorra. Because if that chapter(s) is anything like its anime equivalent, I think it paints quite a grim picture of the dynamics of the two. At the very least, it’d make Orihime really start reconsidering her feelings for him if what just defeated her captor is “not her Ichigo”. If “not her Ichigo” is the only side of him that would rise to protect her, is her affection for him ever going to bloom and positively change him?

And before you think I’m stating that I’m still anti-IchiHime, this same train of thought lead me to recontextualize that moment in TYBW where Ichigo asks Orihime to fight by his side. Considering the manga thus far, I would be open to interpreting that moment in the final chapters as a romantic moment between the two. But I still have a lot of reading to do. As I’m writing this, I’m in the middle of chapter 328. I don’t know if I’ll make other posts updating my thoughts on the manga as I keep reading. It’s been quite a while since I’ve been on Tumblr and this post is probably gonna die, buried under hundreds of more active accounts.

Nevertheless, there you have it. I’m honestly a bit ambivalent about the ship wars. I can see excellent reasons for both ships to exist. I don’t ship IchiHime, but I get you guys who do. You aren’t crazy. I still don’t think that what I got thus far would sell me into thinking the end-game ships make 100% sense, but now I can’t say that IchiHime is completely baseless. It has something. Kubo may be pardoned for that. Shonen romances aren’t usually great and deep anyhow.

What I don’t excuse Kubo for is making Kazui that much of a psycho in the hell chapter. I don’t care if he was tricked or not, his parents should know better. I mean…come on, it’s Ichigo’s son. His spiritual pressure must be monstrous and he couldn’t have learnt to be a shinigami that young on his own. It’s completely OOC for both Orihime and Ichigo to not give two damns about where their kid goes and just slap him on the wrist for sneaking out at night and doing whatever. Namely sending souls to hell.

#bleach #ichiruki #ichihime #ship wars #rant #no but for real wtf is wrong with Kazui #im not looking for clout I just got no friends who enjoy bleach #I had to rant about it

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bleachbleachbleach · 2 years

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This is a TYBW post but is mostly about the Third Captain Amagai Arc somehow

I enjoyed the TYBW ep! My primary takeaways were that Ichigo is very cool and that I have unresolved stolen bankai trauma I was not previously aware I had, because the second half of that ep was pure anxiety. 😩 After watching the ep we immediately resumed our regularly scheduled Bleach rewatch, so TYBW paired with the very beginning of the Third Captain Amagai arc. This is not a TYBW reaction but MAN I AM PISSED THAT AMAGAI KILLED THE DANGAI CLEANER. If all those Hollows you went to go kill were just going to get eaten by the cleaner anyway, then it’s your fault for not... being better at monitoring the dangai cleaner’s personal schedule. Like, damn, he’s just tryna exist in his natural microhabitat!! ToT

Experiencing all points in canon simultaneously is very much a defining feature of my Bleach experience, so I feel like the juxtaposition TYBW and Third Captain Amagai here was very fitting. It also threw into harsh relief was how unexpected my emotional reaction to the TYBW credits and its OG anime montage was. Because boy howdy it gave me ALL of the nostalgia feels, which was clearly its purpose, but also... Nostalgia is actually not how I typically relate to Bleach and like, we JUST watched all those scenes. They were not tapping some memory I had from ten years ago. Like, son, we watched all this last month. XDD

Sure, the reason we ended up back in Bleach was pandemic/nostalgia-driven, for sure, but unlike series I loved when I was 12 and had no life outside of, like Inuyasha, for which I feel a lot of nostalgia, I have exceedingly few genuine memories of how I experienced Bleach as a teenager, because idk, Life had a lot going on! It’s all a blur! Maybe I was never a teenager and was actually a robot!! My faves then are my faves now and that’s all I got.

And at the end of the day, I’m a pretty monogamous media consumer. If I like something then that’s the Thing I Like and it’s what I’m going to watch over and over and over again in a space that exists outside of the flow of time. Which makes me garbage to talk to at parties because I haven’t seen anything except This One Thing that means so much to me I absolutely will not bring it up in conversation to the uninitiated, but also means that This One Thing exists always in the present and I don’t really care if there’s new content for it or not (except that new content often stresses me out because I do not know where to put it in the conveyor belt of experiences that make up continually re-experiencing Bleach). We did not know there was going to be a Hell oneshot or a TYBW anime adaptation, that was not part of the plan--

Like, I’ve mentioned this before on this blog, but I love the way the Bleach filler arcs slot in (or don’t) into the main storyline. Our three filler arcs that exist in universes adjacent to the Hueco Mundo/Fake Karakura Arcs? I absolutely love that the narrative explanation for that is that there isn’t one. There are just multiverses and what’re you going to do about it, Ichigo?--but it’s not even like they’re separate universes. They’re not only adjacent they’re also overlapping and we’re supposed to accept that these things are happening simultaneously to characters who are not discrete versions of themselves existing in other universes but are in fact the same characters experiencing timelines multiply (same goes for the omake arcs) and I love that for them. I feel like Bleach filler’s whole deal feels very true to my experience of Bleach as a whole, where all the arcs exist in the present all at once and time isn’t real. Bleach filler 🤝 me

To come back around here, that Bleach ED was some powerful, powerful drugs because it felt SO intensely, beautifully nostalgic, as God intended, even though, like I said, we literally watched those episodes like, last week, and they did not feel nostalgic then because all of Bleach just exists at all times forever to me.

(Unless you count the square-formatted eps and at the beginning the fact that the subs were hard-coded onto the video files, in which case, yes, that was technologically very nostalgic. But that’s paratext.)

#bleach #no brain just bleach

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