#i have so much to say about the fullbringers

[zabiume]

I really like the fact that Ichigo is a translator it wasn’t something that i ever thought he would do but it somehow works. I never thought he’d become captain I just don’t see it for him which is why it’s confusing when people say he should’ve become one ?? Like no way 😬

What do you think about him being a translator ? Also what did you think about the use of him being captain ?

ohhh, this is such a dead horse topic on my blog at this point, but yeah, i've never vibed with ichigo being a captain, mainly because a) he's much, much stronger than the average bleach captain😅, b) the thematic point of the story was that he's the living world protagonist and rukia is the soul society protagonist (at least during the first arc), and honestly if anyone has a believable motivation for "changing the system," it should be rukia, who grew up in the worst side of that system, and c) it's hard for me to wrap my head around what he would even do there. his duties and narrative goals have long transcended the mere hollow-purging he was doing in the first arc, i mean he was literally fighting a god in the last arc to prevent the collapse of the three worlds 💀 if anything, ichigo cares about all the realms, given how many times characters in TYBW comment on how virtuous he is because he's willing to rescue even his past enemies if they're no longer causing any trouble to him.

i think the reason this comes up a lot in fan circles is not because of how people perceive ichigo, but how they perceive soul society. shinigami characters are very popular, so it's easy to assume a lot of fans see them as the good guys. personally, i think kubo writes them as a very "do whatever is necessary to keep up the status quo" guys who act in soul society's best interest first and foremost, but aren't all necessarily bad people. it's the classic "good individuals ≠ good system" set-up.

i don't think kubo concerns himself with whether a side character is morally good or bad, he just writes them as having motivations that are consistent with who they are as people. for instance, mayuri isn't "good" but he acts in accordance with his own specific set of values. rukia and renji are "good" because their values often align with ichigo's. it's kind of like...the individuals might be likeable or even nice, but the system itself has done some pretty corrupt things. systems are slow to change, so i'd find it pretty unrealistic for one individual to be able to change centuries worth of practices overnight. of course, soul society has changed because of him, but so has everyone else. byakuya met ichigo and byakuya changed, grimmjow met ichigo and grimmjow changed, riruka met ichigo and riruka changed, etc etc. he's the consistent one, it's the others that change because of his influence. he's already done all of this without being captain, so i don't know how it would be interesting, narratively, for him to attain that role. what would it say about the character that hasn't already been said? it's implied that soul society aspires to reach his level, not the other way around, so it doesn't make sense to posit them as aspirational here. as the hero, ichigo is the aspirational one for most of the characters in the series.

also, i know this isn't a popular opinion, but i like that ichigo has parts of every "identity" in his blood (shinigami, hollow, quincy, fullbringer etc etc😂). therefore, it makes sense to me that he's got allegiances to every group, just as he's got enemies. he's bigger than any one particular group.

coming to his living world job, i think it makes perfect sense and i love how kubo phrases it

from a watsonian perspective, we knew from the very start that ichigo is good at english, likes it, etc etc. we also knew from the very beginning that he wasn't much help around the clinic and that isshin actually urged him to stay away from it, even though i would've been equally okay with him being a doctor. ichigo is smart and he has a great sense of compassion, so that's not at all a bad job for him either.

HOWEVER, my most favorite thing about it is, again, coming back to how kubo phrases it. ichigo as a character has always had insight into both sides, the dead and the living, that's what makes him special as a human, so in a way, he's always been a translator, it's just the language that changes. he's understood the language of grief, managed to bridge the gap between the dead and the living. he's been able to convince soul society to return ginjou's body by communicating the real anguish that ginjou felt as a soul reaper. he's been able to understand the arrancars even as he was fighting them, and in silent victory, he's even been able to empathize with aizen! ichigo is all about understanding, as you can see here in one of my favorite bleach chapters:

ichigo is very intuitive, very eager to understand another heart and build connections, and what else is translation other than accessing a whole other language, a whole other mind, trying to understand it? it might not be accurate or exact, but it comes close, and that's the joy of translation, isn't it? finding the most resonant way to have one world connect with another? the way i phrase something might be different from the way you phrase it, but feelings are universal and no one gets that better than ichigo, who has repeatedly understood the feelings of characters whom he shares no culture with. there's also a meta-ness to the "connecting two different worlds:" bleach has always had contrasts (the modern world, which ichigo lives in, vs the ancient world soul society is modeled on; the western influences on bleach's aesthetics, while bleach itself is a japanese story). ichigo ties everything together, so it's just very fitting and satisfying for him to occupy a position like this!

obviously, it also makes sense for practical reasons, considering the work-from-home nature of the job allows him to be on stand-by in case of any emergencies that need him, and it allows him to break the shonen generational curse by being very involved in his son's upbringing😂. kubo mentioned on klub outside recently that kazui's room was built according to ichigo's specifications, and that's a level of involvement i've always expected from ichigo😅 he's a homebody at heart, he loves having a home and a family and i think any job that allows him to be close to them is a good one! kubo gets a lot of deserved criticism, but i think he's always known his characters well, so i like it! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

#bleach has plenty wrong with it but i think a lot of it's criticism in the GP stems from people projecting their nrt trauma onto bleach😂 #and like. i'm sorry you had a bad experience there but ichigo is not naruto & ichi/hime isnt a nrt endgame ship & bleach is not nrt! #it might be only slightly better but it IS still...better😅 #do i even tag this....i never check the ichigo tag so idk what the vibe is like there #ichigo kurosaki #asks #i personally enjoyed the idea of it even back then because some ichihime writers were writing him as one well before it was even canon lmao

[takibikaen]

My top 5 Bleach women and why I love them: Part 1

(Some of this based on what makes them awesome, or how they're written. Also, this is Part 1 of the entire post, so it'll only show the first 3 characters, due to Tumblr's limit on how many links/media I can use.)

5/5. Ikumi Unagiya \~ Owner of Unagiya Shop

Why?

It’s an unique choice since she doesn’t get that much screen time compared to the others but I really think she’s got a fun personalty and somewhat of a good adult character in a shonen manga that doesn’t have many adults that’ll be there for the MC on an emotional level.

In the Fullbringer arc, she’s one of the only adults in Ichigo’s life who tries to be there for him even with her unawareness of shinigami and hollows. Ikumi still reminds him that he is a kid and he should be able to rely on her, and I think it’s really profound that she says this but Ichigo hasn’t ever really believed in that for most of his life.

Another underrated moment is her getting Ginjo to stop subtly upsetting Ichigo and made him leave her shop. Ginjo wasn’t even a villain at this point but Ikumi still knew the questions he was saying about Ichigo’s dad and his family were screwing with Ichigo’s mind. Maybe I’m giving her too much credit for being a reliable adult for a shonen manga, however it still puts her in my list.

Even in the TYBW arc, she’s still there to be a form of stability to Ichigo who goes through hell before visiting her. Her personality between a dependable, intuitive adult and a stubborn woman who kidnaps teenage employees in broad daylight is what stands out to me as a character.

4/5. Tier Harribel \~ Tres Espada

Why?

Her whole look with the jacket and the hollow mask is honestly pretty cool to see in the series and her serious, calm personality is nice to see among the Espada. Plus her motif as the ‘Espada of Sacrifice’ adds a whole new layer of her concern for her Fraccion, like Nel who was the former 3rd. Her sword release is also dope, “Tiburon”.

In the Arcancar arc, she only gets one main fight (which she got done dirty on) and then gets betrayed by Aizen, but at least I have to appreciate the moments throughout the arc that build her character.

Again, it’s really rare here to see an Arcancar care about their own considering the whole process of Hollows devouring each other from Menos Grande - Adgjunchas - Vasto Lordes. Plus, having the balls to go up to Head-Captain Yamamoto and say you’ll avenge your subordinates is pretty insane.

There is no world without sacrifice. Are you unaware? We are in a sea of blood, ashes floating in hell crying the name of a fading world. - Bleach Vol. 42

The series could have used her more outside of the Arcancar arc but in TYBW arc, she was the ruler of Hueco Mundo and saved Nel & friends from Yhwach. However, they forgot about her for the rest of the TYBW arc which I’m hoping the anime will fix, maybe adding a scene. In the timeskip, she’s adjusted to the role of it all and looks OP af, I personally love this look on her.

Appearance-wise, it’s obvious how stunning how she is honestly.

I used to think “Harribel” was her first name but Tier is actually her first name.

https://twitter.com/jessjessdraws - Artist who drew the Harribel sketch on bottom right panel.

3/5. Unohana Retsu \~ Squad 4 Captain and First Kenpachi

Why?

Almost every Bleach fan loves Unohana but besides the obvious mommy vibe she gives, I really appreciate the dual traits she's had. I really love how she’s a healing captain whose committed to the Gotei 13, and how it’s revealed later that she was one of the original Gotei 13 and the First Kenpachi. The way she holds herself from the beginning of her debut to her death, she always been caring to those she healed and worked with but held a intimidating demeanor around her.

Battle is everything - Bleach Vol. 59

Kubo’s character design is something that took me a while to realize there’s certain symbolism in it. Unohana’s mainstream design is much more meaningful when you find out the core of her character and how she started. The braid she puts her hair in resembles chains that Unohana put on herself to hide away her past of immense bloodlust as the First Kenpachi like the scar on her chest.

At the core of her character, fighting is everything to her considering the environment she’s grown in. The Soul Society and Yamamoto has harnessed her strength and killing prowess for the sake of protecting their interests. One of the themes of Bleach is the “The Heart” where many characters and groups have revolved around the belief of what the heart means to them. Unohana’s role in TYBW shows how her heart is centered around fighting and how her sin is the foundation of her persona as the kindhearted, healing Captain of Squad 4.

I always heard criticism about how Unohana got centered around Kenpachi and got killed for Kenpachi’s development, but I point to the overall themes of the story and how shinigami like Unohana who had to fight harshly to survive in the Rukon district. They often centered or associated themselves around another person who brings a feeling, emotion or sensation within them, that drives them to do actions in a story.

Learning healing kido to extend a fight for who knows how long is a pretty unique concept for the whole medical character trope. It’s so riveting to me that even through healing others, Unohana was helping the other shinigami live on for another fight which is something Kenpachi advocated to Ikkaku, besides doing her job. In her final battle, she was doing that not for Kenpachi but for the sake of the Soul Society’s survival. Thus, her heart and purpose might be with Kenpachi now, but she found meaning outside of her original role for centuries, and briefly enjoyed peace from being a fighter of bloodlust until the Wandenreich arrived.

@Mak_ai_ on Twitter is the artist who made the Unohana art with grey-black backgrounds and @srkbom108 on Twitter made the Unohana art that has red backgrounds to it. Check them out!

Bottom left art by @joranz1204 on Twitter and bottom right art by @Mak_ai_ on Twitter

Made by @rakusakugk on Twitter. Sorry about the whole art dump in this answer but I couldn’t help it lol, there’s just so much good Unohana art on the Internet, also I own none of the fan art here.

Hope you enjoyed it so far! Here's Part 2 of the post!

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

Also, talking about her themes

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

#bleach #bleach characters #retsu unohana #tier harribel #Ikumi unagiya #bleach tybw #bleach manga #bleach fanart

[troius]

Six Hearts vs. Fullbringers: Orihime vs. Riruka

Yeah, this one is a little obvious.

Before everything sort of went to hell, Orihime had a pretty deep and meaningful conversation with Riruka, where Orihime’s good faith and decency managed to connect with Riruka, even though Riruka was disinclined to like her for reasons both personal and professional (or whatever you call it when you’re running a con on somebody). And after all the fights happen, they have another very sweet conversation, where Riruka shows how much she’s grown, and develops the resolve to be a better person going forwards.

And in between...she talks through her problems with Rukia? No offense to Rukia, but talking out feelings isn’t really in her bag-- she had a whole star-crossed romance that existed entirely because she and Renji wouldn’t talk to each other about their feelings, and her biggest emotional connection with Ichigo was an agreement not to talk to him about his past until he was ready. It’s no surprise, then, that after Riruka explains where she and all the other Fullbringers are coming from, Rukia just says “cool motive, still entrapment, assault, and battery” and threatens to freeze her to death.

I feel like Orihime would maybe be a little better at being a sounding board for the feelings Riruka’s trying to express in her fight. Like, can you imagine Orihime not being sympathetic to any of these people? She’d probably shed a tear for the eye Giriko lost after he tried to roll back murdering his wife. And she wouldn’t need to be stuck inside a stuffed animal to do any of it, either.

Not that Riruka would be sticking Orihime in any stuffed animal anyhow, because Orihime’s defensive techniques, strong even at the worst times, pretty much wall off Riruka’s powers. But that would actually make for a really neat fight, one where Orihime can win on her terms. After all, she’s not hardly ever one to go on the offense, but to connect with another person to the point they understand your point of view and stop fighting? That’s the kind of victory I think Orihime would want more than anything.

So the fight would have a heavy focus on the dialogue and the flashbacks, with Orihime santen kesshuning any attempts to stick her in a stuffed animal. If you really loved the stuffed animal comedy, it would be pretty funny to put Tsubaki in one, but I’m not sure that’s necessary. All you really need is Orihime slowly talking Riruka through her own feelings, to the realization that hurting other people is only going to make the pain inside her worse, and not heal it.

#Bleach #Troius fantasy books Bleach #sure it's a little sailor moon #but come on if anybody was to do that

[rays-of-fire-and-ice]

Reflections on the Ice

Hitsuhina Weekend - Day 1 - Junrinan / Motivation / Peach Tree / Time

Rating: K+ for mild themes

Setting: between the end of the Arrancar arc and the beginning of the Fullbringer arc

Synopsis: Toshiro reflects on his new-found powers and the motivation behind them.

AN: another fic, another take on the Completed form. This time though, it’s more an introspection with a dash of daydreaming. I think this one turned out weird, mainly because I ended up looking to Toshiro’s more, uh…fanciful side? I’m not sure how to describe it, but he never struck me as the type to daydream or have elaborate fantasies, but here we are!

Hope you enjoy it!

________

The ice around Toshiro is without impurities. It’s clear and glassy, smooth in some places and jagged in others, and the chill it emits is far colder than any ice he’s previously conjured up. He’d created it form just transforming into this form; what kind of ice can he create when he wields these powers to their full potential?

Going against the strains in his back, he straightens as much as he can. His reflection, hazy and colourless, surrounds him in several variations on the ice’s surface. He’s slumped, grimacing from the pain that came after transforming, but it’s gradually ebbing away. The sweat on his temple turns cold the instead it forms and runs down the side of his face; he can almost feel it freezing against his skin. Hyourinmaru is held in a slackened grip, the tip of the blade toughing the ice beneath his feet.

When the strain on his body lessens, he stands straighter and goes to nearest surface in halting steps. All is silent in the cave save for his steps echoing in the freezing air. He stops just far enough to make out the details.

He frowns at himself. It’s his reflection, but it truly doesn’t feel like it. It’s as though he looks at another, someone who is older and familiar, but no matter how close he gets, it doesn’t feel like he’s looking at himself.

He can't help but resent that this is how he looks. Why did he have to transform into something like this? Is it because his power is too much for someone his age, was meant for something older than him? Was his bankai a reflection of who was truly meant to wield these powers?

It didn't help that so much about him had changed. His hair is still white and spiky, and his are the same blue-green, but now narrower. His face is longer and his jaw harder, the face of a man rather than a boy. The rest of his body followed suit, his shoulder wider and angular, and his limbs long and lean.

Then of course there’s the height, which he will never admit still takes some getting used to. When he showed Rangiku this form last week, it struck him that he’d looked down rather than up at her.

Recalling her reaction makes him glower at his reflection. It’s most shocked he’s ever seen her, and for a second he thought she wouldn’t freak out like he’d expected. Of course, as soon as the shock wore off, she got too excited and almost ran out f the cave to get her camera. Then she was spouting ideas about him posing for a calendar in this form and saying he was going to be ‘so handsome’ when he grew up.

A show of the power he’d trained with so far quickly brought her back down to earth, however. He almost regretted it, because she became surprisingly sombre afterwards. Had he scared her? The way she carried on about the form behind closed doors while they did paperwork or were on a patrol alone together suggested he hadn't. She was one of the few who hadn’t been scared of him his whole life.

Unbidden, one of those others comes to his mind. For the first time, he wonders what would Momo think if she saw him like this. Time and time again, she showed no fear towards him, but this might finally be the thing that makes her see why others feared him in the Junrinan and even amongst some of their fellow Shinigami.

He doesn’t want her to be afraid of him – just the very thought of it makes his heart painfully tight – and yet these powers had come about because of her. How would she react to seeing these powers? He can see her being shocked, eyes wide and mouth agape, but what about after it wore off? Would she become sombre like Rangiku? Would she see him differently?

At some point he’d started to hunch over, shoulders drooping and head bowed low enough that he lost sight of his reflection’s face. He doesn’t have to look at it to know his frown has vanished and his mouth drawn down in a grimace. His doubts are getting the better of him. But hadn’t she forgiven him? Hadn’t she come to see him on lunchbreaks and smiled at him without a hint of apprehension or fear? She was still nervous around Hyourinmaru, but even then she acknowledged her fear was unwarranted, that she trusts him to wield his weapon.

He knows her, and surely she would be shocked to see his powers, but she would not fear him.

He lifts his head, meeting the gaze of his reflection. He steps away, and the weight on his shoulders rises away. Looking himself over, he starts to wonder how she’d react to seeing this forms appearance. Would she recognise him? His reiatsu would be a dead giveaway to her, but what if she didn’t?

He shakes his head at the thought, too silly to contemplate. Then his mind takes another turn; he never indulges in daydream or fantasy, but perhaps because of the exhaustion creeping in, he lets this one play out.

He imagines her seeing him from afar, that shocked expression slowly transforming to recognition. He approaches, and he smiles the softest of smile. She knows it’s him, and there's something comforting about that. Just as she wouldn't fear him for his powers, she wouldn't be daunted by this new appearance.

What would she makes of his voice? It's deeper, but not unrecognizable to his own ear. Perhaps she wouldn't see him first, but instead he'd call out to her with her back turned to him. Maybe she wouldn't recognise him at first, but all she would have to do is sense his reiatsu to know it's him.

He could finally tease her about being the taller one, and her flustered reaction would make him almost chuckle. The fact he'd have to look down at her made him feel...strange. Maybe he could finally feel and look like the protector he always wanted to be for her.

His eyes widen at the last thought, and he vigorously shakes him head as heat crawls up to his cheeks. What the hell?

In the back of his mind, he can almost sense Hyourinmaru's amusement. He glares at his reflection. What's so funny?

Nothing, Master, his zanpakuto spirit responds. I have just never seen this side of you before.

Toshiro only huffs and steps away from his reflection, The further back he gets, the more hazy is becomes. "There's no time for this," he says, raising Hyourinmaru to eye level. "I don't have much time left like this, do I?"

No, but there will always be tomorrow. Don't strain yourself, Master.

Focusing on his zanpakuto, the weight of the power roils within him. It's immense and barely controlled, straining against his body and affecting the environment around him. Even his touch has been affect, with just a graze of his fingertip able to freeze a section of a cave wall in thick ice.

Perhaps Momo would have something to fear if she knew touching him meant ice encasing her completely, maybe even freezing her through to the bone. Somehow, he can still see her being more surprised than fearful, more concerned for him than for her.

Are you cold, Shiro-chan?

How many times had she asked him that as children? He can even remember her asking him that when he became a Shinigami, even when she discovered his zanpakuto was an ice-type.

He's always feared having the power to protect her could also harm her. Now with this form and it's abilities, that proved to be a more valid concern than ever. These powers could harm her horrifically if he did not control them, but then could also protect her from being harmed in the first place.

It's a risk he has to accept, but it's one he can minimize by his own hand.

He may dislike this form for changing his appearance and for the strains it puts on his body, but he knows without fail, he will gladly don it if it meant protect her. He only has to use this form as a last resort, when there was nothing else to stop a threat at the same level as Aizen. It was rare for something as dangerous as him to exist in the world, and there is a greater chance of his never having to use this form, of Momo never having to see it at all, but having this form - and knowing how to wield it - will put his mind at ease.

It's with that his grip on Hyourinmaru's hilt tightens. He will become stronger and more adept at using these powers. He can find a way for his powers to be controlled and channeled at only the enemy who threatened him or Momo or the Seireitei. He can become strong enough to maintain this form for longer than five minutes.

And he can find a way for his touch to only freeze what he chose. After the reflections of today, this one became more important to him. Because in the event he needs to carry Momo away from harm, or that she suddenly decides to wrap him up in one of her impromptu hugs, or just to hold her shoulder and know she is there, he can touch and protect her without the fear of harming her ever again.

#hitsuhina #toshiro hitsugaya #momo hinamori #bleach #fanfiction #matured form #hitsuhina weekend

[blue-dream-rhapsody]

Spoilers for the end of the TYBW manga! If you’re only watching the anime, this will be in like the last two episodes of the whole show, so look away!

This is gonna sound like me being biased again (and I definitely am, don’t get me wrong) but I think I have a universally true argument here.

Renji was a weird choice to have go with Ichigo to the last clash with Yhwach.

To be clear, I’m very fond of Renji. I also think the conversation he and Ichigo have on their way there was a fantastic moment in their friendship, and want to keep it intact as much as possible. It’s just that, when I think of the magnitude of this particular moment, the literal last battle at the end of the series, it just feels odd for Renji of all his friends to have this pretty prominent spot.

Who is Ichigo teaming up with here? Aizen, the major antagonist for basically half the series. Uryu, the enemy-turned-friendly rival-turned-fake enemy-turned-genuine ally just acting as an infiltrator all along because he’s got roots in this battle. And… Renji. The Guy.

Like seriously, I’m trying to pinpoint exactly what narrative function Renji’s presence here serves, and for every one I can find, there’s just someone who does a better job? Like, okay, say he’s serving as the presence of a Soul Reaper. Except Rukia would also do that, down to the rank they have, and given her meeting Ichigo is how the series began, it would additionally be a natural bookend for her to be fighting alongside him at the end. (And obviously I am deliberately ignoring bullshit like power levels or whatever, because of the four in this alliance Ichigo’s ridealong contributes little more than a distraction while Aizen tanks the damage, Uryu fires the arrow, and Ichigo makes the cut.)

Rukia is also the member of his friend group Ichigo probably interacts with the least in this whole arc who isn’t Uryu Away For Plot Reasons Ishida (or maybe Chad, who I’ll talk about in a moment too), whereas he and Renji go through a chunk of the Royal Palace stuff together. So it seems like that final battle would be the chance to actually give her a meaningful interaction with him as, again, a mirror to the start of the series.

(Disclaimer: I don’t mean this in a shipping sense in any way, shape, or form, though you can certainly take it as you like. That’s not the only way their bond can be relevant, though. My point is simply that Rukia has more narrative importance to Bleach itself than Renji does, compared to how little time she spends interacting with the series’ protagonist in the final arc compared to him.)

So as far as all of that stuff is concerned, Rukia carries more weight, but let’s say Renji was chosen as Ichigo’s closest guy friend or something along those lines. Um. Chad??? My beloved Yasutora Sado??? Like of course Kubo seems allergic to giving Chad anything significant to do at any point past his introduction, but come on! He’s supposed to be Ichigo’s best friend! Again, I’m ignoring power levels. Maybe the combination of Aizen and Yhwach’s presence would’ve been too much for him to withstand given Fullbringer scale, but I still think he’d make more narrative sense than Renji, and that should be what matters more.

Friendly rival? Well that’s Uryu who is already there, and has a way larger stake in this than anyone in Ichigo’s friend group regardless. Less that he doesn’t meet the criteria if we can’t count Uryu, choosing Renji for this reason would just be doubling down on the same thing.

You could also argue Orihime should’ve been the one, as the one Ichigo eventually ends up with (although she at least was with him at the fight just before this, so it being someone else this time doesn’t bother me). And Renji is just, not that!

Renji goes with Ichigo because it’s in character for him, and I don’t disagree with that by any means. But this is the conclusion of the entire 74-volume narrative and I’m struggling to explain why he specifically is the one chosen by Kubo to be a part of this battle if anyone had to be at all. It’s like he went out of his way to choose the least impactful character possible to fulfill this role.

So okay, Kubo, I can play hardball. You want somebody who isn’t Rukia, Chad, or Orihime? I can do that. I’ll even give you someone who’s already right there so you don’t have to make them come running up at the last moment!

You know who should’ve gone with Ichigo to that very last confrontation? Kugo Ginjo, obviously!

Don’t leave, hold on, let me explain myself.

First is the kind of obvious thing, which is that while it was on a smaller scale than they were, Ginjo was an arc villain just as much as Aizen and Yhwach were. He’s the mastermind and the climactic battle of The Lost Agent. So wouldn’t it be fun if Ichigo had the help of the first two arc villains in defeating the third?

The quartet of Ichigo, Kugo, Aizen, and Yhwach is also interesting because they all have connections to the Reio in some form, being either candidates for the role inherently, or having attempted to become or usurp him. There’s really no one else who approaches this (barring Urahara, for the hogyoku).

But wait, you may be saying, why would Ginjo fight on the side of Shinigami if his whole thing is that he hates them? To which I say—he wouldn’t! But I think he would be willing to fight to help Ichigo. Maybe not for everything ever, but maybe for the time where if Ichigo loses, everything will very clearly fall apart, including for the people he obviously still cares about in Xcution. (Also, does he know about Soul King stuff at this point, including that the both of them are candidates to replace it? Preventing that being necessary for both their sakes might be good.)

Not to mention, this would be the first time Ichigo and Kugo can fight together consciously as Deputies. It would give us a more concrete picture of how they feel about one another now that the Lost Agent conflict is over, seeing as this gets very little resolution on either side—and give Ichigo back what it was that Kugo had almost given him during that arc, a “big brother” figure he can rely on in a desperate situation, instead of having to be that figure himself.

Plus… fixing Ichigo’s sword was really kind of just Tsukishima’s repayment, wasn’t it? Ginjo shows up and says four lines, (and probably a fifth on the way there that was “Tsukishima do the thing”) and that’s what exactly? Is that supposed to make up for the extremely personal betrayal? Is that a sufficient expression of gratitude for the respect of taking his body back from the Court Guards’ grasp? He still had to say something about paying Ichigo back because debt’s about all the obligation Tsukishima would ever respond to, but what’s his contribution other than holding that “leash”?

Also for the three of them being revealed alive like a hundred chapters ago, that sure is a whole lot of no payoff. Like for Tsukishima it’s great payoff, but for Ginjo? What was the point of the training they all did with Ganju? Was it really about Ganju getting stronger? And we never got an answer why Kukaku took them in in the first place, could that really have just been chance?

If I want to put on my conspiracy cap—I half suspect Ginjo was meant to go from the time of their reappearance, and more of his backstory was supposed to come to light/he was supposed to get some additional development. But as Kubo’s health deteriorated and he got toward the home stretch, just like it would’ve been difficult to give Rukia the proper due if she’d gone, it became too much for him to do Ginjo justice, or maybe to set up for his role in CFYOW, so he decided to not do it altogether, rather than half-ass it. (This is what I tell myself, anyway). He already has a completely justifiable reason to show up at the last minute with the need for Tsukishima’s ability. He’s been training, supposedly. He owes Ichigo something and acknowledges it. He’s thematically fitting, he’s been absent for so much time after being teased, we know he was doing something because he went looking for Ukitake, it really just makes too much sense.

I doubt Kubo is planning any out-and-out rewrites of anything significant as the anime proceeds, but if he were to tweak the ending at all, I certainly think this would be reasonable.

Anyway, we’ll see what part 2 brings. CFYOW content is getting teased for sure, so who knows what’s in store!

#bleach spoilers #bleach tybw spoilers #bleach anime spoilers #ginjou kuugo #Kugo Ginjo #bleach cfyow #this is still a Kugo-loving household and don’t you forget it

[recurring-polynya]

I'm sorry if this comes off weird, but I wanted to ask why you seem to not want to know about Can't Fear Your Own World? Do you dislike it, or it's nature as a post-series work?

So I've read a couple of the light novels and they simply do not spark joy. The plots sort of wander around, the characterization has very little to say, and they are full of what I'll call "lore dumps", where there will be a paragraph of exposition that's not integrated into the story in any sort of natural way and is frequently of the "thanks, I hate it" variety. Even though they may be "Kubo approved", or include stuff that he came up with, they completely lack his storytelling skill or the charm of his character voices. There are usually about 3-5 bits that I find charming per light novel, and about five to ten times as many that I find aggravating or off-putting (or just plain tedious or boring).

I think that a big part of it for me is that I read a lot of fanfiction and while there is an awful lot of mediocre fanfic, I have also read a lot of brilliant stories written by people who have given a ton of thought to the characters and the worldbuilding and out-of-canon adventures that these characters might go on. To me, the light novels I have read feel like finding a story on AO3 that has all my favorite tags and a cool story description, and then it turns out that I absolutely hate the writing style and direction. It feels like adding insult to injury that on top of that, I am somehow obligated to consider them canon.

To address CFYOW specifically, it does not contain any of the characters I care about. I mean, I like Shuuhei, but what I like about Shuuhei is his relationship with Izuru, Momo, and Renji. I like his job at the Seireitei Communication. I like his guitar playing and boring cooking and the goofy outfits he wears in splash pages. I could not care less about him getting bankai. I've said this before, but I would like relatively very few characters to get bankai, and he is not on my shortlist. It feels very shoehorned to me.

The plot sounds convoluted and tedious as hell. I already found the Fullbringers tedious enough when I had to read about them in the manga, I do not want to spend one more minute of my life thinking about Fullbringers.

Tokinada seems mildly interesting, but I'm pretty sure I got as much as I care to know about him from reading thru some BBS screenshots.

I hate literally every piece of Soul King-related lore I have heard come out of CFYOW. It makes me literally enjoy Bleach less.

I read a fan translation of the first couple of chapters when they came out and it barely kept my attention. I briefly considered that maybe the professional translation might be a little more readable (I say this with all love and respect for the translation I read, which was trying to keep it very close to the original), but then I have heard that Viz butchered the translation, so I feel like there's no winning there.

It's just not for me. If it were a fanfiction, I would look at the tags and description and simply keep scrolling. I wish peace and love on planet Earth to everyone who enjoyed it and any of the other light novels, but it's not something I wish to spend my time and energy on. There are so many parts and pieces of Bleach--the manga, the anime, the movies, the filler arcs, the novels, databooks, random facts Kubo spills in interviews, fanworks, etc, and I've always been of the opinion that as fans, we all have the right to pick and choose which ones we want to consume and what we want to include in our own personal canons. Further, because CFYOW is post-canon, it literally affects nothing if I ignore it. Yeah, there are a few interesting crumbs in there, like the stuff about Ikkaku and his sister and I think there's an off-hand mention of the Six Hearts gang going to the beach, but it's simply not worth it to me to read through over a thousand pages of something that I am otherwise just not interested in.

#if i have to read a thousand pages about hisagi he better be spending a significant part of it kissing kira on the mouth #and it is my understanding that this doesn't happen even once in CFYOW

[m34gs]

Hello ❤️

I think we only share Bleach and JJK as fandoms so here goes: Ichigo/Urahara for Bleach and Shouko/Utahime for JJK

Hi friend! Thank you for the ask!! (from this post)

Ichigo/Urahara - ship it! (there's so many different Bleach ships I love ahahaha)

What made you ship it? I think I love the chaos of it. They have a fun dynamic to play with, both in a romantic and nonromantic relationship. Also, if you insert the ship into canon, it makes the Fullbringer arc hurt *that* much more, and I love pain :D

What are your favorite things about the ship? I think I really just love the mentor/mentee relationship; and the fact that it's someone who can and will take care of Ichigo. Like, someone older and wiser who is fully capable of stepping in to help him when he's absolutely struggling, but also knows that sometimes experience is the best teacher. I think Kisuke would definitely let Ichigo make his own mistakes, but when Ichigo truly needs him he is there as an unshakeable support. And I think Kisuke deserves Ichigo getting hotheaded and defensive over him when others tease him. He thinks it's cute.

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship? I tend to just keep this ship quietly in a little corner of my brain so I honestly don't even know what the popular opinions on it are, hahaha.

Shouko/Utahime - don't ship it

Why don’t you ship it? Honestly, it is simply a case of "I don't really think about it" combined with "I am not caught up in the manga and feel I don't know their characters well enough to understand the dynamic that would lead to a ship"

What would have made you like it? I mean, if someone who does ship it wants to explain what they like about it; often that's all it takes for me to be like "yeah, you know what, I like that". It's not that I really dislike it, I just don't have an opinion in general. Lol.

Despite not shipping it, do you have anything positive to say about it? Well, from what I do understand about their characters this far, I think they're pretty badass, which is cool in my opinion.

#asks #ask game #shipping #bleach #jjk #thank you for the ask #hope you enjoyed the answers!

[stupid-sloot-headcanons]

-slides flashily into your asks-

Can you tell me your unpopular opinions? (Related to your favorite anime/manga)

Boop👉🏽🔴

I'm currently fixated on Bleach but idk how many of these are really "unpopular" lol

Orihime is great and I don't give a fuck what people say about her being a weak female character or worse than pink-hair girl from Naruto. She wants more than the Ichigo dick whiff and it's a disservice (on fans AND Kubo's part sometimes) to relegate her to just tits and being Ichigo's wife.

Kubo isn't a good writer and his ideas have so much wasted potential. The reason Bleach works so well is because he has a serviceable-at-best plot with the coolest character designs and imagery ever, and it's easily worth the less than stellar writing.

However, Orihime's confession to Ichigo while he's asleep and how she can't bring herself to kiss him is so sweet and is the best non-tragic canon romance in Bleach. The best canon romance overall is Gin and Rangiku but I digress

Orihime's fear of Ichigo losing himself to his Hollow is entirely justified because of what happened to her brother Sora, and people really understate that aspect of her character during the Ichigo fights she witnesses. Like we get it, haha very funny "Kurosaki-kun!" meme you stole from Reddit.

The Zanpakuto Rebellion arc is the only non-shit filler arc. And most of the reason it's good is because of Muramasa's design and the humanized versions of the zanpakuto we know and love

Aizen and Yhwach are both 100% justified in wanting to get rid of the Soul King.

I don't really get the hype for Toshiro

Regarding waifu wars bullshit, my personal best girl is Kukaku Shiba and she's way too underrated (even by Kubo himself since she has so few appearances)

Chad becoming a boxer is so goddamn stupid and ooc, his abuelo specifically said to NOT use his strength to hurt others. He should've become something like a florist or pet shop owner who protects the neighborhood and is the gentle giant he's always been.

The fact Ichigo is a Hollow/Arrancar/Quincy/Soul Reaper/Fullbringer hybrid is such dumb shonen protagonist bullshit that it actually loops around to being cool

SuperEyePatchWolf's video about the downfall of Bleach completely undersells Ichigo's character and desire to protect those he loves, and it's very fun to find ppl obviously regurgitating his video's points and respond with this meme

#.bleach #ask games

[azdoine]

THE FLESH IS WILLING

So there’s this bit back in the Fullbringer arc, after Ichigo has lost all of his spiritual powers and become a human again, where he’s being a stubborn shonen protagonist and getting chewed out for it:

Jackie takes a pretty straightforward stance on the providence of the body: “you have to remember that you, as a mortal, are now more vulnerable than the discarnate spirit you used to be.” Likewise for the behavior of the Shinigami of the Gotei 13, who never once fight in a Gigai if they can help it, always preferring to evacuate their false bodies and fight in spiritual form.

The takeaway, for a lot of readers, is that human bodies are dumb and limiting in the Bleach universe, and life in the human world is just the tutorial before you get to the good stuff - that being a spirit is strictly superior to fleshly embodiment, and condescending to take on a physical human form is just one more way Shinigami have to hide their true power in their dealings with the world of the living.

And this is an easy conclusion to reach! Certainly it seems that it has to be correct on some abstract level; the human form isn’t godly, we’re all viscerally familiar with the hard limitations of our own bodies (and the way Shinigami seemingly rise above them).

More than that, the mere prospect of life after death intuitively demands some level of mind-body dualism, insisting upon a spiritual essence which transcends the confines of the flesh. One is reminded of Foucault’s bit on embodiment:

"My body - it is the place without recourse to which I am condemned. And actually I think that it is against this body (as if to erase it) that all these utopias have come into being. Utopia is a place outside all places, but it is a place where I will have a body without body, a body that will be beautiful, limpid, transparent, luminous, speedy, colossal in its power, infinite in its duration. Untethered, invisible, protected - always transfigured. The first utopia, the one most deeply rooted in the hearts of men, is precisely the utopia of an incorporeal body.

"But perhaps the most obstinate, the most powerful of those utopias with which we erase the sad topology of the body, has been, since the beginning of Western history, supplied to us by the great myth of the soul."

Engaging stuff, right. You see Ichigo cavorting around as something different from his friends, a soul existing without relation to a body, and are tempted to imagine that he is something more sublime than they are, a self severed from all material trappings and conditions - and that’s how we ended up with a scene chock full of weirdly suicidality-coded fanfiction about how liberating it is to die and be reborn. (All of which is to say nothing of the lovably cheesy Sandman-ass fics where trans!Ichigo discovers that his body turns cisgender in the afterlife.)

But as compelling as the line of thought is, is this assessment of the situation actually accurate?

Any Headline With A Question Mark Can Be Answered By The Word ‘No’

Seriously, you can deflate this fantasy with two pages:

Each time Ichigo draws upon his power and overreaches, it has the exact same deleterious effect upon his corpus, irrespective of whether he’s embodied as a mortal human or a Shinigami at the time. Much is made of how Fullbringers have to train their bodies to handle and sustain their strength, but this isn’t unique to the mortal condition - even Shinigami have to train their bodies to reach their full potential, and their bodies aren’t uniquely suited to channeling spiritual strength in a way that those of humans are not.

(No indication is ever given, for example, that Urahara’s Reishi Henkan-Ki will have any effect on the abilities of Chad, Orihime, & Uryu - only that the conversion of their bodies into souls will allow them to enter Soul Society. IOW, we can infer that spirit body conversion is the equivalent of wearing a Gigai to better fit in the living world.)

But surely the form you take as a discarnate spirit at least expresses something about yourself, right? If your soul is a reflection of who you really are, that would explain why some members of the Gotei 13 are straddling the uncanny valley - the transubstantiation of your self-image would obviate the need for body modification and fashion!

Except no, that’s not how souls work, either. Because Komamura isn’t actually a furry, Kurotsuchi still has to apply his juggalo makeup manually, and this line of thought can go in some really fucking troubling directions if you try and work through all its potential implications.

(All of this is why Shinigami are such ardent tool-users and why they’re prone to subsidizing so much mad science, you see - their technological development helps to compensate for the natural puissance they lack, and then technological self-modification is the only path for the iconoclasts among them to shuck off their limitations.)

We know from Yoruichi vs. Askin that the spiritual realms contain analogues to kishi particles:

And Aizen informs us all of the way back in Soul Society that a Gigai - a false corpse, a physical vessel to be inhabited by a spiritual being - is itself made of spiritual particles!

Between the demands of serialization and his initial uncertainty about the ultimate direction Bleach’s cosmology would take, I think Kubo was - understandably - somewhat inconsistent in his presentation of spiritual physics. Nonetheless, I believe we can infer that the distinction between ‘reishi’ and ‘kishi’ doesn’t strictly exist. Bleach very much mixes Eastern and Western thought in the melting pot of its aesthetics, but its cosmology is primarily inspired by Japanese Buddhism, and the wheel of reincarnation doesn’t draw an absolute distinction between ‘physical’ and ‘spiritual’ realms. Materiality is relative, and ultimately only phenomenal.

To temporize: dying and becoming a soul, rather than representing a dis-incarnation, should more properly be thought of as another form of re-incarnation. When Kubo refers to a soul in the abstract, it’s almost always with the word konpaku (魂魄), a compound term with kanji that refer both to a higher ethereal soul (which transcends the body) and a lower corporeal soul (which is still conjoined to a body) - if you’re familiar with the Chinese concept of the Hun & Po souls, that’s the etymological root here. On other occasions, Kubo will use the concept of a reitai spirit body (霊体), or use the kanji for the higher soul alone, such as with reference to the Gikon that can displace a soul from the body.

Mind-body dualism is still in play, essentially, it’s just one level of abstraction higher than you expect it to be. Every time a person dies, only their higher soul and personality - the Kon soul - leaves their body after death. Then, circumstances independently conspire to re-embody that fully immaterial spirit within a completely new material vessel. (And yes, this sounds nuts, but that’s just how reincarnation works! Not to mention that Bleach’s cosmology is artificial; if it otherwise strains your suspension of disbelief, consider that this underlying alignment of cause and effect was deliberately built into the domain of the Godhead.)

So the difference between the ordinary human body and the spirit reitai is solely that one is made of kishi and the other is made of reishi.

Now I’ll start asserting shit: on a chemical and physical level, reishi and kishi are identical to one another. For purposes of embodying a soul, reishi and kishi are very likely identical to one another. What actually sets them apart is going to be their planar properties, their disjunction - perhaps artificially - into separate realms of existence.

Just like humans most naturally abide in the human world,

And Shinigami and Plus souls most naturally abide in Soul Society,

And Hollows most naturally abide in Hueco Mundo,

A physical particle most naturally abides in the realm of existence which corresponds to its underlying spiritual aspect - we might even think of this aspect as a reiatsu charge, though I’m inclined to visualize it more generally as a position in the configuration space of all possible realms. (‘Realms’ in the Samsaric sense, that is, at the intersection of indexical location and subjective psychological experience.) 

What we call ‘kishi’ is only a special case of matter: it is a particle which conforms to the reiatsu aspect of human beings, spirits who are themselves defined by their karmic attachments, their ‘chains of fate’. What we call a Shinigami’s ‘reitai’ is only a special case of matter: it is made of particles which conform to his reiatsu aspect as a cosmic balancer. Neither are sufficient to constitute the utopian body.

And yet,

There is perhaps one other natural form of reishi which would suffice…

The human body is the principal actor in all utopias. After all, isn’t one of the oldest utopias about which men have told themselves stories the dream of an immense and inordinate body that could devour space and master the world?

To wear a mask, to put on makeup, to tattoo oneself, is to place the body into another space. They usher it into a space that does not take place in the world directly. They make of this body a fragment of imaginary space, which will communicate with the universe of divinities, or with the universe of the other, where one will be taken by the gods.

#bleach

[uraharashouten]

With all the usual silence did she appear in the doorway of the Shouten. Steps light; feet bare, making precise contact to minimize any sound. Closing the distance to a seated Kisuke with cane drawn up and its end soon pressed to his chest right above his heart. Enough gentle force easing him down onto his back.

The figure of this unexpected partner; this lover once granted his own powers to free her of her prison, stood over him. Repositioned so that her feet were planted on either side of his hips while the cane remained firm to his breast. Stood tall. Imposing.

"Do you truly trust me so, dear Kisuke?" Questioned the British Fullbringer made Shinigami. A little more force with eyes rested; blind as they were, upon his visage. "How easy it would be. A little more pressure could very well kill you. A tale like so many, of lovers murdering their partners."

Ah - how truly easy it would be. A spike spring loaded in the base of her cane, primed to jolt out and stab whatever rest beneath it. How swiftly an end would come to those who were on the receiving end of this booby trap. But this was merely a playful gesture, wasn't it? She had been gone.. She'd spent an enormous amount of time in Hueco Mundo, vanished from the radar.

Well.

As vanished as anyone could get who may be being tracked.

"I hate the Shinigami." The atmosphere shifted. She's gazing down upon him with a steely look. The detachment of a killer. The eyes of a monster. "Entitled sods, the lot of them. Believing so bloody damned much that they know my best interests.

"Do you, Kisuke?" Just a little more pressure. Was she serious? The mechanism was on the brink. A wire-thin line of pressure change could send the spike out and through his chest. Through him. Into the floor. Embed his body against the wood and leave him pinned for all to see -- so long as the cane remained pushed downward. It doesn't, however. She's holding it in that fine line. Any action could result in an immediate, uncontrolled reaction from the mechanism.

She was a Fullbringer. It's unpredictable how it'd react to just about anything. Only she knows.

"Ginjo was right." Venomous drops carry words forward. Whatever light in the room felt to darken suddenly. Like the world had gone from playful dangers to immediate, undeniable threat. "Shinigami are no better than the man who enslaved me for twenty years. I have to wonder what your purpose was, for granting me your powers. Careful of your answer.. I wouldn't want to flinch."

“Trust you?” he echoed as he found himself pressed against the tatami, brows rising sharply behind his fringe. He could feel his chest thump against the tip of her cane, and glanced down. His eyes returned to regard her hostile, inquisitive demeanor, holding questions of his own.

Had it been a mistake to empower her, to unshackle her? In whose interests had he acted—his own, or hers? Of course the answer to that second question was both; or so he'd thought at the time. But he’d gambled, hadn’t he—as he’d done with any personal investment he’d undertaken. Trust... now that was tricky, wasn’t it? He'd always trusted folks to act according to their nature. And as far as he could tell, he’d not been wrong about hers.

“You’ve had me more at your mercy than this, Yatagarsu…” His gaze challenged hers, but he failed to suppress a smirk. If trust had been an issue, there were most certainly intimacies he’d have been foolish to allow… but he couldn’t say he harbored regrets. Even now, he'd allow... well. Perhaps he ought to set those thoughts aside for the moment. He glanced again at the nexus of her concealed weapon and his sternum. “You do me the honor of acting as though I have a heart. I should warn you, many of us do seem to be able to manage without one if it comes to it—though I suppose…” His eyes held hers evenly. “That’s your point, isn’t it?”

And he’d force her to press it, calling her bluff as he pushed himself up on his elbows, and his chest against the tip of her cane. Let her pierce him through—it’d be no worse than what he’d done to her, and he was just curious enough to wonder what made her think her doing so would prove any more lethal.

“Ginjō,” he added with a dark smile, “is also dead. I’m afraid that illustrates a lapse in judgement on his part, don't you? Though I hear from Kūkaku that he’s adjusting well. You sound as though you might know—how is he these days?”

#[[ well well well ]] #soulxfragments #MUSE::Kisuke #ERA::Progress(); #BOND::SinteredSoul( unexpected; but not unwelcome );

[the-lost-bleachfics]

More things I’ve noticed/thought about while rereading The Lost Agent arc:

Tsukishima comments to Orihime that her saying she won’t let him get away isn’t “interesting enough to turn into a book,” but he later ponders aloud what Ginjo would say if he went after Ichigo directly, perhaps suggesting he would find that interesting enough for this weirdly specific standard of his.

Riruka equates meeting Tsukishima to being saved by Ginjo, as the results of her and the others being not normal. Being saved (whatever that means to her) is explicitly a good thing, so what does that say about what Tsukishima was to the group? And it’s not because she was marked, either, as Ginjo being the only one marked is a plot point.

During Ginjo and Tsukishima’s battle (taking place after Ichigo’s training with Jackie), Ginjo gets cut in the eyebrow and it bleeds, later scarring. This is after we already saw that when Tsukishima cut Orihime, it left no wound on her. An otherwise minimal moment in the grand scheme of the arc, but it was a very subtle way to show Book of the End having two different effects, which Riruka somewhat explains when she’s cut by it later. (He does also cleave a metal door in half, undeniably physical damage, but when the question of his ability becomes if it’s memory-based or affecting the past itself, it’s hard to say if that’s the blade’s doing or the result of altering the door’s past. Y’know, as one does.)

Ginjo does have a beam attack prior to absorbing Ichigo’s Fullbring. It’s unclear what it’s made of in the manga.

Related, while it’s fairly commonly recognized that Ginjo’s bankai form is roughly the same as the form Ichigo attains (albeit incompletely) against Yhwach in the Horn of Salvation chapter, i.e. a complete integration of all his powers—the large blast Ginjo lets loose that Ichigo catches with his palm is consequently likely the same as Ichigo’s combined Getsuga and Gran Rey Cero.

I’ve talked on my main blog about the moon symbolism during the last beats of the arc, but it’s worth mentioning that the moon as one of the between sketches appears earlier, just before the chapter Loading to Lie. This is, of course, the chapter where Ichigo first enters Yukio’s game with Ginjo, who over the next few chapters seems to pull a fast one on him. If the moon is still Ginjo, the clouds moving to cover it reflect his false behavior here.

Might just be a coincidence, but when Ginjo first explains to Ichigo that there was a Deputy Soul Reaper before Ichigo, the image paired with it resembles Tsukishima’s memory of Ginjo while he was a Soul Reaper (chiefly the hairstyle).

Yukio and Aura joining forces in CFYOW is even more interesting than I realized, because Yukio describes part of his childhood as being “locked away in a room with everything inside it” due to his parents’ disdain for him. And Aura’s father, albeit out of overprotectiveness on the opposite end, did much the same to her. Though he deprived her of a lot materially, which probably prevented her from attaining a personal Fullbring, whereas Yukio’s undoubtedly formed out of that environment.

Tsukishima’s expression when he lunges toward Ichigo after Kugo’s death is grave and intense. When Rukia jumps in front of Ichigo to try to protect him, though, it becomes almost a delighted smile. Considering we know he’s truly going for the kill as Riruka says so, meaning Book of the End isn’t active to alter the past, I wonder if that excitement is an extension of what he feels when he breaks somebody using his ability. And if knowing someone Ichigo cares about was about to be injured or killed trying to save him first, he felt that psychological damage on top would be even more devastating revenge than just killing Ichigo without it. Which of course he wants, given who Ichigo has just taken away from him.

The scene near the end where Riruka wakes up in Urahara’s shop, Orihime lists Ginjo among the Fullbringers she was told they “couldn’t find.” Both Riruka and Ichigo know, however, that Ginjo’s whereabouts aren’t a mystery in the least—well, maybe where his soul ended up still is, but not the fact that it’d been separated from his body by death. It seems Ichigo (and probably Rukia since she was there too) chose to keep that from her, and Riruka’s reaction, before realizing Tsukishima’s absence in the list, might indicate she has realized this.

#bleach #kugo ginjo #shukuro tsukishima #yukio hans vorarlberna #riruka dokugamine #aura michibane #ichigo kurosaki

[zabiume]

A few months ago, we were talking about CFYOW and Orihime’s powers and I promised @elyonholic​ I would make a separate post about my general thoughts regarding Orihime’s abilities and origins, some theories and some canon ideas I’ve grown warmer to over time.

1) Tinhat Theory (Crazy)

I want to get this one off my chest because it’s the least developed idea I have, but an interesting one nonetheless. Fair warning, the connection I’m about to make here stretches canon like a rubber band and I’m 85% certain it is totally coincidental, but: I noticed in one of my re-reads of the manga while I was writing TLtH that Orihime has a lot of surface-level similarities to...the Soul King.

The very first appearance of the Shun Shun Rikka is accompanied by some eyebrow-raising wording. I’m not sure how accurate this translation is, but ‘princess-shielding flowers’ seems to be a pretty direct allusion to the fact that Orihime is named after the mythological princess from the Tanabata legend. Also, I’m pretty sure that when Kubo first conceived Orihime in his mind, he had no idea she was going to be a Fullbringer or what a Fullbringer even was. My guess is that he wanted royal imagery to go with her name, and fairies seem to do the trick. Our job is to protect you, however, implies that they’re somewhat like her own Royal Guard. We know they each have their own distinct personalities, styles, dialects and powers, so one of my headcanons has always been that they each have their own inner domain (palace), too, like the Royal Guard. In my head, the domains are based on aesthetics alone, but they also represent different aspects of Orihime’s core personality.

Tsubaki’s inner world is a volcano [her tendency to be deeply emotional], Baigon’s is a toy factory [her childlike curiosity], Shin’O’s is a moving train [her openness for adventure], Lily’s is a futuristic techno-utopia [her inventive mind], Ayame’s is a tropical forest [her tendency to nurture/desire to heal] and Hinagiku is a witchy lab [her intellect and her experimental nature].

Even in CFYOW, there’s a mention about how Orihime can’t bring someone back to life because it messes with the balance of souls. There are some people she has to let cross that barrier, because crossing the barrier means keeping the balance of souls stable. This, too, is similar to the Soul King’s own responsibility of keeping the three worlds stable (though for Orihime, it’s on a much smaller scale than it is for the SK).

Take, for instance, a small-scale example where Soul Society has 98 souls, Hueco Mundo has 99 souls, and the Living World has 100 souls. If a person in the Living World is dying, Orihime can’t save them because then the numbers would be 98/99/100. Unequal and unstable. To make it 99/99/99, Orihime would have to let that one person die and cross over to Soul Society. I think, in instances like these, Orihime’s powers probably won’t work because of how they interfere with the balance of the three worlds. 

In this AU/theory, I guess you could say that the part of the Soul King that Orihime absorbed is...a big one? Which would explain why she’s constantly said to have “God-like” abilities in the SS and HM arcs and also why her powers imitate his on a teeny scale.

2) Orihime as a Fullbringer  (Semi-Canon)

I’ve talked before about how I didn’t like this idea much, mainly because it felt like a lazy retcon, but since CFYOW said Orihime’s powers are a combination of the Hogyoku’s influence and the pieces of the Soul King’s soul, I’ve warmed up a little to it. In this headcanon, Orihime’s Shun Shun Rikka operate quite similarly to a shinigami’s abilities in that her soul, her desires and her fear shape her “weapon.”

Like I said earlier, Orihime has a lot of fairytale-esque aesthetics in early Bleach: her brother makes remarks about her special hair, her first protector (Tatsuki) is likened to a dragon, her own name is a reference to a mythological princess. We can probably assume she internalized some of that, which is why her Fullbring is six fairies protecting their princess. Bleach has always put an emphasis on characters living up to their namesakes so it’s not a stretch to believe that her name had some influence on her Fullbring.

Additionally, Orihime was bullied a lot as a child, so it makes sense that she would manifest powers that would protect her. She was lonely, so she manifested friends that would always be with her. She’s been hurt before, so she manifested powers that would heal instead. The Hogyoku grants her that, but it’s she who subconsciously made that choice for herself. It’s a power she has always wanted, just like Ichigo and Chad have always wanted theirs. She’s an ordinary girl who chooses powers that define her largely pacifistic relationship with the outside world. She also has an object affinity, and like Riruka, who has the ability to permit using her ability of “love,” Orihime can reject using her powers of negation, so it wouldn't be a lie to call her a Fullbringer, even if she isn’t a very typical one.

#these two points don't necessarily contradict each other but they do offer insight into what being a fullbringer really means for orihime #since we never got any mention of her being one in the actual FB arc #orihime inoue #i think literally everything would have been fixed if she and chad got a fight in the FB arc #also fullbring is such a ridiculous concept but that's a dead horse atp #meta

[deathblizzard]

;WISHLIST: Digging through things, this is an old list of thread ideas from a loooong time ago that actually are still intriguing to me:

At least in my mind, Rukia’s fight with Aaroniero is very secretive, and Rukia herself is pretty private, not sure how truthful Aaroniero was but, I think he says no one can watch them in there so I like to think the only one that really knows how that fight was done or WHO was involved was Rukia. I’d love to see her expand on it to someone, (I swear I’ll force her to at least open up a little, ok?) because I think it very much helped and hurt her in many ways, but I would love to get more concrete and write them down thoroughly. Maybe it could start with someone being impressed that she took down the 9th espada, and she seems a little glum at it being pointed out. This one is fine for any timeline/verse post-Aaroniero fight.

Similar a bit to first possibly, but I had the thought Rukia might actually finally go to her friend’s graves in Rukongai after remembering Kaien’s spiel about the heart being passed down, I was picturing a friend(team Karakura, or other familiar friend) being surprised to find her there, but I’m down if you can figure out how your character would find her there? Post winter war is what I was thinking, but I suppose she could delay it as she has a habit of ‘running’ or putting things off, so a later timeline could be alright too. 

Let Rukia fight other fullbringers( honestly I was just laughing at the thought of her fighting Yukio cause video games are ???? something she doesn’t understand at all but I think the other fullbringers would be interesting too?)

A sort of shinigami gone human AU? Like– We heard all these plans that Urahara had with the detection less gigai for the hogyoku that turns the wearer “human”. I kind of just wanted to entertain if Rukia WASN’T ever detained to go to her execution and had instead stayed in the human world and had become “human”. Probably a sense of conflict in her as well as a endless sort of worry about being found out still. Could be more everyday threads for a bit that eventually have a sort of heaviness to them. More limited to humans/Karakura folk, but I could advance forward in the timeline a bit to her bring suspected by a patrolling shinigami or some other conflict

Hanging out with other female characters and or doing more feminine activities?(hot springs, shopping, etc?) Her last kind of female figure in her life (other than Orihime) was Miyako. I don’t think she doesn’t indulge in these cause she doesn’t like them but she’s a bit missing on the crowd to do so. 

I literally don’t know what I want to do with it, but pocket sized!Rukia from the initial bleach pilot has at least some entertainment value. 

If you’re wanting to do something more general tho, and less specific than these, here’s a short, even older list I would still be down to do or just hit me up for plotting!! Or we could figure out something together too!

Rukia on her journey to become captain

stupid shit and shenanigans 10/10 [my muse was born in crack rp she cannot escape]

Training

Post war(karakura, or TYBW pick your poison) aftermath feelings

#;wishlist #;Rukia as captain is probably the verse I feel like I understand Rukia the least and I'd love to write it out a bit and get to know it; #rukia training and pursing getting stronger is also a fun but difficult thing I want to try writing more!; #;notic

[troius]

100% agree with you about how.. dunno vague/almost nonsense most of the fullbringers explanations/mechanics are.

But one thing i LOVE about this training arc is how all the fullbringers go "lets throw Ichigo in with almost 0 explanations and being vague af" meanwhile chad is like "fuck you guys" *proceeds to explain things to ichigo or straight up shouting what he has to do"

I love chad so much

Yeah, I'm 100% with you on that. It's underplayed, because the focus is on these new nonsense powers and how they work, but Ichigo and Chad's relationship has been the actual best part of these chapters in the Xcution hideout. It's given us our first Ichigo-Chad content since...I dunno, that flashback way back in Soul Society? But I like this even more, because it does a great job showing why the two of them are still so close.

Because we got the story of how they became friends back then, but here is where we see why that connection is so strong, and it's because Chad has been in the same places, mentally, as Ichigo. Just as Ichigo fell into a deep depressive place after his mother's death, Chad's life must have also seemed like there wasn't a lot doing. He'd lost his parents at an early age, and had to move to a new country and speak a new language, and suffered through bullying that without a doubt had something to do with his "foreign" appearance.

And then his grandfather, his support through all that, dies as well, and he moves back to Japan, and gets bullied for the exact same thing in reverse. He must've felt like there wasn't ever going to be a place where he could truly belong, especially as physically fighting back against this persecution would've felt like a betrayal of the source of his pride.

But then he meets Ichigo, and everything becomes so much easier. Because they're in that same place of violent depression, they're able to bond without having to actually express their feelings in words-- punching, or taking a punch, becomes proof of how they care for each other, in a way that I don't think either of them were actually capable of saying at the time. And this makes the connection "safe" for the two of them: I sort of made fun of it at the time, but Ichigo's belief here is probably the reason why he felt comfortable bonding with Chad, and I'd imagine Chad feels the same way.

It's why this moment, back in the Arrancar arc, crushed Chad so badly. But that's also why Chad, and not Orihime or Uryu, was able to get through to Ichigo on this. Because not only has he been there, but both he and Ichigo understand that the other has been there. They're not scared of being vulnerable to each other, because the trust in the other guy is so high. And that is quite sweet, regardless of whatever Fullbringer nonsense is surrounding them.

#bleach #ask troius #thank you for the ask #I feel like this is much better and more enjoyable analysis than what I put out with the panels today

[nosongunsung11]

📓

hi q you get bleach boreas au my beloved -- tldr powerless fullbringer arc ichigo stumbles across an abandoned shrine and meets a tiny little god who is fading away from lack of worship; i got powerfully hit by the mental image of ichigo telling this little god "I guess we've both been abandoned" and it wouldnt leave my brain for the next month

so ichigo finds this abandoned shine and he thinks "fuck, that's me" and he starts cleaning it out on a whim, leaves an offering, he doesn't have much to do now that he's done saving the world for a bit, and all of a sudden he can see the shrine's god and he's a bit freaked out but the god (koshin) is so faded and barely there because he's been forgotten so they just kind of. talk for a bit. and eventually they sort of become friends

and when it comes down to it ichigo makes friends so terribly easily and would do literally anything to protect them so he starts really awkwardly advertising so koshin doesn't straight up fade away forever but it doesn't really take off until he sees a group of punks vandalizing the shrine one day and they notice that he's glowing slightly while chasing them off

the group of punks whisper "what the actual hell" to each other and then quietly start coming back and making offerings

other highlights of this au include - ichigo going around and helping out the people who prayed to the god because koshin really can't do much other than offer some small blessings; starts hearing the prayers as whispers in his head - ichigo and koshin being dramatic foils; ichigo is very much a tough love punch first kind of person and koshin is a very mild kind little guy who'd probably thank you if you punched him - ichigo very obviously talking to the air while people who are just at the shrine to make offerings give him weird looks - one of the few things koshin can do is make flowers, and he tucks them into ichigo's hair when he stops by on the way to school - when shit inevitably starts going down and ichigo ends up wounded on koshin's shrine after trying to help someone who made an offering koshin is kneeling over him and crying as he tries to pour any power he has into ichigo to heal him and apologizing that he can do so little while ichigo his follower is doing So Much and ichigo just looks at him and says "you're my friend, idiot."

there's actually a little bit of this one tucked in my google drive somewhere but the only stuff I know about shintoism is entirely based on things from the natsume yuujincho manga and frankly i don't want to overstep and write smth disrespectful so for now it just lives inside my head <3

#boreas au #man one day i will put in the research and write boreas au #i miss it #heavily inspired by a lot of really good god!natsume fic #and the kitsunegeddon ichigo fic #and the god of arepo tumble post #bleach #ask game

[healingglxw]

response from @hideyou​ : x

                     orihime really couldn’t think much of a response as soon as she finished talking. she thought that riruka would know by now that orihime is just the type of person that would do anything for her friends. her friends are her family. her found family. she’d give up everything for them. sure she could be reckless && not think too much about situations she gets herself into, but she knows she’ll regret && hate herself if she couldn’t do everything she could to help, protect or save her friends. or anyone really. the pain of losing her brother, the only family that loved her with all his heart, she wouldn’t want that for anyone.  

                the thing is, is that orihime understands her. orihime understands how it feels to think of oneself as unworthy of help of any kind. the whole time she was kept captive by aizen && the arrancars, she felt like she was going the right thing. she felt like her friends could forget her. but she was wrong. they risked everything to save her. to protect her. she doesn’t want the pain they went through to be in vain. so she’ll try her hardest to protect && save others as well. but she knew telling riruka any of this would just feel like preaching. instead orihime tries a different approach.   

                ❝  even if you weren’t my friend && some stranger, i’d still have done the same.  ❞  she starts before getting up on her feet.      ❝  i couldn’t live with myself if i didn’t even try to help in any way i can. you can have every right to be angry with me, but i’m just thankful you’re okay. && that’s okay with me. ❞ hazel hues look back down at the pink haired fullbringer, a soft smile on her lips.      ❝   i can’t tell you what do to, so you can’t really do the same to me either. i’m always going to try && protect you riruka-chan. even after you say mean things to me. or at least try to.  ❞

#hideyou #･ﾟ: *❀･ﾟ:* REPLIES *:･ﾟ❀*:･ﾟ #･ﾟ: *❀･ﾟ:* IN CHARACTER *:･ﾟ❀*:･ﾟ #this turned out a little longer then i meant for it to be #but gosh i haven't written in forever so sorry #if there are any grammar errors here and there >//>