Shounen Bleach by Tite Kubo

[Exodi]

Re: Bleach 614 Discussion/ 615 Predictions

A few questions/observations

Started watching the anime from start to finish, and I am finding some interesting comparisons which may have nothing to do with each other but I just figured they might make for interesting discussion:

1. When Ichigo got turned into a Soul Reaper after losing the powers loaned by Rukia, Urahara told him "If you don't want to become a hollow, then become a Soul Reaper", after Tessai cut his soul chain.
Could this condition have been a result of Ichigo's bloodline? Or perhaps Urahara's method for training Ichigo? Or do all souls that aren't sent to the SS with the aid of a Soul Reaper's Konso have that Soul Reaper/Hollow option?

Knowing what we know now about Ichigo, I can't help but feel like it's both. But more so because of Ichigo's bloodline. Ichigo surprised even Urahara with the way he was transitioning (into a hollow) during the training. He was experimenting on Ichigo, I feel.

2. Ichigo constantly gets called "King" in his inner world when talking to his Zanpakuto. In the first episodes when he's in the process of turning into a hollow / dying for real, Zangetsu tells him that he needs to find his soul reaper powers within himself or else the inner world will crumble and he will become a hollow. Could there be a similarity to the SK and his death meaning the death of all worlds?

I only recall the "king" stuff from White's "king and horse" analogy, in comparison to himself and Ichigo. I don't think it's anything beyond that.

3. The Soul Reapers tell all the souls that they perform Konso on, that the Soul Society is a much nicer place. Yet there are districts that look stricken with poverty. There's crime, and there's imbalance. It certainly doesn't fit the traditional "Heaven" criteria. We know there's a Hell from the very first chapters, which was never mentioned again, there's the Human World, Hueco Mundo, Soul Society with it's Royal Palace. Could there be a Heaven as well? Or is the Royal Palace supposed to be that Heaven?

Soul Society seems to be "Heaven", but I don't think the concept of "Heaven" as we know it really exists in the Bleach world.

4. Some of the 13 Squads in the early episodes looked like a bunch of bullies and misfits. Like Mayuri sacrificing other Soul Reapers in order to capture/kill Uryu and Orihime. There's the mention that Unohana used to be a murderer. And I don't recall if this was cannon or not , but somewhere it was stated that the earliest incarnation of the 13th squads were just a bunch of murderous thugs. For all the talk of Justice, the 13th squads seem to be more preoccupied with keeping an imperfect soul society in-tact, through the monitoring of the Human World, rather than keeping the peace within the Soul Society itself.

This is something I think is interesting about the Gotei. And it'd be really great if Kubo went into their history some more.

5. I find it interesting that Urahara and Aizen both have a vested interest in the Hogyoku, in Ichigo, both had seen the Soul King when only a select few ever had, both constructed domed daylight complexes.

They somehow both have been to the Royal Palace before, which is.....interesting. Come to think of it. We know absolutely nothing about Aizen's history.
Urahara sort of makes sense since he lived with a noble family, but there's is literally no history on Aizen.

6. What was it that made Aizen immortal. The Hogyoku? I missed that part. I only read where his immortality was acknowledged, but never the part where he attained it.

Yes, the Hogyoku. The only reason he's still alive.

 

[NoOneInParticular]

The G13 are still pretty morally ambiguous. A lot of them are decent guys, even during the SS arc that was true with guys like Shunsui, Komamura, Ukitake, etc. But then you've got guys like Mayuri, who's a horrible psychopath, and everybody in the 11th Division. Renji is just as brutal to his enemies now as he was to Ichigo. Our perspective's just changed, now instead of our teenage protagonists the Shinigami have been turning all their aggression on Arrancar and Quincy, although we recently had Mayuri order a massacre in Rukongai and Yamamoto telling him off just for not asking for approval first, though to be fair the alternative was to let the balance of souls spin off. It would be cool to see more of how much worse the G13 were before though.

End of the day, the Shinigami keep to themselves in Seireitei whilst the millions in Rukongai are trapped in a medieval slum rife with poverty and crime. Most of SS is a shitstack. Whether that's cos the G13 can't do anything about it or just wont is the question. They're living in a pretty shoddy system for the most part, for most people it's a choice between living poor for a couple thousand years or becoming a Hollow. If you're lucky you'll have the spirit potential to become a Shinigami and live relatively comfortably, unless, say, some evil king and his band of bloodthirsty warriors roll into your home town and kill you on their way to getting to the royal palace so he can kill the guys he's actually angry at.

 

[cracker]

The G13 are still pretty morally ambiguous. A lot of them are decent guys, even during the SS arc that was true with guys like Shunsui, Komamura, Ukitake, etc. But then you've got guys like Mayuri, who's a horrible psychopath, and everybody in the 11th Division. Renji is just as brutal to his enemies now as he was to Ichigo. Our perspective's just changed, now instead of our teenage protagonists the Shinigami have been turning all their aggression on Arrancar and Quincy, although we recently had Mayuri order a massacre in Rukongai and Yamamoto telling him off just for not asking for approval first, though to be fair the alternative was to let the balance of souls spin off. It would be cool to see more of how much worse the G13 were before though.

End of the day, the Shinigami keep to themselves in Seireitei whilst the millions in Rukongai are trapped in a medieval slum rife with poverty and crime. Most of SS is a shitstack. Whether that's cos the G13 can't do anything about it or just wont is the question. They're living in a pretty shoddy system for the most part, for most people it's a choice between living poor for a couple thousand years or becoming a Hollow. If you're lucky you'll have the spirit potential to become a Shinigami and live relatively comfortably, unless, say, some evil king and his band of bloodthirsty warriors roll into your home town and kill you on their way to getting to the royal palace so he can kill the guys he's actually angry at.

I have seen that before...that scenario is ringing a bell in my mind, game of thrones?

 

[NoOneInParticular]

I have seen that before...that scenario is ringing a bell in my mind, game of thrones?

Funnily enough I was starting to think of GoT while I was typing that. Similar thing with all the nobles having their beefs and whatnot and getting thousands of random villagers killed.

 

[BleachOD]

Re: Bleach 614 Discussion/ 615 Predictions

A few questions/observations

Started watching the anime from start to finish, and I am finding some interesting comparisons which may have nothing to do with each other but I just figured they might make for interesting discussion:

1. When Ichigo got turned into a Soul Reaper after losing the powers loaned by Rukia, Urahara told him "If you don't want to become a hollow, then become a Soul Reaper", after Tessai cut his soul chain.
Could this condition have been a result of Ichigo's bloodline? Or perhaps Urahara's method for training Ichigo? Or do all souls that aren't sent to the SS with the aid of a Soul Reaper's Konso have that Soul Reaper/Hollow option?

2. Ichigo constantly gets called "King" in his inner world when talking to his Zanpakuto. In the first episodes when he's in the process of turning into a hollow / dying for real, Zangetsu tells him that he needs to find his soul reaper powers within himself or else the inner world will crumble and he will become a hollow. Could there be a similarity to the SK and his death meaning the death of all worlds?

3. The Soul Reapers tell all the souls that they perform Konso on, that the Soul Society is a much nicer place. Yet there are districts that look stricken with poverty. There's crime, and there's imbalance. It certainly doesn't fit the traditional "Heaven" criteria. We know there's a Hell from the very first chapters, which was never mentioned again, there's the Human World, Hueco Mundo, Soul Society with it's Royal Palace. Could there be a Heaven as well? Or is the Royal Palace supposed to be that Heaven?

4. Some of the 13 Squads in the early episodes looked like a bunch of bullies and misfits. Like Mayuri sacrificing other Soul Reapers in order to capture/kill Uryu and Orihime. There's the mention that Unohana used to be a murderer. And I don't recall if this was cannon or not , but somewhere it was stated that the earliest incarnation of the 13th squads were just a bunch of murderous thugs. For all the talk of Justice, the 13th squads seem to be more preoccupied with keeping an imperfect soul society in-tact, through the monitoring of the Human World, rather than keeping the peace within the Soul Society itself.

5. I find it interesting that Urahara and Aizen both have a vested interest in the Hogyoku, in Ichigo, both had seen the Soul King when only a select few ever had, both constructed domed daylight complexes.

6. What was it that made Aizen immortal. The Hogyoku? I missed that part. I only read where his immortality was acknowledged, but never the part where he attained it.

Ichigo's FGT split Aizen in half, he meant to kill him but he couldn't because the Hougyoku just regenerated him, so yeah, I'd say he was immortal and that's why they sealed him, instead of killing him--because they couldn't.
Well I personally feel that Hollow are Shinigami whose souls have gone retarded....but as for Ichigo, Urahara did that because..Ichigo was born with a Hollowfied Zanpakuto, the others had their Zanpakutos hollowfied. For his Zanpakuto it’s not an unnatural state, so he is a natural Arrancar, not an artificial one like the Vizards.

 

[henhead]

What i still haven't been able to passover is the fact that YW only mentioned three types of worlds: SS, The Precipice world (hueco mundo), and the human realm. The so called demons that humans refer to are the hollows. In Hueco mundo, the strong survives and the weak just dies. Unlike the human realm, hueco mundo is purely survival of the fittest. Either you kill and eat other hollows and survive, or vice versa. I wanted to give some consideration into hueco mundo as purgatory in the past, but i personally cannot link purgatory (i am a confirmed Catholic btw) with hueco mundo. Purgatory is more like the human realm where the "gods" decide which realm they go in the afterlife.

This is why ever since YW first mentioned about all three realms reverting back to it's original existence, I keep thinking of the possibility that the Quincies were the ones who ruled the heavens before the SK was created. The Quincies were the embodiment of light and the "Shinigamis" played the role of death (refer to the definition of a Shinigami). The Precipice world (hueco mundo) could've been what we would refer to as hell. Instead of hollows going around feasting on one another and being purified by shinigamis, Hueco mundo could've once been a sort of "prison" where they would receive "heavenly judgement" from the Quincies and cease to exist.

As most of us already know, Quincies could obliterate their foes into non-existence. The Shinigamis would be the ones who would have first-hand knowledge that the Quincie's criteria and penalty for souls deemed "evil" was flawed. Maybe the Shinigamis realized that many souls deemed "evil" by the Quincies had a legitimate reason as to why they became the way they are.

For example: A shinigami notices a cute baby walking with his mother. Twenty years later, that same baby murdered someone and ended up on death row. For the Quincies, it might've been an automatic "mercilessly obliterate this tainted soul into non existence" without any reconsideration as to how and why they became who they are. The shinigami's that knew the history of this tainted soul could've witnessed the event/events that occured which transformed a pure soul into the current deathrow criminal, which is why they urged the Quincies to give these souls a second chance and be reborn into SS.

Assuming something like the example above happened, the Quincies ultimately agreed to this and gave it a try. To everyone's discontent, this led to a mass traffic of souls traveling in and out between SS and the human realm, which might endanger the fate of everyone. To prevent this chaos, SS created the SK to be the lynchpin that allowed for this traffic to cease. But there might've been a condition: In order for the SK to become of use, they had to create a brand new version of the 3 realms (similar to how Ichibei creates a fake SK realm) in order to create new rules.
To simplify, refer back to the movie "The Matrix." According to The Matrix, the real world is actually comprised of humans who served as batteries for the machines in exchange for blissful ignorance in a fake world. The current three realms of existence in the Bleachverse that we know of could be just like The Matrix (The Matrix is the fake world created by machines to keep their human batteries alive). YW wishes to destroy the matrix SS created.

I can't help assuming the possibilty of everyone in the Bleachverse all the sudden waking up to the true, original world that YW mentions. YW hates the idea of all three realms collapsing thanks to the Shinigami's idea of creating the SK and wants the original world. In the original worlds, the wicked were destroyed completely to protect the well being of "pure" souls. No more worrying about balancing the exchange of souls coming in and out of SS and hueco mundo.

Once again i have to say, ASSUMING if the aforementioned were to be true, the reason why the 1000 year war really happened was that the Quincies wanted things to return to the way they were whereas the Shinigami's the exact opposite. Quincies lose the war against the death gods (Shinigami) and spend the next 1000 years harboring vengeance against not only the death gods, but to the traitor amongst them known as "Soubou," (Twin Pupils). Soubou could've been either a high-ranking quincy, or possibly the leader of the Quincies who betrayed the heavens and sided with "evil" (evil referring to Shinigami).

Ever since Bach uttered the words, "if Quincy blood flows through your veins, than you cannot forgive the existence of the Soul King," I can't help but wonder why he hates his father so much. Well...if a father betrays your entire country to side with the "enemy," (also known as treason),that might be a good enough reason for YW and the Quincies to hate Soubou (the SK) so much.

I'm going to have to borrow this term once again from someone in here, but everything I've said here is simply a crackpot theory. I want my assumptions and theories to be debunked so that I can move onto other ideas, not the other way around.

 

[Holt]

Ywach is supposed to be the father and progenitor of Quincy. Ywach in turn came from the soul king (either as a limb/part of him or biological son) so it seems the system was already in place before the Quincy (which refers to ywach and all after him) existed.

Also, ywach seems to be intent on crumbling all worlds and soul society in particular. Aizen atleast seemed intent on change with little bloodshed. Ywach simply kills and discards everyone. Shinigami, hollows and even Quincy.

However, its very likely that the rift between the Quincy and shinigami was politically motivated. Perhaps a disagreement on what the world should have been like or the management of souls or even who was to sit at the helm. Aizen seemed discontent with the SK as well. He told Urahara that they should speak of what the world should be and not what it is. Does hint that there's something off somewhere and it has to do with how the world is. Aizen has been sorta released now so if we could get something from his angle about the change he wanted, it will go a long way to explain things. Ofcourse since this is the world we are used to in bleach, things might seen normal but there could be something really off.
Either way, I can't see ywach having any sort of noble intent or the like. He's simply too cruel and heartless for that.

 

[henhead]

When i refer to the "holy" beings in the original realms to be Quincies, I do it done only because I have no idea whatelse to call the beings that are similar to the SK. Since it's possible for Soubou, or someone way before Soubou that belongs to the same species, to be the true source of the quincy bloodline since they've been around before YW. Or, it could also be that the SK mated with someone other than his own kind to produce Bach in order to create the quincies kind of like Ichigo and his parents.

Another possibility is that the term "Quincy" simply refers to the offsprings of a being similar to the SK, which in this case it's YW, reproducing it's bloodline in the human realm, whereas the SK is a genuine "quincy" or whatever the heck his race was called in the original realms of existence. Soubou wasn't a god who created the universe. The folks in SS created or turned Soubou into the entity known as the SK. This means the SK might not be the only person of his kind in existence.
So sum it up, Quincy might be refered to as "beings similar to Soubou in the human realm."

I do believe that YW is evil as well, based off his actions. I always find it ironic when the Quincies refer to themselves as "holy." Sort of like a cruel roman emperor who submits cruel executions and tortures and still has the balls to call himself a servant of god. I compare this to the beings in the original SS in a similar way.

I think ill just refer to these original "holy" beings in the original realms as the Soubous.

 

[Sky Render]

On a completely different matter, somebody needs to make a meme out of Kubo's "angry fun face" selfies:

https://twitter.com/tite_kubo/status/580983206066855936/photo/1
https://twitter.com/tite_kubo/status/580982966685331456/photo/1
https://twitter.com/tite_kubo/status/580982819180052480/photo/1

 

[Exodi]

Whatever he's eating, I want some.

 

[NoOneInParticular]

"This has too many sprinkles."

 

[Sky Render]

Whatever he's eating, I want some.

He's gonna eat the shit out of whatever the hell that is.

 

[Asclepius]

On a completely different matter, somebody needs to make a meme out of Kubo's "angry fun face" selfies:

https://twitter.com/tite_kubo/status/580983206066855936/photo/1
https://twitter.com/tite_kubo/status/580982966685331456/photo/1
https://twitter.com/tite_kubo/status/580982819180052480/photo/1

I think he has cute pinchable cheeks.

I wonder what will he eat during the golden week. I hope he post pics. I love food porn.

---------- Post added at 08:16 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:08 PM ----------

That's the biggest chocolate on a stick i've seen in my life.

 

[Sky Render]

"Damn you, cherry blossom trees. Soon. Very soon I shall have my vengeance".

 

[kkck]

Why does kubo look constipated on all his pictures?

 

[FetherMan]

Kubo giving people the finger with his glare about the current pacing of Bleach chapters. lol.

 

[Schabrak]

Why does kubo look constipated on all his pictures?

He can't handle all the light without his sunglasses.

Does he have a graying beard or is it bleached?

 

[SupremeMod]

I had a drunken dream last night that it takes both Ichigo and Aizen to defeat Bach, and that after the battle as Aizen lays dying from injuries, he ascends beyond time/space and becomes the Soul King. While he's detracted by his own ascension, the rest of the captains and shinagami manage to seal him. At this point it's revealed that the Soul King and Aizen are one... lolwut?

Just thought I'd share my random drunken Bleach dream.

 

[Hakuteiken]

I had a drunken dream last night that it takes both Ichigo and Aizen to defeat Bach, and that after the battle as Aizen lays dying from injuries, he ascends beyond time/space and becomes the Soul King. While he's detracted by his own ascension, the rest of the captains and shinagami manage to seal him. At this point it's revealed that the Soul King and Aizen are one... lolwut?

Just thought I'd share my random drunken Bleach dream.

It sounds like you telepathically connected to Kubo in your sleep, actually.

 

[Sky Render]

Oh my God.