Whilst Watching The Anime Did You At Any Point Think That Ichigo & Rukia Couldve Had A Chance (since

Whilst watching the anime did you at any point think that Ichigo & Rukia could’ve had a chance (since that’s what a lot of ppl that just watched the anime thought would’ve happened) before you read the manga, it’s quite obvious that the anime was biased towards a certain ship. Or was it always Ichihime for you ?

I started with the anime only. I went into it knowing about the ichiruki fandom popularity, and was fully expecting to ship ichiruki. And as I watched the first arc (AotS), I did see a few moments that definitely seemed to be hinting at an IR romance.

...Only to find out later on when I read the manga: all of those moments were anime-only filler. I explain more on that below.

But still, at that point, I was an anime-only fan. And then the next arc, the SS arc, began. And I was confused. Because a majority of the "shippy" moments of the SS arc went to RenRuki and IchiHime instead of IchiRuki. I talked about that more here in this post.

So the ships seemed up in the air to me. Because there were definite romantic IR hints in the first arc (or, so I thought, not realizing they were filler). But IH and RR were now presenting themselves as strong contenders for canon as well.

And then the arrancar arc began and IchiHime came in swinging like a wrecking ball. And the moment Ichigo bowed before Orihime, looked her sincerely in the eyes, and vowed to protect her, I just knew it would be canon.

But I kept in mind that I had only ever seen the anime at that point. And I thought, "well, maybe the anime is distorting things and downplaying IR while playing up IH/RR with fillers."

At which point, I decided to read the manga from the start to see for myself what was filler, and what was canon.

Come to find out, the few moments that I did think were hinting towards an IchiRuki romance?

They were all filler.

Linked below are episodes on crunchyroll with timestamps:

Episode 8 @ 15:05 The random shinigami dude who shows up and accuses Rukia of being in a relationship with Ichigo while blushing i.e. "are you finding pleasure with a human boy?" while she gets all flustered and tells him it's none of his business? Filler. (Literally, the animation team created a whole ass filler character just to tease at some IR romance that didn't exist lmao).

Episode 11 @ 4:10 Orihime watches Ichigo and Rukia run off together at school, followed by Orihime wondering if they're dating? Filler.

Episode 15 @ 17:40 Ichigo and Rukia staring at each other and awkwardly stumbling over their words, as if they're holding back from confessing their feelings, as the sun sets and soft music plays? Filler.

Episode 18 @ 6:34 Ichigo having a flashback to Rukia's glowing face while he thinks to himself "her place is here" (which immediately follows the peptalk Orihime just gave him, which takes away from an important IH moment 🤦‍♀️) Filler.

Episode 22 @ 12:04 Ichigo staring longingly at SS as the sunsets as if he's staring/thinking about Rukia? Filler. (And this moment actually replaced the canon moment of Ichigo offering Orihime a drink while she was healing Jidanbo.)

Episode 146 @ 20:04 Nel getting jealous of Rukia and demanding to know what her relationship is with Ichigo? Filler.

So, when I read the manga, I realized that all of these seemingly romantic shippy ichiruki moments didn't actually exist.

Meanwhile, I was introduced to a lot of canon IchiHime moments I had never seen before in the anime, such as Orihime's feelings for Ichigo being introduced in chapter two, Orihime and Ichigo meeting up on the way to Urahara's house, Ichigo bringing Orihime a drink while she healed Jidanbo, the guys in SS wondering if Orihime has a boyfriend and then saying "definitely" when they see her walking with Ichigo, etc. All of those moments were left out of the anime.

So, essentially, in the first two arcs, the anime added in some heavy-handed filler IchiRuki content, while removing canon IchiHime content.

And by doing so, they effectively bamboozled so many people into thinking IR was romantic and endgame. Especially those who only ever watched the anime and were fooled by all the filler.

The anime got better about all the butchering once the arrancar arc began, but by then, I think it was too late. The damage was already done. So many people had already declared IR as their otp and were reluctant to jump ship--especially to the ship they had already spent so much time bashing.