Rukia

Rukia

BLEACHまとめ 5 / ヒロ

Daily Reminder That

So I measured Rukia in this panel and the distance between them and calculated the % the space between them takes up of Rukia’s height. I got 11, 6%. Then I calculated how many cm there is between them, based on my knowledge of Rukia’s actual height, which is 144 cm. The end result was 16,8 cm(+- any mistakes I did during measuring). Japanese intimate interpesonal zone 15-25 cm(I googled it). That is the space between them in the big panel. Can you imagine how close they are in the little panel(bottom left corner, p 20, chp 423, but well, you know it guys)

Also can we talk about this sound effect here

EDIT: So thanks to lovely @ichirukilover, who explained it to me, we now know that 

“The sound effect is actually the sound of their steps, while they are talking, they are walking towards each other and then stop in that little panel where we see their feet so damn close”

I’m really sorry guys if I confused you. I myself was confused. But somehow…doesn’t that knowledge make this scene even more endearing and heart-breaking at the same time? Because the moment was so heavy, and all the other people and the world around them just disapeared to the point where they their footsteps towards each other - and towards goodbye - are so loud. 

Hadn’t made a Bleach post in a while.  For the most part I feel like I mostly ran out of things to say.  But there’s this weird little loose thread early-ish in Bleach that I never really see get addressed.  For good reason, granted, even bringing it up now, I don’t actually have a lot to say about it.  The initial mystery between Ichigo and Kaien that was only sort of(?) resolved.

Originally Kaien isn’t drawn or even referenced by name at all, but just by vague inference, as early as chapter 23.  An early, early version of Ukitake is heard in Rukia’s memory talking about the difference between fighting for survival and fighting for honor, starting with…

おまえが今力を貸せばなるほど奴の命は救われだろう

だがそれは同時に奴の誇りを永遠に殺すことになる…

If you lend power, indeed his life might be saved now, but at the same time the result would be that his pride would be killed forever…

And this whole spiel is actually repeated verbatim when we do eventually get introduced to Kaien in Rukia’s flashback in chapter 135. (Rukia’s 4 chapter long flashback story is even titled “memories in the rain2…″ as a direct throwback to chapter 19 titled, “…memories in the rain” where Ichigo had his flashback of his mother’s death.)

The first time we hear of Kaien (but before we actually see him proper) is when Ichigo & co. meet Ganju and Kuukaku in the extremely forgettable foray into the Rukongai.  Prior to Kaien being brought up though, we learn about this dynamic in which Ganju, the Shiba family, and a certain demographic of the souls in Rukongai have a hostile relationship with the governing class of Shinigami.  And in this class divide, it’s suggested that Kaien was unusual in his ability to bridge that gap.

On a related note, when Ganju has his run in with Byakuya, we get another little bit of information about the Shiba clan’s reputation…

Ganju takes pride in the Shiba clan not being afraid of nobility, and Byakuya acknowledges the Shiba as something to be taken seriously.  We also get more play into the classism of the Shinigami vs the spirits of Rukongai; keeping in mind that all this has been well before the notion of the Shiba clan as a fallen Royal House would be brought up.

So, worth pointing out, as that at this point we’ve still not seen Kaien’s face, and thus don’t know about his uncanny resemblance to Ichigo.  When Ichigo encounters Ukitake for the first time, we get this little exchange…

Which is the first time we get the suggestion that Ichigo and Kaien have some kind of overt similarities.  But it’s worth pointing out that neither Ganju nor Kuukaku reacted to Ichigo based on this, so I feel like at this point (with only the bottom of the face to go off of) that what Ukitake is supposed to be reacting to here isn’t that Ichigo is supposed to physically look just like Kaien, but that he recognizes some kind of innate spiritual/personality similarity in his defiance.  And Byakuya understands this similarity, as he can recognize why Ukitake is asking about him.

Then we get this moment where Ukitake further characterizes Kaien as more of a rebel…

.. he’s physical, violence prone even, and apparently not concerned with rank, class, formality or professionalism.  We get a glimpse of his hair, confirming some similarity with Ichigo, but again avoiding the face.

Then of course in the following chapter, we do get a clear look at Kaien and he’s drawn to look exactly like Ichigo, but with black hair and long eyelashes(like Ganju).  We also actually see his personality for the first time, and he’s surprisingly amicable, and has a bit of a bumpkin demeanor about him, which matches Ganju and Kuukaku’s, and their background as having grown up in Rukongai. (this, along with other remarks about how the Ganju and Kuukaku see the Shinigami, also places the fall of the house of Shiba as having happened well before the siblings’ generation.)  His disregard for status at odds with his respect for shinigami are shown as really personable qualities, as he is the one shinigami who doesn’t judge Rukia as a member of the Kuchiki family.  We see why he was an important person to Rukia, but we don’t really get much followup on why everyone else seems to revere his memory.

We get one tiny detail from Sui-Feng, honestly kind of out of the blue, at the start of her fight with Yoruichi…

And then we get to the loose thread I mentioned…

Like with the run in with Ukitake, Byakuyra sees Kaien’s spirit in Ichigo in flashes.  It’s the suggestion that it’s the things Ichigo says and does that reminds him of Kaien, not just their appearance. (in fact juxatppsed to how this all was first brought up, making him a relative of Kaien, even distantly, actually just cheapens the meaning in comparring the two.) And in both this and the previous situation the parallels seem to be drawn with Ichigo’s rebellion against the law and order, and class heircharchy of Soul Society.  But from everything we were actually explicitly shown and told, Kaien’s defiance of the class divide didn’t seem to manifest as much more than just managing to become a talented and high ranking Shinigami in spite of his social standing.

So, what is it that Kaien did, or was doing, or trying to do that earned him this reputation?  What laws of Soul Society was he, like Ichigo, fighting that stirred Byakuya’s memory?  And perhaps implicitly, what does that have to do with the history of the Shiba clan?  All these early plays at the mystery of who Kaien really was dances around the subject, but it doesn’t actually point in any particular direction; and even when we learn more about him, most of these questions aren’t really answered.  And ultimately, we never had this brought up again.

There are some things we could kind of take guesses at based on later developments, but a lot of that is hard to really pin down as something that Kubo would’ve even had on the drawing board at the time of Kaien’s original introduction.  For example, we do later find out that the Shiba and their cannon are closely related to the Royal Guard and the King’s Realm.  There is also some question as to how Kuukaku lost her arm.  And she and Ganju both keep personal swords that seem to have broken blades, and might be (what are left of) zanpakutou?  It’s never clarified how Kuukaku and Yoruichi or Urahara were associated; Yoruichi and Kuukaku might have been familiar with one another as members of (ex)royal houses, but the specifics of their history together are never brought up.  And Kuukaku’s missing arm is rather conspicuously never addressed even remotely.

And I actually brought it up as one of my earliest Bleach posts, but the Shiba family have a distinct naming trend that Kubo set up.

The whole family is actually very deliberately named Shiba[志波] written as “Aspiration”/”resolve”/”will [power]” and “wave”/”ripple”/”after effect.”  Basically explicitly defining the family by a kind of highminded goal with long lasting effects on the world around them; this is deliberately designed as a reflection of Kaien’s legacy –on the most surface level on Rukia personally, but also in this unresolved/unaddressed way that talk about Kaien was suggesting at first.

In conjunction with that, the children themselves are named  Kaien[海燕]: “Sea Swallow,” Kuukaku[空鶴]: “Sky Crane,” and Ganju[岩鷲]: “Cliff Eagle.”  Each named after Land Sea and Sky plus a bird.  The different birds I don’t know have any specific meaning (although the crane is used as Kuukaku’s personal emblem on all her fireworks) but the Land, Sea, and Sky part works in conjunction with the family name to suggest that the aforementioned Ripple of Aspirations/Will Power permeates throughout all domains.

Also, when Rukia first sees Ganju, she recognizes him as a Shiba by the family crest, which she refers to as tsuiten-no-kuzure-uzushio [墜天の崩れ渦潮]: “Crashing/Falling Heaven’s Downfall/Ruination Whirlpool.”

Now… personally I feel like there’s kind of a disconnect between the Kaien we started with, the one covered in this examples, and the one we eventually got in Hueco Mundo,(he doesnt even remember to draw Kaien’s Shiba clan tattoo in Rukia’s flashback fighting Aaroniero) and the Shiba clan we wouldnt see again until TYBW. But, if we really want to give Kubo credit…  We could look at all this and what comes after and infer that the revolutionary thing the Shibas did that got them exiled, for which their family crest is named, that relates to how they’re a main method of accessing the King’s Realm, that was in some way reflected in Kaien’s disregard of class divide and rigid laws, and that Byakuya and Ukitake saw reflected in Ichigo… is that they tried to dismantle the order of the King of Soul Society (they tried to “Crash Heaven”) just like Aizen and Yhwach would try to do so much later in Soul Society’s history.

In fact, one might think that the implication of Ichigo being this nebulous spiritual successor to Kaien would mean that his arc would/should ultimately mean completing the high minded goal of equality and dismantling Soul Society’s corrupt power structure that the Shiba, and ostensibly Kaien himself had been working on… Yet Ichigo never even has an opinion to weigh in on the matter with. Even once the Soul King is introduced proper and the structure of the world(s) are brought under direct threat, Ichigo just kinda keeps his head down, nose buried in powering up, so he can slap a few people with his sword before it breaks again… and then the whole series is over…

So I have a 'conversation' with an Origo

She (my followers know who) keeps asking me stupid questions and ask why I won’t answer them, and because I’m not Kubo or shit like that (her english is terrible, i sometimes don’t understand what she exactly wanted to say). But please! That Origo denied completely ORIHIME’s words about she is jealous of Rukia and her relationship with Ichigo, she denied KUBO’s words about Rukia being Ichigo’s rain drier, his world changer, his ray of light. She denied Ichigo’s words about how important Rukia is to him. She denied Rukia’s words about Ichigo being the one who changed her world. She even denied her precious princess words and contradict herself multiple times. And she wants me to answer her questions?!! Well bitch please stop ignoring my words and canon material first then I may kindly answer your stupid fuck questions. But what make you think my words will mean anything when YOU deny the WHOLE manga yourself. You twist it to suit your benefit.

“you IchiRuki make it look like Ichigo can’t live without Rukia.”

We don’t make it, it’s a fact, Kubo showed you multiple times but you just turn blind eyes to it:

And no matter how many times you are going to deny it, I will keep putting THIS here:

INOUE. ORIHIME. IS. JEALOUS. OF. KUCHIKI. RUKIA. ORIHIME. IS. JEALOUS. OF. RUKIA. JEALOUS. OF. RUKIA.

Ichigo wonders if he can keep up with the speed of the world without Rukia:

And before you start to spout shit about how this poem is about Zangetsu, i will give you this:

And this:

Deny all you want, because you are hopeless fuck if you do.

“Orihime is smart, she knows IchiRuki is platonic.”

Yeah, Orihime is so jealous of a platonic friendship that she cries, make so much sense, yes, of course.

“Platonic is non-romance, only sexual relationship would work, non-sexual has nowhere to go.”

Pretty much saying “love” = “sex”. Describe the major part of this fandom well.

And I tell you, get a dictionary or go google searching for platonic love. I won’t take lesson from someone whose english is much more worse than mine.

“Our ship IH is more credible, IR only will happen if everyone in this manga is stupid”

Credible? Such a big word for an Origo. Are you saying Kubo is stupid? Because last time I checked, he gave us this:

(And a whole movie which Kubo has most hands in just dedicated to IchiRuki, your princess never appears lollol)

IchiRuki has unbreakable bond.

Meanwhile there were bonds that were once broken, which include your precious ichihime:

Unstable friendship, just how FAR it is from romance then? (Plus if it can be romance, sure IchiChad should work out too lollol). How credible.

“If Rukia is so important to Ichigo why she is not the main heroine, the desire and love arc is about Ichihime”

Somebody completely ignore the whole Soul Society arc.

AND DEAR GOD RUKIA KUCHIKI IS THE MAIN HEROINE. WHAT MANGA HAVE YOU BEEN READING STUPID?!! But because she is the heroine doesn’t mean she has to be fucking main in every arc, that’s Ichigo’s fucking job, he is the main protagonist of this series, not Rukia oh dear god.

However, stop your shit about only main heroine could end up with the main hero. I hate that shit the most. I don’t ship Rukia with Ichigo because she is the main girl, I ship them together because of the chemistry between those two. So shut your shit about MC x MC right now.

And the name of that arc is not “desire and love”, it’s “lust” you dimwit and it’s not about your fail ship, it’s about Ulquiorra and Ulquihime:

If it were about your failhime, shouldn’t Kubo have drawn a cover of Ichigo and Orihime instead?

And the poem:

Let’s see how your otp became canon in this arc:

Nope.

Let see how this fight ends.

Oh look Orihime is reaching for Ichi…

It’s Ulquiorra’s hand?!! How?!! What’s about “Kurosaki-kun”?!!

Wait let’s see the conclusion of this arc instead, sure there should be Ichihime somewhere…

Almost there…

It’s gotta be now…

Well :/

But I’m sure Ichigo didn’t miss Rukia at all all those 17 months (not that anybody counts ;3), I remember he said so:

See!

And I remember Ichigo day-dreaming in class before that, he must be fantasying about our dear hime right?

Nope, not your hime, but my hime, my queen -Rukia Kuchiki.

Seriously, I pity your ship, at first when I read this manga, I couldn’t even give a  fuck about your ship because frankly, it doesn’t make a single sense to me. But the shippers sure make me catch off guard every time by their idiocy, which makes me feel ashamed for some IH friends of mine, they are totally different from you, they are not in denial and they respect and accept Ichigo and Rukia’s unbreakable relationship. But the major part of this fandom is completely different. Indeed, like a friend said: your willful ignorance is unfathomable.

Lemme tell you something, if you have questions and want answers, seek for yourself, you don’t even take the manga seriously, you don’t take my words seriously, yet you want MY answers?!!! When I did give you what you were so desperate for, you refused to see them and asked some other stupid fuck questions instead and saying I could not answer because I am not Kubo. No shit sherlock. Why don’t you ask Kubo then? But wait, you will deny his words too if he tells you IchiRuki is romantic. So nope, keep dreaming.

will not be watching the Bleach anime and actually just filtered out a bunch of bleach tags, including ichiruki

am still too bummed out about too many things, including:

• the weird, sudden downplay of Rukia’s importance and mad reduction of screentime–she went from co-protagonist to someone who gets less than a second of screentime in the new trailer, is MIA during the final battle, and is separated from the nakama for virtually all of the final arc. So many of her personality quirks, the things that made her so unique and wonderful, (her shitty drawings, her love of cute rabbit-themed things, her interest in the human world, her snark) are gone or hella watered down

it’s an odd observation/opinion but I actually wasn’t all that crazy about her new haircut in the FB arc–it makes her silhouette/form a lot less distinctive and interesting from a character design perspective. I know the idea was she wanted to look less like her sister but knowing how awesome Kubo’s designs are I think she could have gotten a lot more interesting/flattering haircut (again, this is more from a character design perspective so this is more an offhand opinion whatever)

• the weird, sudden downplay of Ichigo and Rukia’s relationship. I adore ichiruki but at this point I’m not even mad they’re not canon–I’m more bummed at how such a fateful, important, powerful, dynamic, symbolic, and unbreakable bond is so absent in the final arc. There’s so much buildup in the FB arc (speed of the world poem, Ichigo dreaming about Rukia, the freaking fullbring powers being unlocked just thinking about her, the way the rain stops when she comes back and gives him his powers) and then…nada. idec they’re not canon, I just wished their bond was a lot more featured (platonic or not), that they got to fight in the final battle together, or at least share a few moments of bickering in the final arc. they’re separated for almost all of it which is wild. Even in the canon WDKALY novels, Ichigo isn’t even the first Rukia tells about her engagement? They don’t interact at all and that just seems so weird to me given all they’ve gone through/how much Kubo himself has hyped up their bond and duality. 

• How Renji is all of a sudden Ichigo’s new BFF…Renji as a whole is such a flimsy and inconsistent character (slashing and slamming Rukia against a pole in one arc, then going on to righteously lecture that “a man who lays hand on another woman is trash” smh) and to give him so much spotlight just felt so weird and off

• ishida and chad doing essentially the opposite of what they vowed in earlier arcs (ishida didn’t want to be like his dad, chad didn’t want to use his fists/strength for money/fame) also ishida being all alone and not even mentioned by his friends in the last chapter was weirdly kind of sad and ugh

early bleach was such a spunky, unique, special thing with ichigo and rukia’s bond giving it such a wonderful spark, it had such character and over time really just became another generic shonen which is a darn shame but what’re you gonna do

I stopped breathing for a sec-

新年快乐唷! by Tobu@Tobu_0w0