Soul Society - Tumblr Posts
Good questions tbh
They said they used Reishi to create space in the Seireitei's shadows, and everything in the Soul Society is made of Reishi, so I guess that whole Shadow realm was literally part of the Soul Society's composition like it's other half. Plus, couldn't Quincy hide their reiatsu like Shinigami do?
Hueco Mundo still has tons of Hollows in it that would come and go from the World of Living to Hueco Mundo. Hollows would go after the Quincy there and get killed, which would be troublesome, possibly alerting the SS if the balance of souls gets tilted. It also gets rid of the territorial advantage the Quincy had by staying in the Soul Society's shadows and avoiding the "Soul Shield Membrane" which vaporizes Reishi. https://bleach.fandom.com/wiki/Sekkiseki
Quilge (The Quincy guy I assume you're talking about) was using his Reishi subordination to make the hollow/Ayon part of him. He mentioned it was unholy to him. This post talks about that stuff and has a manga panel where Quilge said the Ayon monster he absorbed was corrupting his holy wings. Ayon wasn't the Tres Bestia's true power so Quilge could somewhat integrate that Hollow into himself But he wouldn't be able to do the same to Resurrecion which is a Arcancar Hollow's true power. ihttps://saranel.tumblr.com/post/156307147675/remember-those-bankai-hollowify-pills-urahara-made
Oh yeah, the brainwashed Arcancar soldier has that Quincy cross which allowed him to use Reishi like a Quincy could, I don't think the Quincy powers were actually integrated into that Arcancar. Plus, Yhwach probably granted him the ability through that cross.
Honestly, I think Kubo should have had Urahara bring in that Tenshintai doll or something based on it, considering it manifests a Zanpakuto spirit in the Soul Society. They could have focused on the zanpakuto's spirit's bond with a Shinigami but then the Quincy's medallions could have recaptured them or the medallion is literally forcing the Zanpakuto spirit away from it's owner. https://comicvine.gamespot.com/tenshintai/4055-49138/
Just watch a few clips on youtube while skimming through the wiki and I have. so many questions.
* How did none of the scientist in bleach notice any of the thousands Quincies building up their strength right under the Seireitei?
* Why is it suddenly impossible to detect another dimension when Hueco Mundo (and the Valley of Screams if you’re a novelist truther) were so easy to find when they’re spiritual pressure went up?
* Wouldn’t it make more sense to put the shadow dimension in Hueco Mundo since it’s been far less researched and the giant amounts of hollow Reishi that’s build of could have disguised the Quincies well? Especially since YHWACH is basically a Hollow that nobody had a chance to put down?
* Why is hollow said to have been poisonous to Quincies and yet that n@zi based Quincy was able to observe it’s powers pretty easily? And how does it explain the brainwashed Arrancar soldier we saw in the first Episode?
* Why didn’t the show just create a telepathy booster for bankai users to be able to reconnect with their bankais even after they’ve been stolen to showcase how strong a bond can be between the sword and it’s user instead of these last minute hollow pills that were mostly just fan service for Toshiro fans?
And I cannot stress this enough how this is not at all sarcastic. I am legitimately confused.
My top 5 Bleach women and why I love them: Part 3
If you haven't seen Part 1 and 2 of this, here's the link.
1/5. Rukia Kuchiki ~ Squad 13 captan and Number One
I don’t think I have to explain this but I’ll touch over what themes I love, some of it’s duality and how it all helps encompass her character as one of Kubo’s best.
Upbringing and Human Nature ~ Throughout the first arc, we get glimpses into how Rukia was raised and what kind of warrior culture the Soul Society had. Despite her life in the Rukon District and being treated horribly in the Kuchiki Clan, Rukia maintains that Soul Society is better than the human world, that letting an inexperienced Ichigo fight Grand Fisher on his own was considered right by her captain’s standards. However, there’s cracks in these beliefs even from the moment she met Ichigo and began making friends in the human world. It’s especially more painful when she didn’t see Renji for 40 years, and knew she would have to return to Soul Society, that her brief stay with humans was where she felt she belonged, where she didn’t feel empty in the heart.
Self-Worth and Finding the Heart ~ Saving someone usually means the rescuee wants to be saved right? Not in Rukia’s case, her self-loathing over her execution is visible throughout the SS arc. It’s tragic, she was forced to kill Kaien to stop Aizen’s Hollow experiment from continuing to use his body, that she besmirched the Kuchiki name by giving Ichigo her powers, the guy who looks alike to Kaien. Renji and her split up decades ago due to the divide between them, and compounding all of that corroded her self-esteem to the point of her accepting her execution. However, she finds what connects her to those important people and how they care for her, the heart. Therefore, deciding to stay in Soul Society and reclaiming her self-worth.
Renji declares he won’t leave her in the face of Aizen.
Byakuya Kuchiki protects her to fulfill his promise to Rukia’s sister.
Kaien’s relatives forgive her for being the one to end Kaien’s suffering.
If it can be said that the heart is unchanging, then that is strength. - Bleach Vol. 54 poem
A Soldier’s Heart and It’s Duality ~ At the crux of Rukia’s character is her bonds and how she got there through becoming a Shinigami. Kaien was her mentor who taught her to fight and the theme of “The Heart”. To not die alone, to have meaningful connections is where Rukia ensures she makes sure to support her friends through her manner. I think it’s really poignant that the way she tries to sway Ichigo out of his doubts and fears of his inner Hollow…that it doesn’t work because Ichigo hasn’t been in the shinigami life as long as she had. Ichigo’s issues are far more embedded due to how he’s been changed by them….while Kaien’s heart which Rukia metaphorically holds in her, hasn’t changed at all.
Emulating Kaien’s mannerisms because Kaien’s heart carried strength, Rukia’s way contrasts with Orihime’s nature, which ends up helping out Ichigo even for a moment in the Hueco Mundo arc. However, the soldier’s heart is what allows Rukia to continue fighting against Aaroniero the 9th Espada, because she finds strength in it to want to save Orihime, protect her loved ones, and move past the obstacle, because she cares about the reawakened connections she has.
The top three art pieces are made by @srkbom108 on Twitter. Black and White background art is done by @Mak_ai_ on Twitter. The last two art pieces are by @rakusakugk on Twitter.
Thanks for reading, if you want to see my full-length post of all three 3 parts, then here's the Quora link for it!
Ichigo’s stance on the SS’s morality is definitely one where I also wondered how he act in response to it as a whole. He mainly is protecting those he cares including his friends in the SS, but on the other matters like the Quincy genocide or the falsity of the Soul King, he seems to be neutral, mainly focusing on the present, not the past actions that fuel who he's fighting. Like you said, his action to move forward with others towards a future for everyone is the antithesis to his opposition.
Him being a human also factors into the one time he’s been critically against SS was in the FB arc where he’s bold enough to ask for Ginjo’s body from them so he can bury it in the WOTL, despite Ginjo’s crimes against the SS. Like he still decided to trust them considering what they did to Ginjo, but that moment is segmented after his past actions that overturned the SS's rigid law that's lasted for thousands of years.
At the end of the day, Ichigo isn't the lonely teen he used to be with how he's developed and has let other people into his life opposed to Aizen. I say he would decide to leave the internal affairs of the Shinigami to those he trusts instead of taking things into his own hands like Aizen, and be his own figure that has Urahara's influence.
Tbh there's something about the way Ichigo, Kisuke, and Sōsuke are all reflecting off of each other in canon
Like this is sooooo influenced by my random uraichizen thoughts but
Like, considering Kisuke's Boddhisatva allegory with Guanyin/Kannon and his knowledge of the world, the idea that he preserves the status quo of the worlds by not actively doing anything in comparison to Sōsuke (from what we can see). He is a Boddhisattva in this sense. He's seen the truth, he teaches others the truth or hints at it because true Enlightenment can only be with the self. But.
Then there's the actual consequence of SS and what shinigami have to do to maintain the balance. Kisuke opposes Sōsuke and his views not because he believes it's right, but because he believes that the destruction of the worlds is not acceptable. It's a necessary evil.
Sōsuke has an ego with him wanting to become God, but there's also something almost tragic about his arc with reframing it from his perspective of Soul Society.
Soul Society is not a good place. Honestly horrible to live in. Especially when we find out that they sacrifice souls to hollows and vice versa in the name of balance.
Tbh, I ended up asking myself, from this viewpoint, is the Soul Society really worth protecting? Because it's goal is not about protecting people, but protecting the balance. Can the shinigami claim ignorance? Should they even be allowed to when they are complicit in destruction of lives? What would 'life' actually be considered in this universe? Do hollows deserve life as humans do? Except the SS ultimately sees both as a means to an end, hollows are just more of an obstacle.
Effwctively, shinigami are content sleeping on a bed of ground bones. I can see Sōsuke thinking this from a biased perspective.
But he's also not some savior either. He's arrogant and has a callousness to him that conflicts with this more sympathetic view of him.
His anger at Kisuke for knowing the truth of the world and not trying to change it seems genuine. There's an air of hypocrisy to his character I can't shake and it makes me wanna know more about why. Like the question of the greater evil vs the lesser evil.
Except Ichigo. He steps forward, finally knowing himself in full, to defeat Sōsuke, to defeat Yhwach, yet I can't help but feel like he's still so ignorant of the world he lives in. If he learned about their horrors, could he truly stand by in shadows waiting as Kisuke does, or would he become like another Sōsuke, for whatever reason. Or would he become a different path?
Sōsuke is also related to illusion and water, a reflection. We never see his bankai and I would even go so far as to think that he own powers don't work as they do in canon. There's still too many unknowns about him for me to be confident in them. But Ichigo’s own insights about Sōsuke's loneliness is just... it's so tempting to build off of that.
Because those feelings are likely a reflection of Ichigo from when he was a young age and his own confusing powers may have brought only more loneliness instead of understanding or connection.
I can't help but think that Kisuke represents Stagnation and Sōsuke represents Progess. Except poth come with an unsavory taste in the mouth. Kisuke waits, likely works towards a goal, bit it's far too slow for the people that have already suffered because of the world. Sōsuke steps forward, also hiding until he's sure of his strike, and he probably would have won if not for Ichigo. What is Ichigo then?
The only part of the Soul King that's named is his heart, which can bring about miracles, things unexplained due to emotions and desires. It acts similar to the Hōgyoku. Ichigo speculates that Sōsuke may have actually wanted to lose to him and that's... also a lot of implication about Sōsuke's character. There's also the idea that Sōsuke may have built Ichigo up. To what? Defeat him? Stand by his side? To make him less lonely? Or are these Ichigo’s unreliable feelings, are they simply Ichigo’s own reflected onto Sōsuke?
Both of Kisuke and Sōsuke's plans and views come with a price. And Ichigo remains ignorant, but he stills fights for everyone to not pay that price, even his enemies.
In a way, it's like Sōsuke decided to pay a huge price upfront to pay back later, Kisuke is frugal and making sure to balance everything while moving forward but that means people can't attain true wealth within their lifetime. Yhwach decided to destroy the concept itself despite that it means everyone will then have to pay that price.
Ichigo, is just, bursting through all of that. But he's also only one person. And idk, that feels important to how change must be made collectively when it's about a whole society. All Ichigo does is step forward, with other people, like the beginning of a wave.
Like, this is the end of the post but SŌSUKE AND KANAME??????? That alone needs a whole thesis and how it informs both of their characters since the only person Sōsuke actually trusts out of everyone is Kaname
Sketch Ichigo And Rukia
Potential.
Every dead soul was once a living organism. Plants, trees, animals and people in Soul Society were all once alive. Humans in particular were created in such a way that their potential spanned out before them, if only they had the courage and power to grasp it.
Upon death, a human soul can go one of two ways: locking away their rationality, decision-making capacity and ability to say no, stop, enough, for the gain of power, the retention of growth and evolution; or, excising their potential, their ability for growth and power and ability to become more in such a way that allows them to keep their mind and individual thoughts.
According to shinigami, who in many ways don't understand or even know the meaning of potential, this is the difference between a soul that passes on, or a soul that hollowfies.
The true difference in them, is that a "plus" soul or Shinigami has cut out and/or eroded away their power of progress, in a way that is subtle enough not to be noticed; but, in hindsight or from the viewpoint of a foreign intelligent being, is all too clear and unsettling. A Hollow, meanwhile, has changes that are so obvious as to mark them as an entirely different species, even though they aren't; they trade their higher minds - temporarily - to keep the ability to grow and change and evolve to greater strengths and appearances. And the stronger they get, the closer a resemblance they achieve to their original form: the human one. This, after all, is how Vasto Lorde are born, and they are frighteningly similar to humans in so many ways.
Of the two types of soul, Hollows are the ones who, in the end, have the opportunity to truly become "human" again - albeit, without a physical body.
Shinigami, meanwhile, are stuck; their souls find comfort, an equilibrium, and simply stop there. They have a set amount of power, conforming most often in a 100:1 ratio to what they had as humans (and even that only partially accessible without training), and no more than this. By cutting off their growth capacity, so they have limited themselves to remaining as a fraction or less of what they once were, or could have become.
When attempting to create a hybrid, a Vizard, the process was likened by Aizen to knocking down the barriers between Shinigami power and Hollow power. I, however, hold with a... mildly different hypothesis.
I suspect that Aizen may simply have returned to those Shinigami their own potential for growth.
CRYING, SCREAMING AND RUNNING AROUND. THIS IS NOT A DRILL!
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Ichigo & Rukia: Agent of the Shinigami & Soul Society
TV アニメ『𝐁𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐂𝐇』 𝟐𝟎𝐭𝐡 𝐏𝐕
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Bleach X Tokyo Ghoul au
Now before I post about the soul reapers, hollows, visoreds, etc it’s important to understand how this au works
World Building I Guess?
Honestly most things are the same in the living world. Ghouls eat humans, humans learn to fight back, etc etc.
One thing that has happened is that ghouls happen to have a much higher rate of being able to see/ sense spirits. Since living souls gain spiritual energy faster when they are in danger, ghouls tend to have a higher population that is spiritually aware when compared to humans
CCG investigators of rank 3 or above almost always can see spirits. The amount of life threatening situations they have been in is probably higher than some of the ghouls. The Doves normally don’t see spirits where they live so most of the time no one mentions/ acknowledges it.
Now say if certain powerful Doves (such as Arima, the cool younger Mado, Suzuya and/or Amon) get sent to a place with high spiritual activity like Karakura? Well that seems like a lot of potential shenanigans and mental breakdowns to me
Karakura only has the ghouls from our main cast as Isshin has kicked out any others that he doesn’t trust with his life. Any ghouls he sees hanging around the town for more then a week, he tells to fuck off somewhere. Hopefully all the ghouls he kicked out found better homes
Due to Urahara’s intervention, the CCG typically avoids Karakura. Computerized evidence just straight up gets deleted way too often for it to be a glitch in the system. The CCG has bigger priorities than the town at the moment. However they will get around to it (around which arc I’m not sure but before/ during the fullbringer arc sounds convenient)
Fun Fact: Most human murders are never caught. Most killings are attributed to ghouls and suspects are typically cleared of suspicion once they prove they are not a ghoul. Only those with obvious motive are ever investigated and convicted.
Now you may be wondering where ghouls originated from here. Well in this au ghouls are actually all the descendants of quinces. Yhwach (I’ll never know how to pronounce this), as the son of the soul king (aka quincy Jesus) and is all around a “better human”. Through sharing his soul and teaching quinces to use their powers, he was able to create the ghoul race. That doesn’t mean all ghouls are quinces. All quinces are ghouls but not all ghouls are quinces. Quinces are ghouls who still have the spiritual abilities. Normal ghouls are those who descend from quinces but have no Quincy abilities themselves. Normal ghouls lose the Quincy bloodline when the grand parents or parents don’t activate Quincy abilities. Normal ghouls make up for this lack of spiritual Quincy power with a slightly more powerful kagune.
As souls, ghouls are no longer required to eat humans/ non ghouls to survive. Eating spiritual energy can sustain them. The only time a soul reaper or hollow ghoul has to eat non-ghoul flesh is if they use their kagune or need to regenerate. The RC cells can not be regenerated from just consuming spiritual energy from normal food. Ghouls still can’t make their own RC cells even in death.
Most ghouls end up in hell or Hueco Mundo, due to the actions they were forced to take when alive. Any race that is also a ghoul will be stronger than the average of that race. For example, a ghoul soul reaper should be stronger than an average non- ghoul soul reaper. Same applies to hollows. Ghoul hollows need to eat more to reach the next evolution stage.
Ghouls in Soul Society aren’t treated that well. Soul reaper ghouls are only able to join squads 3, 7, 10, 11 or 12 after graduating the academy. Gin just doesn’t care about what the other captains think. Komamura doesn’t like the discrimination. Hitsuguya knows they aren’t all bad from captain Shiba. Kenpatchi could not give a single fuck as long as they can fight. Kurotsuchi could always use more lab assistants/ test subjects.
Squad 4 runs a blood bank to feed ghouls that need RC cells. Each ghoul needs ID and the amount of blood they get is tracked. If they try to draw “too much” without a reason (such as needing it for a mission) they get denied and reported to their squad for “suspicious activity”. Leaving said blood bank is also a great way for soul reaper ghouls to get jumped.
Hueco Mundo is exactly the same. The strong eat the weak and all that. Honestly with the addition of ghouls, the soul reapers and living characters understand the hollows just a bit better.