Procrastinating from writing my fanfic to ponder this question: Which lieutenants are good at math?
Sasakibe: He's fine. Really enjoys writing out long columns of numbers in his fancy-ass handwriting. Is the primary reason that the Gotei made the shift to Arabic numerals for math, against Yamamoto's vehement objections.
Omaeda: Absolutely not.
Kira: Too gay to do math.
Isane: In a high-pressure situation, like emergency surgery, can crunch numbers like a calculator. Can also do math fine if she's in a quiet place and can concentrate. If she has do math in her head during a low-stakes interaction with people watching (say, calculating a tip...do they do tips in Soul Society??), gets completely flustered and loses track of what she's trying to do.
Momo: Perfectly competent, took all the higher level courses at the Academy.
Renji: Oddly good at math, but pretends he's not. Can add stacks of numbers in his head, took all the same school courses as Momo and claims she carried his ass, which is absolutely not true.
Iba: Doesn't like it and is not good at it, but slogs through and always double checks his own work. Is not too proud to ask Renji to calculate things for him.
Nanao: Fantastically good at it, including topics in pure mathematics like formal proof and number theory (I assume this kind of stuff has application to kidou, particularly the creation of). Has authored numerous monographs.
Shuuhei: Severe dyscalculia. :( It's okay, he's got many other fine qualities and he's pretty.
Matsumoto: Pretty decent at it, especially calculating things in her head. Like, Renji, pretends to be bad at it, but she does it to get out of being given work (he does it for image-related reasons). She makes mistakes in her paperwork because she gets bored with it and doesn't like to check her work, plus she knows Hitsugaya is gonna check it anyway. She says she leaves the mistakes in "for his enrichment."
Ikkaku: Marginally better at math than he is at spelling, but that's saying basically nothing.
Yumichika (included here because he actually keeps the books at Squad 11): Very competent and detail oriented. Also enjoys his own handwriting. Not above using his accounting skills in slightly unethical ways.
Nemu: This goes without saying.
Akon: Compared to other people on this list, he's a genius, but does not consider himself a "math guy" by Squad 12 standards. Extremely well versed in applied math and statistics, but those are just tools for doing his other work, y'know? Would always rather write a script or make a spreadsheet than actually calculate a thing himself.
Kiyone and Sentaro: Oh, no. Oh, dear.
Rukia: Decent, but it's not her favorite. Also not too proud to ask Renji to calculate things for her.
I think Omaeda is good at money math. if you ask him to add two double digits together, he's gonna give you a wildly incorrect answer. but you ask him to calculate 4.75% interest on a 9 figure loan? he's got it in a snap. he also does not understand the concept of decimals, he says it's because his family does not look at pennies, Soifon thinks he just never showed up to school during that quarter
At the end of "Fullmetal Alchemist", Ed Elric quits the military, has given up his ability to "play god", and is (as he has been since he burned his fucking house down as a tweenager) homeless, disabled, and crashing at the Rockbell place to help his very sick brother recover.
And it's easy and funny to imagine Edward Elric essentially becoming the house husband of successful and innovative automail mechanic Winry Rockwell (and later stay-at-home dad). Small family businesses are pretty much always a mess of needing an extra hand just to answer phones and the mail, to schedule appointments, to deliver and pick up parts, to organize stock, to "just hold this for a second for me", and so on. Pinako is not getting any younger and could use someone to cook dinner and fix the roof while she rests her back!!! Winry is busy!!!
There is also always a lot to do in a rural community, so I'm sure that Ed would find another hobby in the absence of alchemy and could turn it into a gig if necessary, if he really doesn't like automail. He has a lot of skills that he could potentially turn towards an income. I've also generally assumed that Ed made a pretty decent amount of money as a State Alchemist and still has some generous savings on that front.
But, I was also thinking, that it would be kind of funny if being a State Alchemist came with incredible retirement benefits. Like, the military wants to lure people in with wealth and power and resources - and then make alchemists desperate enough to keep these things that they become walking weapons of war, commit horrible crimes against humanity in the name of "research", and/or resort to human transmutation and become viable sacrifices. Ed never had to worry about getting kicked out (and presumably losing his benefits) because he was a perfect human sacrifice from the get-go (although he didn't know this). I'm guessing a lot of State Alchemists were never actually able to retire between dying in wars, failing out of the program (the brass finding excuses to save money! Bosses are always cheap!), or being murdered for their crimes against humanity.
But, in theory, maybe the State Alchemist retirement benefits were absolutely incredible if you could somehow survive long enough or get permission for an early, "honorable" retirement, because King Bradley (who let's say set up this financial bait) somewhat reasonably assumed that Father would completely destroy the country before he'd ever have to pay out a pension. Which means that Ed could be out of the military for years and somehow still costing Roy Mustang a lot of money.
The sad part is there’s a decent chance a large proportion of them can be blamed on one spider.
The tarantula that bit JRR Tolkien as a child.
He swore he didn’t have a spider phobia and the experience had nothing to do with the man-eating giant spiders in The Hobbit, the even more giant and even more man-eating spider in Lord of the Rings, or the unholy eldritch spider from outside creation that plunged the world into darkness and made literal Satan scream like a little kid in the Silmarillion. Very few people believe him.
Given LotR’s influence in the fantasy genre, there is a high probability that tarantula is the progenitor of even more fictional spiders than Ungoliant was.
“fantasy universes have too many spiders” factoid actually just statistical error. Georgs Spider, who bit JRR Tolkein & is to blame for menacing over 10,000 fantasy universes, is an outlier adn should not have been counted
Ran into a version of the Yuki-onna creature again and thought of Rukia and Hisana.
Someone had a meta a while ago that Rukia was the baby and Hisana the woman, then Rukia grew up to become the woman herself.
The story goes a woman in the snow his holding a crying baby and asks for help, then when you take the baby it is so impossibly heavy it crushes you/compels you to stay/makes it impossible to leave and you freeze to death and the only option to save yourself is to abandon the baby.
This does, actually map very well to them.
Rukia was a burden too heavy to carry that crushed Hisana.
Rukia was a weight too great for Renji to hold onto so he had to let go.
Hisana was a woman that had the burden of a "baby" she passed on to Byakuya, which nearly crushed him.
Hisana was, herself, a burden of grief and guilt and obligation that nearly crushed Byakuya.
Hisana was never able to let go of Rukia (forever chasing her) and died.
Byakuya was able to bring himself to let go of Hisana and Rukia alike (abandoning his promise of secrecy and literally letting Rukia go into battle and trusting her) and lived.
I think it's also noteworthy that it was when Renji started to pick Rukia up and carry her that their "romance" began, but more so that Ichigo - a representation of the sun and heat which melt snow - was easily able to carry Rukia from the beginning.
Hi, i saw this panel in hell one shot, qhere rukia commented ichigos marriage per phone. Her line was something like their are a divorce. I always thought this was a strange panel chapter, and total untypical for rukia to make such a rude comment. Also for japanese standart, making such comments about another marriage is inappropriate...but back again to the question...(im not a expeet on japanese culture)
Tite kubo get divorced few years ago, do you think this chapter panel has something to do with his personal life. He annoucent back then at jump festa 2012 his marriage, he has not publicly shared an exact date or year for his divorce. But he is a father of a son. Given that one shot from hell was realesed in 2021. Otherwise i cannot explain why dis he make such a hint on ichigos marriage life.
I also could not get rukias conclusion of a divorced couple, only because ichigo comment inoue is doing laundry. This feels so weird and cheap.
By the way what are youre thoughs on it?
Have a nice day
You mean these 687 panels?:
I don't know if another translation says "divorce", but the one I read didn't have that anywhere. Just "moral harassment".
Taking the translation choice of "Moral harassment" here in the western sense: this is usually used when someone means a person is creating a hostile environment in a place through how they're treating someone else.
Ie: a hostile workplace where everyone is bullying a certain worker by blaming them for things going wrong, heaping more work on them (or denying them work), and overall making them feel uncomfortable and stressed.
Or more accurately I think the phrase should have been translated as "psychological harassment": Psychological harassment is a form of vexatious behaviour that involves repeated hostile and unwanted words, behaviour, or actions that are painful, hurtful, annoying, humiliating or insulting. In such situations, the victim’s dignity and psychological or physical health is threatened and the work or study environment becomes toxic.
Since she's talking about having got the term from television drama's, it's almost certainly referring to an unfortunately common thing in Japanese life: Japanese people tending to stay in marriages that have gone sour and/or hostile and abusive if there are kids until the kids graduate highschool and leave home. Some live on schedules that mean they don't even see one another at all and are counting down the clock. One couple I saw in a documentary about it hadn't seen or spoken to each other in 10 years, hated and wished the other was dead and the man was sleeping around with prostitutes and other women he picked up all the time. They wouldn't even do an interview in the house, both chosing separate locations to speak with the person asking about why they stay together, which was: for their daughters sake, to give her a stable house while she was in school and to not ruin he social reputation, but they were both waiting for the day they could divorce.
Rukia is basically implying Ichigo is abusing Inoue by deliberately, hurtfully excluding her from an outing with him, cutting her off from their friend group, heaping housework on her as the excuse, and neglecting her by herself at home with the goal of wearing her down both mentally and emotionally because their marriage has soured into resentment and spite.
Rukia says this accusation as a joke out of seemingly nowhere after asking where Inoue is.
It's not a funny joke in general, but considering Inoue is excluded and not present or consulted in any way through this chapter, just shown feeling grateful Kon played with her son (who seems to have no other friends) and Ichigo's one and only shown expression when looking at her post-timeskip is in 686 and it's this remote, disconnected look:
Inoue doesn't get to have any relevance in 686 aside from announcing a meal no one is going to eat now in favor of popcorn and to inform the reader Kazui is in the house, but in specific the only words Ichigo speaks to her are "It's starting Orihime!" and "Where's Kazui?". Informing her of a fact about the event they're hosting and asking a question about the child they share in common. No interest or care or affection like you'd expect out of the moment it's revealed he married her.
After reporting where Kazui is she does not appear even in the background again.
She is left in the kitchen until the last moment, called, then ignored.
Then in 687 he only speaks of her when asked, and that's to explain her absence from a gathering of what looks like all their friends, and he doesn't defend their marriage in any way, only protests he isn't an abuser.
I think Kubo is implying Ichigo and Inoue have that kind of too-common broken, waiting-to-divorce-marriage.
He certainly isn't portraying them as deeply in love and entwined in each other's lives and hearts and thoughts.
Inoue is not shown thinking about Ichigo or positioning herself near him or reaching out for him or his attention once post-timeskip.
Ichigo genuinely isn't the sort to be psychologically torturing his legal wife because he's unhappy married to her (hence why he speaks against it) but the "living separate lives and maybe never seeing each other despite being under the same roof" isn't proven false in any way.
Not by Ichigo or Inoue's words, actions, thoughts or anything.
idk why people are still trying to do "hear me out"s on tumblr
you could talk about wanting to fuck the space needle on here and people would still call you a poser for insisting on fucking "conventionally attractive architecture" as if that's a coherent, easily-recognizable category
okay so spock (the alien in blue) essentially goes into heat. like literal heat like an animal. Anyway, spock’s in bloodlust in this episode and must go back to vulcan to have sex with his finace (or someone. but its supposed to be his fiance) or he’ll literally die. this is called pon farr and some backstory spock is half human and thought he wouldnt go through pon farr so he abandoned his HOT fiance to fuck around in space except oops pon farr happens so. he and kirk (in yellow getting his tits cut open, he’s also spocks captain and best friend) and their other friend mccoy go to vulcan so he can have sex with his fiance or get married or whatever so he doesn’t die. but then spock’s fiance (t’pring) is like no i dont want to marry spock i want to have him fight someone to death (which she can do) and spock at this point is fully in the ‘blood lust’ and is basically not in his right mind and doesnt get what’s happening. and t’pring picks kirk to be her ‘champion’ in the fight (her logic is that if spock dies in the fight she doesnt have to marry him and if kirk dies, spock will be so upset with her he won’t marry her anymore anyway). anyway kirk doesnt know that its a fight to the death and so he’s like of course i’ll do this fight if it’ll help spock and then he gets told it’s a fight to the death and he goes WHAT and right afterwards spock slices his titties open like in the gif. also eventually spock and kirk roll around in the sand and kirk fakes his death and THIS somehow knocks spock out of his blood lust and he goes back to the ship super sad bc he’s killed his ‘best friend’ only to discover kirk’s alive and we see one of his biggest smiles of the series (a big deal bc spock is vulcan and they dont show emotion). anyway this aired as the season opener in 1967. know your history and all that happy pride
Is it just me or does Orihime being in danger not really feature in Ichigo top 10 despair moments ?
ok but does ichigo even HAVE top 10 despair moments? despite how interminably long bleach is sometimes, and how much we like to make fun of him for having a glass mentality, he’s pretty plucky and doesn’t actually ‘’’’despair’’’’ that easily. I can only really think of maybe 5? major moments off the top of my head that ichigo’s really ‘despaired’ and those are 1. masaki’s death 2. the lust arc (except, like, he straight up died in that arc so idk. does dying count as ‘despairing’?) 3. winter war fighting with aizen/gin 4. when he fought ginjou just before rukia gave his powers back to him and 5. in the last fight with yuha. every other major ‘moment’ i can think of when someone mentions ‘ichigo’ and ‘despair’…. other emotions seem to predominate for me. E.g when rukia gets taken to soul society reads more as frustration, anger, helplessness etc. Ok, this one’s pretty close to despair, I guess, but there’s a definite difference in the tone compared to the other five moments i listed above. I guess how I classify ‘despair’ is basically Ichigo’s given up all fucking hope and is virtually catatonic, and ichigo after rukia’s arrest is PRETTY close to given up hope but his demeanour reads more ‘sullen’ rather than ‘catatonic’ to me there. But yeah, I’d argue that ichigo actually ‘despairing’ has been a Pretty Big Deal narrative-wise in Bleach and it’s generally in response to really dire things like the entire universe ending, compared to the safety of just one person, with the exception of Masaki’s death, of course. Which is why it’s an even bigger fucking deal that in tybw his despair at losing rukia was literally paralleled at an equal level of his despair at losing masaki. like, what the actual, literal fuck.
compared to that, i’m sure orihime being in danger is worrisome for ichigo, as would be the case for any of his friends being in danger. But I don’t think its ever triggered ‘’’’’despair’’’’’ in him bc in the bleachverse, that’s a Kind of a Big Deal reserved only for 1. Masaki 2. the world ending and 3. Rukia, apparently. literal canon.
Do you have a license for all these hot takes? ▲ Unleash the other meta conversation. Please give use Ichigo.
Or not, apparently I don't know how to read and missed that you already did one for him. Oh well.
Even though I’ve already given my Hot Take about Ichigo (see here), I figured I can take this chance to write that meta I promised re: ichiruki’s double protag status, the meaning of ichigo’s name, and what it means to be a shounen hero. This will also sort of addresses the debacle a few months ago in regard to the Only well-worded, moderately coherent and somewhat valid IH meta I have read, which is also primarily about the meaning of ichigo’s name and how that ties in with the overall theme of protection throughout the manga. (I think the basis for the IH meta – that Ichigo only ever uses the serious form of the word ‘to protect’ for ORIHIME as an individual, and that the other times he uses them are for broader swathes of things—has been debunked in the comments, but since I don’t speak Japanese I really can’t figure out the validity of either side of the argument so I’ll take it as it is. Also, when I say ‘somewhat valid meta’, what I mean is in the context of the narrative I don’t think it’s valid at all, but at least there aren’t major glaring logical fallacies in the meta itself. The bar is so, so low for IH meta. I’m not even sure we can call most of their…. text-vomit… meta at all.
Anyway. Petty and off-topic.)
So, here goes: the meta about ichigo’s name and how it correlates to the theme of protection throughout the manga, what it means to be a shounen hero, and why and how those two things tie in with ichiruki’s double protag status!
Ichigo’s name is comprised of two kanji – one obviously the kanji for the number one, the other a kanji that means ‘to protect’. We all know this. This leads to Ichigo’s name potentially having two interpretations: ‘one protector’ (or as the official eng translation put it, the one who protects), or ‘to protect one thing’ (the translation used in the scanlator’s versions + official kr translation). Both would make sense given the context of the entire story, but I tend to think the latter version is slightly more relevant (not necessarily more accurate— just more relevant), mostly because in chapter 19, straight after hearing the meaning of his name, Ichigo goes on to single out one thing (one person) that he wants to protect—his mom.
(And why does he single out his mom for this honour? Because his mom always protected him. This is relevant a little later.)
He then does go on to say that as his sisters were born and he went to the dojo and got stronger, the list of things he wanted to protect grew, so it’s absolutely valid to read his name as just meaning ‘protector’. But, despite that, it’s very clear in the text that Ichigo always has one thing (person) that he wants to protect above all no matter what. This is the ‘one’ thing that he associates his identity of ‘protector’ to. Initially, it’s his mom—because when she dies, despite the ‘growing list of people he wants to protect’ still existing, Ichigo loses his sense of identity as ‘the protector’. Sure, he still protects his sisters, but it’s duty driving him— he no longer thinks of himself as a protector. How can he, when, in his view, he’s the one who practically killed his mother? His ‘growing list of people to protect’ halts to a stop, and years later, we see him telling Rukia that he’s ‘not a good enough guy to stick his neck out for other people’. This is a lie, as we all know, but it’s important that Ichigo is espousing this rhetoric. He has stopped actively wanting to protect.
So, despite Ichigo having an innate desire to protect, I would argue it’s conditional – 1) dependent on the one person he wants to protect the most (e.g. his mom, and, as I will argue in a moment, Rukia) being alive and well, because otherwise he just falls into despair and rejects his identity as protector, and 2) initially dependent on the subject of protection being someone close to him. Ichigo, despite having progressed to ‘I will definitely protect everybody’ by the tybw arc, did not start there—it was a progression! He starts off very small and quite selfish – first, the person most important to him, his mom. Then his family. Then his friends. Then friends of friends, then acquaintances, then—and so on. This is why I said Ichigo is self-centred: everything he does is dependent first and foremost on the things and people that are most important to him. (Which is fine for a normal person! Maybe not so fine as a shounen protagonist, though that part comes later.) Ichigo doesn’t start off with some lofty ideal to protect the whole world – compare that to Rukia, who lands in the story and immediately demands him to protect everybody, regardless of distance or convenience. As dux put it in his excellent meta, this is an instinct towards protection versus a philosophy of protection. Ichigo has an instinct to protect, like most people do! But Rukia has a philosophy of protection, which most people can’t even begin to fathom or try to emulate. (This will, again, be important for a later point in this post, but for now, back to ichigo’s name.)
So basically, we have established so far that: Ichigo’s name means one who protects or protector of one thing. But whichever interpretation we go by, it’s evident in the text that Ichigo has a… tether person, of sorts, that he ties the meaning of his name and his identity of ‘protector’ to—a person he wants to protect above all. Initially it’s his mom. But after his mom dies?
It’s Rukia.
It’s blatant. Ichigo being unable to save Rukia in ch56 broken coda is DIRECTLY paralleled with him being unable to save Masaki. At the end of the arc, in having saved Rukia, Ichigo regains his identity as protector finally gets some closure re: the Masaki era of his life: ‘the rain’s finally stopped’. It’s very clear that Rukia’s importance to his identity as protector is equivalent to the importance that Masaki had on it. Rukia has now become his ‘tether’; Rukia is now the person he wants to protect above all; Rukia is the one, who, should he fail to protect her, he would fall into despair and reject his protector identity again. He WAS a little down about being unable to protect Tatsuki, Chad, and Orihime in the HM arc, but it was nothing like the abject despair he experienced at Masaki’s death + Rukia being taken away for execution, and as soon as RUKIA comes back and affirms his identity, despite the fact of his failure still existing, Ichigo perks straight back up. Basically, failures to protect people other than Rukia get Ichigo down, but it’s not enough to keep him down as long as Rukia’s still standing.
Ichigo also consistently goes apeshit over Rukia’s safety in particular. He’s not spurred into action re: going to find the Vaizards until Rukia becomes hurt. He thinks of Yammy and Ulquiorra, but his eyes don’t glaze over black until he thinks of Grimmjow, who has hurt Rukia. He refuses to split up and Rukia specifically calls him out that it’s out of concern for HER safety. As soon as he feels Rukia being cut down, he immediately throws away the mission to go save her instead. And most importantly – what’s the main criteria for Ichigo deciding on the one he wants to protect the most? It’s the person who protects HIM. Rukia is one of the only people in the text who consistently protects Ichigo, physically, mentally, and emotionally. (She is also the only person that the text refers to as having ‘saved’ Ichigo. Nobody else gets this distinction.)
Alright! So Ichigo’s instinct towards protection has a self-centred bent to it, and the person at the centre of this instinct has gone from being Masaki to Rukia. So what now from here?
A little bit of a tangent: when I first read the chapter regarding the meaning of Ichigo’s name, I was a little taken aback, because – what a selfish name for a shounen protag, for someone who’s supposed to go on to become a hero of the world. Heroes don’t get to protect just one thing, they have to protect everybody! How is Ichigo going to be a shounen protag saving the whole world, if he’s only going to protect one thing?
To answer this question, we need to have a look at what makes a typical shounen protag. Look at Naruto, whose ‘ninja way’ has rehabilitated countless people, who eventually became Hokage, so that ‘his ninja way’ officially became adopted as the whole Leaf Village’s ‘ninja way’. Look at Luffy and his crew, whose carefree attitudes and ride-or-die comradeship between their crew members is widely admired and emulated. Look at Fairy Tail, where Natsu’s guild is the ideal for what a guild should be, and many guilds have reformed in their image with their values. What makes a typical shounen protagonist, I would argue, are two main things: an indisputable, unshakeable, almost inhumanly good ideal widely recognized within the canon as the way that things should be, and the faith, power, and drive necessary to rehabilitate people to this ideal and change the world so that it becomes closer to this ideal.
Naruto is the ideal of a ninja. Luffy and his crew are the ideal of a pirate crew. Natsu’s Fairy Tail guild is the ideal of a mage guild.
Is Ichigo the ideal of what a Shinigami should be?
Not initially! Initially, he’s just a prickly little kid with a shitload of trauma and depression to boot! Initially, his instinct to protect has a self-centred bent to it! Initially, he’s not even a Shinigami at all!
This is where Rukia comes in. Rukia and her philosophy of protection is the ideal of this series – she is what all Shinigami should be. The text isn’t even subtle about this—Rukia canonically has the most beautiful sword (soul) in all of Soul Society. Realistic or not, Rukia is the ‘absolute good’ of this universe—her ideal is, theoretically, the universal ideal.
But idealism alone doesn’t make Rukia the protagonist-- Rukia lacks the faith, power and drive necessary to turn people to her way of thinking and enact change, which is the other key component of a shounen protag. This is the part that Ichigo supplies—his complete and utterly unshakeable faith in Rukia and her values, the power necessary to back those values, and the ability to spread these values far and wide so that other people start to take up these values as well. I said above that Rukia’s philosophy of protection is so far-fetched that most people can’t even begin to fathom or emulate it—but Ichigo is not ‘most people’. He’s a shounen protag, goddammit! He has the ability to take up an ‘ideal’ that for most people would be impossible, and actually enact change towards that ideal.
This is why Ichigo and Rukia are double protagonists. Not because they were designed to be matchy-matchy or because of their avalanche of matching titles or whatever else. This is why. They are literally two halves of one shounen protagonist. Kubo called them sand and rotator in the side A and B poems, and he could NOT have picked a better analogy for them. Think of a watermill (or a sand mill, as the analogy is given), which is used to grind grain. The mill by itself cannot perform its purpose any more than the water by itself can magically grind the grain. The water needs to be driven by the wheel through the right mechanisms, and the wheel needs the water to actually function. Rukia drives Ichigo, points him in the right direction with her values, and Ichigo supplies the force necessary to enact change. Rotator, and sand. One protagonist, split into two.
(As a completely unrelated aside, I don’t know what it’s like in Japan, but in Korea ‘grinding the grain’ is a euphemism for sex, and watermills are inextricably associated with illicit liaisons. They’re the eastern world’s equivalent to the western world’s stables- any raunchy business conducted outside is usually conducted in a watermill.)
This is also why Ichigo’s name wasn’t something more all-encompassing. He can ‘protect one thing’ and still be a hero – as long as the ‘one thing’ he protects is Rukia. He wants to protect Rukia above all else, to the detriment of others, even (as evidenced by him turning away from rescuing Orihime to rescue Rukia)—but Rukia tells him no, no, I refuse to be protected by you, you have to protect the whole world. This is why it HAS to be Rukia for Ichigo – anyone with less than the absolute selfless ideal that Rukia has could never make Ichigo into the hero. Rukia turns Ichigo’s head to the whole world, opens his eyes to the possibility of protecting more than those in his immediate circle, makes him selfless enough to go through with it. Rukia makes Ichigo the hero. (Big aside: I’m not using ‘hero’ and ‘protag’ interchangeably here. Ichigo is the ‘hero’ of the narrative, but BOTH ichigo and rukia are the ‘protagonists’ of the story.)
But that isn’t the end of it. I have mentioned, in the past, that Bleach is not typical shounen, that it is structured more like YA lit and should be analysed as such. ‘But Sera! You just spent like 2 A4 pages talking about why Ichigo and Rukia are Standard Shounen Protags together!’ Ah but you see, that’s only initially. INITIALLY, Ichigo and Rukia need each other to become One Whole Stock Standard Shounen Protag. Rukia lacks faith and drive, Ichigo lacks ideal. They need the other to support their flaws, initially. To be completely honest, this is an excellent way to start an unhealthy codependent relationship. The most beautiful part about Ichiruki is that they don’t go down this path at all. They start becoming a whole shounen protag individually, by adopting the other person’s strength as their own. Rukia’s ideals inspire Ichigo, and by tybw, he is as avid about protecting everybody as Rukia is. Rukia sees Ichigo’s unrelenting faith in the fact that she is a good person worth saving, and starts believing in it herself and reciprocates in kind in HM and FB arcs. This is where the YA component comes in—YA protags, unlike typical Shounen Protags, don’t start off with an unapproachable ideal and the power+faith+drive necessary to change the world with it. They GROW into it. That is what Ichigo and Rukia are doing—they are both growing throughout the whole story to fit their protagonist roles, so that eventually, they can become One Whole Independent protagonist on their own.
It’s a beautiful, perfectly balanced, ironic jigsaw puzzle: Rukia had the ideal, but didn’t have the ability to turn others to this ideal. The only person she turned to it was Ichigo, but that was enough—Ichigo turns everyone else to it as well, overcoming centuries of tradition. Ichigo had the faith and drive, but no-one to put it behind. The only person he put it behind was Rukia, and that was enough—she and her values guide his choices and actions, and he becomes heroic. Ichigo and Rukia each failed one criteria for being a shounen protag, except with each other, BUT THAT WAS ENOUGH. Affecting and changing just one person—each other—was enough to set everything in motion.
A couple other points that I couldn’t find a place to fit into the essay cohesively, but think they’re still worth a mention:
Rukia says ‘all souls should be protected’, and she enacts this by protecting Ichigo, who is a hybrid of all the different soul types present in the narrative: human, quincy, hollow, reaper. Ichigo, despite being such a mixed entity, identifies firmly as shinigami, not because the shinigami convinced him with their ironclad, lofty morals but because Rukia did.
If Ichigo’s main flaw is being self-centred and tunnel visioned + a weird sort of superiority/hero complex, then Rukia’s main flaw is probably the exact opposite - despite having this incredible ideal, her lack of faith in herself + her tendency to obey the system in all but the most dire, life-threatening situations. Even their flaws are a perfect balancing act, mitigating each other out. (Rukia’s main flaws I probably want to go into in a bit more detail some other time, since it’s not something the fandom in general has much discussion on.)
So! In summary, the tl,dr version:
Ichigo’s name means ‘protector’ or ‘to protect one thing’ (both versions have been used in official translations). The latter is more relevant, as I have explained above. This ‘one thing’ initially is his mom, but by the end of the SS arc, it has very firmly become Rukia, again evidence listed above.
This had the potential to be problematic, as it’s not very heroic of someone to want to protect just one person, to hell with everyone else. BUT the narrative sidesteps that by making Ichigo and Rukia two halves of one shounen protagonist, and making them work best when they are together.
Shounen protags require two components: an ideal, and the ability+desire to enact that ideal. Rukia had the former, Ichigo had the latter. That’s why it’s not problematic for Ichigo to want to protect just one person most— because that one person is actually the ‘ideal moral standard’ of their entire universe, and she keeps telling him to use his powers for good and not just her.
But that’s not even all. Initially, they need the other to become ‘whole’, so to speak— but they don’t stay that way. Ichigo and Rukia have an immensely positive impact on each other, and help each other grow to adopt the best traits of the other and become a hero in their own right. Again, this is why they are both protagonists— because both of them kept growing and changing, right up to the final arc.
So, even though it’s been said a million times before, it bears repeating: Bleach genuinely is a story about Ichigo and Rukia, both of whom felt a little displaced in their own worlds and had trouble making connections. They connected with each other, and only then could their immense capacity for good could start changing the world. That’s really the crux of it— that it had to be each other for these two, not anybody else. Nobody else could bring out the best in them except for the other. They would never have become this extraordinary had it not been for the other person recognising their inherent value. It absolutely had to be Rukia for Ichigo, and vice versa. It’s always going to be the Ichigo and Rukia show.
9th doctor era was simply The Best One im sorry. shaved head leather jacket doc martins telling people to kill themselves. sweetie pea retail worker universal union organizer who became god for him. their stray cat horny little boytoy bottom who becomes an unkillable eldritch horror because of their love. did i mention the first guys a dilf and the other two have daddy issues.
"Going a couple hours without eating a single kind of food? No thanks, I would rather kill a child" is such a wildly horrifying take to see MULTIPLE people proudly stating.
how can you cheat when it's open book and open Internet? if I look up the answer, that's allowed. if I message my friends for the answer, that's also allowed?
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