Way back at the beginning of this arc somebody asked me if I thought Ulquiorra fell in love with Orihime.
I deferred my answer at the time, partly because I wanted to get through the story before rendering judgment on it (I hadn’t read it in a decade), but also because “did he fall in love with her” seemed, to me, to somewhat trivialize a relationship with tremendous importance to the story, going far beyond “was he into her”.
Because sure? He seems into her in the early chapters after her arrival in Hueco Mundo, in the extremely annoying way that middle school boys act around their crush. He shows up in her cell apropos of nothing to neg her. He spends his time in Hueco Mundo thinking about her. He gets in a philosophical argument with her for no real reason (besides her being somebody he wants to impress). And he repeatedly provokes Ichigo, Orihime’s crush, into fighting him, in what sure seems like a romantic rivalry of sorts.
But tell it like that, and you miss the real emotional core of the story, the reason that people like me say this is the hands-down artistic peak of the series. Because Orihime’s not just a girl who Ulquiorra thought was pretty. She’s a person with very strong, admirable values, and though Ulquiorra is in hardcore denial of it for 99% of the story, that’s what attracts him to her. He feels a need to tear it down, of course, because it makes him feel weak, this idea that an ideology other than the one he’s lived his life by could be closer to the truth. And yet every time he tries to tear it down, Orihime pushes back. She reasserts herself. And her friends– Chad, Rukia, Renji, and especially Ichigo and Uryu– back her up at every turn. She refuses to give in to fear, because she can’t, so long as her friends are with her.
And that what makes the climax of this story so beautiful. Because Ulquiorra has won the argument! Not only does he defeat Ichigo and Uryu rather handily, but then he loses to a version of Ichigo that has abandoned morality, pretty conclusively proving that Ulquiorra’s philosophy is superior. And Orihime slips into despair.
But only for a minute. Because even knowing he’s going to die in a few short moments, Ulquiorra jumps in, not even to save Orihime directly, but to stop her friend from being hurt. He puts her values above his own. He’s preserving those bonds that Orihime so treasures, and in doing so, creates a new bond, a “heart” that will last even beyond his death.
So yes, I suppose you could say he fell in love. But that doesn’t really tell the half of it.
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