Never going to get over the fact Ichigo blew past every enemy, every ally, every dear friend laying wounded and bleeding and broken on the ground to quietly stand with Byakuya in what they both thought were his final moments.
He checked on Rukia, but left her on the ground.
He checked on Renji, but left him collapsed in rubble.
He'd left behind his human friends.
He'd torn through the one enemy directly in front of him and blew past all the rest as unimportant.
All to be at Byakuya's side. All to listen to what might have been his final words and last request and cry with him over the horror and tragedy of his death and the ruin of Soul Society.
This is equally as profoundly devoted and romantic as Byakuya unhesitatingly killing someone he thought was a mentor because they were Ichigo's enemy.
They both, in separate situations, unprompted by anyone, chose the other over everyone else in a desperate situation.
#never ever going to be able to get over their relationship#enemies to ride or die lovers#the best ship in bleach
Actually, I want those tags as part of the post.
They are the PERFECT enemies to lovers because they had deeply opposing viewpoints and came into genuine conflict, and Ichigo CONVINCED Byakuya he was wrong and to take on his viewpoint.
And in the process they came to deeply appreciate and understand and trust and cherish each other. Getting past their clash, they each find they like who the other person is.
To the point when the time comes for them to choose between the other and someone or everyone else, they pick each other.
I love how Ichigo approaches Hueco Mundo with openness and curiosity.
He comes to the world of dead souls and bones and empty hearts and the first thing he does is notice something thriving and reassesses it from being a "dead world" to someplace alive.
Nobody else does this.
No one else, human or shinigami, appreciates or notices in any way that Hueco Mundo is a complete place with little critters and comfy sand to lay on. The most they have is textbook facts about it they give in answer, like Ishida telling Ichigo the little hollow subsists on the denser than other places ambient reishi in the air.
Everyone else looks at it with dread and fear, is focused on saving Inoue or gearing up to cross the desert, but Ichigo is actually looking around and appreciating the place, is wondering about it.
Also: I love how he's the only one that flops out, stretching comfortably all over the place as easily as home, visually embracing and joining the landscape while the other's carefully pick closed in spots to sit:
Just like in when he arrived in Soul Society he was comfortable being there and interacting with the world and people when the others were in a rush or treating it as strange and discomforting, Ichigo is again the only one able to simply be in this world like it's natural. Because it is for him.
Just...Ichigo is the only one part-hollow here and he's also the only one showing real ease being there. Unlike Ishida and Chad, this is Ichigo's world as much as the living and Soul Society worlds are. He belongs here and fits here in a way they don't, and realizing that is going to be the crux of his character development through the following arc, and right here in a moment of rest he's kind of foreshadowing that.
I'd argue that Chad had probably felt at home in Hueco Mundo to, but on a small scale.
When Ichigo and Uryu were talking, you see Chad sorta feeling the sand with curiosity (not sure how to describe it)
Like I said, this is probably more on a smaller scale compared to Ichigo, whereas he could be considered a natural-born Vizard (that he has Hollow 'DNA' or whatever you wanna call it). As a Fullbringer, Chad more likely just carries a trace of the 'essence' or energy of a Hollow.
I liked how casual Uryu was with the conversation too at the beginning. He had some distain towards Hollows, but at the sight of the tiny Hollow, he just left it be. Almost like he too was amazed by the...I guess biology (or however you wanna call it) of the Hollows.
Note: the subtler moments with Chad (feeling the sand) and Uryu (looking at the lizard) were anime-only, I think. Although, in the manga, there was still a quiet moment with Chad as Ichigo and Uryu talked.
literally this season of the show is going to look like this:
This looks awful.
For comparison's sake:
Having zero contrast and everything being flat neon colors or red has been the hallmark of the TYBW anime. The black and white manga is an infinite improvement over that "high def" animation. The colored manga is an infinite improvement.
One of the final fights of the series and it's gonna be a bubblegum mash of flashing monochromatic pink and...something happening.
Which is an especially baffling decision because Kubo's art style is the embodiment of high contrast, having lots of solid black and white and negative space to artistically highlight and make central the figures and what they're doing.
So: full on, Zangetsu was about to kill Ishida and Inoue.
He knocked Ishida back and to the side, then charged up a cero to take him out permanently, then Inoue called out and he turned to attack her instead. We can see that in where he's aiming shifting. He's facing and aiming at Ishida, then Inoue calls out and in the next wide shot he's turned 90 degrees away from Ishida's position to aim at her.
This was on purpose.
Zangetsu was trying to kill Ishida and Inoue.
He was content to ignore them while he was fighting Ulquiorra, but Ishida interfered and Zangetsu struck up. Knocking him away by brutally goring him was by any reasoning enough to keep Ishida out of the fight, and Ishida and Inoue both are distinctly weaker than him - no threat - but he keeps going.
Zangetsu says later on when we find out for sure he was in control of this moment that he doesn't care at all about what Ichigo wants to protect and only wants to protect Ichigo and while he doesn't speak, from context of how he acts and the way he acted in the Sogyoku fight, Zangetsu isn't at all mindless instinct.
So why the murder attempt?
My theory is Zangetsu ruthlessly judged them as people who would be an ongoing threat to Ichigo, getting in his way, hurting him in non physical ways, and being a liability and danger on the battlefield later. He's out to protect Ichigo from everything right at that moment. Even them. And so he decided to not let that interference stand or give it a chance to repeat and just take them out now.
Problem solved.
Which flows very interestingly with how Ichigo tries to create distance between himself and them for the rest of the series - leaving or trying to leave them behind in one way or another, just not permanently with murder.
Zangetsu also IS Ichigo even as he's semi-separate as a sword, and tied very powerfully to his subconscious. Ichigo at the start of this section of the fight had deliberately made distance between himself and them and they closed it against his will, he didn't want them there. Ichigo himself wanted them to go away or not be there in the first place, and being unconscious, Zangetsu, who doesn't care about these people, took that shared sentiment and carried it to his own logical conclusion and tried to eliminate them after they proved to be "a threat" against Ichigo.
Amazing how if you point out how Ichigo-as-Zangetsu was aiming to kill Inoue and Uryuu in that nuclear-sized Cero, that both Zangetsu admit they don't give a rat's ass about anyone not named Ichigo, and that this should not - in any way- be considered a romantic 'Ichihime' moment, you get shouted down.
Can lead a horse to water but can't make it drink, I suppose.
Thinking today about the scene at the end of the Soul Society Arc where Rukia tells Ichigo she's decided to stay in Soul Society
[cut because I put a million pictures in this]
I want to start out by saying that I think that normal, non-sicko Bleach readers should just take this as it's presented. On a meta, narrative level, I think Kubo had to do this to reassure the reader that "this is slightly bittersweet, but it's a happy ending. They are parting as friends, by their own volition," because it could really be quite ambiguous if weren't addressed so explicitly. It also follows up nicely from Ichigo's conversation with Orihime at the beginning at the arc, where he's wrestling with whether or not to embark on the rescue
The context of this pep talk is interesting as well, because Ichigo knows (but Orihime doesn't) that is was Rukia's own brother that ruthlessly fetched her. It's ambiguous what, if anything, that Ichigo was able to discern about Rukia and Renji's relationship with each other, but we, the readers, know that they know each other and have some kind of shared past. In other words, maybe Rukia's "family and friends" aren't the rosy portrait Orihime is imagining here.
Then, because Kubo likes to keep us on our toes, the literal next chapter is Renji visiting Rukia in jail, where we learn that, while their relationship is obvious one giant "It's Complicated", they're not actually enemies. Byakuya, on the other hand, who may have come across as the more reasonable one in the arrest scene, is revealed as the real asshole to watch out for.
I'm getting off topic, like I always do when I talk about this arc. My point is that Rukia's "I've decided to stay" implies an optimism towards her Soul Society connections, a little bit like slapping an "And they lived happily ever after! (at least until next arc)" across the screen, please pick up your popcorn.
However! I'm a Soul Society sicko and this is wild to me because nothing in the worldbuilding, especially including stuff we'll see in the future, supports the idea that Rukia would be allowed to just go off and live in the World of the Living, if she so chose.
Rukia is a military asset, even if she's not a particularly valuable on at this point. Later on, we find out that most people aren't even allowed to quit the Gotei (Shirogane's built different). She's also, for better or worse, a Kuchiki. She is of value to numerous parties in Soul Society, they are not going to let her just fuck off to the World of the Living. What's she gonna do, anyway? Get Urahara to give her another gigai?? I guess maybe, but the idea of Yamamoto signing off on her discharge like "yeah, it's fine" is ridiculous to me.
I think it's very funny that most people badmouth Bleach filler, but most fans' general impressions of how Soul Society works come entirely from filler arcs. Shinigami do not regularly go back and forth to the World of the Living. No one in canon ever "just goes" to the World of the Living. Senkaimon seem to be strictly regulated and monitored. When Rukia and Renji sneak off to Hueco Mundo, Renji notes that they needed Byakuya's help to get to Urahara's. It's not surprising to me that Rukia didn't visit Ichigo when he lost his powers. Astronauts aren't allowed to just borrow the space shuttle because they feel like going to the moon.
There's a very easy and sensible explanation for the "I've decided to stay" scene, which is that Rukia is simply lying. Well, half-lying. I think, if she were given the choice, that Rukia would want to stay in Soul Society. I won't say that she likes being a shinigami (only, like 10 people actually like being shinigami and they're all insane), but it's a big part of her identity, and it's hard to imagine her giving up on it. Additionally, she has had a big breakthrough in her relationship with her brother, and it's not too hard to imagine that a reconciliation with Renji holds some appeal, as well. Her captain championed her rescue. She's finally apologized to Kuukaku. Even though Rukia's life in Soul Society has a lot of downsides, she's been given an opportunity for change, and I think she would want to take it.
The Gotei is shitty, which Rukia is quite familiar with, but Ichigo is not. I think this is one of those things where, like, as a parent, you smooth things over when explaining them to your kids when they're small, and ease them into the injustices of life. Ichigo would be pissed if he thought Rukia was trapped where she was. She doesn't necessarily feel trapped, so she goes along with the idea that she was given the option to stay and just chose not to take.
To be honest, the alternatives are probably worse. I can think of two reasons why Rukia might be officially allowed to move to the World of the Living:
They are wary of Ichigo, who just made them look like a bunch of clowns. Letting Rukia go to the World of the Living is effectively ceding her to him. Perhaps they're even hoping that she'll act as an influence on him, sympathetic to Soul Society.
She's explicitly instructed to spy on him (possibly also Urahara).
Both of those are pretty blueeegggghhh in my opinion. I mean, it's really just the substitute badge thing from the Fullbringer arc, but worse.
I'm not sure I have an actual conclusion statement to this. Every once in a while, like from a fanfic perspective, I get interested in thinking about "What would Rukia's decision making process look like? Did she talk to Renji or Byakuya or Ukitake?" and then I'm just like "lol there's no way she actually had a choice."
I love how not-looking, I cannot look Ichigo is standing with his back turned while Rukia is swaying and turning back toward him with her whole body, even as she's allowing Renji to shove her away.
The story telling and emotion here is so powerful.
He's just argued they should go save Inoue, they refused, then he said he'd go himself and was told "no, you can't do that".
Rukia had just argued to go save Inoue, shouted defiantly at her captain for the suggestion Inoue went of her own volition, then outright stated to Yamamoto that she's going to refuse the order not to help Inoue....and then the Senkaimon opens and everyone is suddenly and abruptly leaving.
Rukia is more desperate than Ichigo to save Inoue, wants to save her enough to outright state she'll commit treason, and it was her anticipated refusal in particular that made Yamamoto send Byakuya and Kenpachi to force the issue. The way Rukia is looking back isn't just an apology, but her almost begging him to speak up and argue and make a way for her to go save her friend. Rukia is almost physically hurt by not being able to save Inoue and help Ichigo do it and by his silence - but they both stay silent because there is no arguing in this moment.
This isn't like Rukia when it waa who was taken. He doesn't know Inoue that well, she may very well have picked the other side as far as he knows - and it was Inoue who, before Ichigo went to save Rukia, argued he shouldn't go because "Rukia's where she wants to be".
He insists on going to save her because she's his friend, but I think it's opposite of how he later goes after Ishida.
He says he'll change his mind if he's turned traitor, but never actually believes Ishida was traitor because he believes in their bond and friendship and in Ishida himself.
He says he'll save Inoue, but never believes in her. When he gets there and it's revealed she was taken, he's surprised, not validated. He thinks she's a traitor, and intends to try to change her mind to bring her back.
I also think Rukia has misinterpreted what Yamamoto says just before this, but that Ichigo didn't.
Ichigo says: "Fine. I'm not asking the Soul Society to help me. Just tell me how to get to Hueco Mundo. Inoue is my friend. I'll save her myself."
And Yamamoto replies: " You will not. We require your assistance in the coming battle. We cannot permit you to do as you wish or throw your life away. You will standby and await further orders. That is all."
Ichigo then goes quiet.
Ichigo's silence in particular here is fascinating.
Ichigo is in disbelief they said no and wants to press the issue, wants to ask Rukia in particular for help, but doesn't, because he fully understands the situation and agrees with Yamamoto. He makes one token protest of "NO!" when it's stated, but then doesn't argue with the idea again. Rukia does, but not Ichigo.
He genuinely thinks Inoue went because she wanted to, that she's a traitor, and hesitates about it.
Should he actually go save her?
He has an angry look of "Fine, I'll do it myself" at the end of the chapter. All signs point to he was going to save her despite orders, but he crucially doesn't move to do anything to save Inoue until Tatsuki confronts him about her disappearance. He says he'll try to be back by December 5th when Mizuirou is telling him about a movie, so he's planning to go, but he's at school, not preparing, and never got around to telling his sisters and father anything before he left.
He has a place in the coming war, is needed where he is and can easily guess they're going to go to Hueco Mundo so he could try to save her then. Yamamoto's "no" to going to Hueco Mundo was more of a "not yet" than a real no.
I think Ichigo was initially waiting for Yamamoto's order to move, that he was going to take advantage of the door they opened for him then do what he wanted - helping them and saving Inoue - when Tatsuki punched his head through some glass. I think Tatsuki's anguish about it was what sparked him to decide to go to Hueco Mundo now instead of on the shinigami's timeline and went straight from school to Urahara's to ask if he had a way to get there.
Deciding to go to Urahara and save Inoue sooner was Ichigo's plan B, not the plan all along I think.
Some Bleach fans get really mad at you if you infer Chad, Uryu and Orihime are as secondary to the overall workings of Bleach as most of the Shinigami are by the end of, like, Soul Society
"I cook and cook, but nobody ever eats what I make! I was starting to think there was something wrong with my taste buds!!"
The Karakura gang are SUCH terrible friends to each other. She is SO shocked and excited someone finally ate and complimented her cooking, and from this comment she's made a lot of attempts. Considering Japanese culture has a homecooked food = love thing deeply imbedded in it, that says a LOT.
Her food and love and friendship are being constantly rejected or dismissed. To the point she's thinking there's something wrong with HER.
I believe this is the only time her cooking is accepted and eaten in the entire series. In TLA she brings people bread, but that's from the bakery she works at, not her own cooking. In the final chapter we see her coming out of a kitchen in an apron, but her food is never eaten or reacted to, everyone is excited instead for the soda and popcorn Yuzu and Karin are bringing.
But to delve into her food more:
This set of panels made me think of that Kubo interview where he said her food looked weird but tasted good and suddenly I'm remembering the BBS christmas Inoue's soulbomb where she says she made a christmas cake and the secret ingredient is potatoes.
I think most everyone knows of Dylan Hollis's reaction to a Chocolate potato cake:
He goes from "This is why we don't perform lobotomies anymore" and "I bet this recipe is just all the wrong answers on a baking test" and "It smells like dentures" to "It's incredible and I'm mad about it."
He has the same reaction to a chocolate mayonnaise cake.
Those recipes are from 1912 and 1956 and this guy focuses on retro recipes. So now I'm imagining Inoue cooks like a housewife from the early 1900's. Maybe she only has a second-hand, old cookbook with recipes that use cheap ingredients in "creative" ways to substitute for things during wartime and it sounds strange and alarming, but works.
Maybe from the experience of making her own meals for a year with only that book for help she's worked out which ones are delicious and only makes the good ones for her friends, but they're still things like mystery pumpkin pie which substitutes pumpkin for kidney beans and comes out a bit "meaty" despite tasting good and like regular pumpkin pie (apparently).
I never thought I'd see Dylan Hollis in a Bleach-related post, but here we are and I love it ^^
I do get the feeling that the whole food thing is meant to be a running gag, but I also think that her friends mostly don't have the heart to say to Orihime what they think about her food...which is still equally bad.
I don't remember if this was in the manga or anime filler (I honestly believe it was early in the Bount Arc), but there was a scene of Rukia trying one of Orihime's dishes and she loved it!
Kubo was the one to write/draw her as a horrible cook, bringing about actual bad flavour combos and showing the rest of the characters reacting badly.
Keyword "interview"
How many of us, simple fans, have access to the interviews? Which means the only thing we have to keep going for information is the Anime, on a more global availability, and the Manga in the countries that do sell it.
Putting under read more 'cause it kind of turned out way longer than intended and has big images attached. ^^'
Warning: I literally am reviewing and judging sketches Kub0 drew of the Ichi//Hime fam post-manga and just being critical of I//H as a whole.
“Kub0 has yet to release any artwork of the Ichi//Hime family together!”
I just recently recalled this statement made years ago by anti I//Hs and became rather curious over whether or not this statement was still true or not. It’s been about 8+ years since the manga ended and I//H became canon with their mini-me child being revealed alongside. So, out of genuine curiosity, I decided to see if Kub0 had since drawn the I//H family in any capacity.
Only to discover that, nope, he indeed had not.
The closest I could find of any drawings made by Kub0 that involved Ichig0's family post-manga were these two sketches he made:
A sketch of Ichig0 and Kαzui with Kub0's signature.
And the pic he drew of Ichig0 with Kαzui during quarantine (which I will admit is super adorable omg).
Two pictures featuring a father and his son.
But! You'll notice with both of these sketches, 0rihime is missing. You know, the wife of Ichig0 and mother to said child?? She's not so much as shown in the background or right there alongside her husband and kid! She's just, not present what-so-ever...
And the saddest part? When I tried searching for any sketches Kub0 made of Kαzui with 0rihime, nothing came up. Not a single sketch featuring mother and son. I only found those two pics of Kαzui with his father. That's it.
And there wasn't a single sketch that had all three of them together.
The closest I could find was of an edited version of the quarantine pic an I//H fan drew where they added 0rihime in. That's right, an I//H fan had to add 0rihime into the sketch in order to get a proper Ichi//Hime family pic, because Mr. Tite Kub0 couldn't be bothered to do so himself in the first place. I also found other edited pics that just took separate pics of the three and mashed them together, which is just... sad.
I think the closest there's been to the three being seen together as a family was in the manga and even that is a bit of a stretch.
This then led me to see if Kub0 had since drawn Ichig0 and 0rihime together and came up with two more sketches:
A sketch of the two standing next to each other, looking at one another.
Another sketch of the two's portraits.
And just like with the previous two pics, I noticed something about both pics. In the first one, 0rihime and Ichig0 are keeping a distance between themselves, and the sketch overall is rather simplistic and not really readable. I can barely make out either of their expressions, though 0rihime looks shocked? Confused?? idk Meanwhile, Ichig0 looks either blank or irritated? He might be talking to her??
As for the second sketch, Ichig0 looks like he had more time and effort put into his portrait, while 0rihime looks thrown in last second. Given how much bigger Ichig0 is, it gives off the impression that Kub0 drew a pic of Ichig0 first, and then added 0rihime off to the side, in the background, which explains why she's so small and seems tacked on. You can essentially remove her from the sketch entirely as she doesn't look part of it as a whole.
Also, this same sketch had an I//H shipper tack on Kαzui to try and make it a family pic, just like with the other one.
Despite Kub0 canonizing Ichig0 and 0rihime as a married couple with a kid, despite it being nearly a decade now, despite I//H shippers asking Kub0 to give more details about how the two got together and what their relationship is like as a family and couple, he still hasn't bothered to actually give the Ichi//Hime fam any proper spotlight.
I hate bringing up other mangas for comparison, but even Nαruto, despite its own controversial ending and endgame ships, showcased some sweet family moments with their next gen families and even had cute couple-y moments between the endgame pairs. Kishim0t0 at least bothered to put some effort into trying to sell his endgame ships to fans. Meanwhile, Kub0 has left I//H high and dry of any basic domestic fluff.
And honestly?
I just find that to be plain sad. Sad that even though a pairing is made canon, is made to be married with a child, there's still this lack of intimacy between the two. Yes, many I//H antis have pointed out how much Ichig0 and 0rihime lacked development and intimacy prior to the ending, but it's post-ending where I feel the failure of I//H really comes to ahead.
I//H stans tend to use Ichig0 and 0rihime's marriage and product of their consummation as a crutch or a "got'cha" to prove them being canon somehow means they're a perfect pairing. But it really doesn't mean anything if there's no real intimacy outside of a legal piece of paper and offspring. Those two things don't prove anything and shouldn't be used as evidence for a happy, healthy relationship.
Because, despite what is believed by many, a marriage and kids does not automatically translate to a good relationship. People can be married with kids and still be unhappy or lack real closeness or intimacy in their relationship. Just like how the alternative (i.e. not married and no kids), can mean a happy and close relationship. Basically, a marriage and children are not required nor are proof of a happy, healthy relationship.
Kub0 himself has already proven to me that he doesn't even care about Ichi//Hime as a pairing, despite the marriage and kid. He hasn't shown that Ichig0 and 0rihime are close and seems to actively avoid drawing the family together, leading the fans to do so for him out of desperation. He was more than happy to show 0rihime's one-sided devotion towards Ichig0 throughout the manga, but never bothered to show Ichig0 ever returning those feelings, and then just ended with the two married with a son. Only later offhandedly mentioning that the two got together sometime after university when a fan asked him about it. And Ichig0 had to be prompted by his friends to make a move on her, not because he did so on his own accord.
Ichi//Hime may be endgame canon, but it's still hollow and empty.
Update 7/9/24
I had actually forgotten about another pic Kub0 did and was only recently reminded of it by a twt user.
The pic features Ichig0, Rukiα, Ichikα, and Kαzui altogether.
And I have to agree with the twt user’s assessment on it, it does look like an accidental family pic. I can totally see some people who aren’t familiar with Bleαch taking this out of context and mistaking Rukiα and Ichig0 as the parents. It’s a very cute and silly sketch too, with Rukiα and Kαzui messing around with Ichig0 and Ichikα dealing with their antics. An overall happy, wholesome pic.
Which makes the fact that Kub0 drew Rukiα alongside Kαzui and not his own mother, 0rihime, all the more noticeable and depressing. It really does feel like Kub0 is actively avoiding making any happy I//H fam material. He always falls back on drawing Ichig0 and Rukiα together (which he has admitted to enjoy doing).
On permanently broken bankai being a retcon, Renji is the best example as it's shown, then immediately broken.
Ikkaku's bankai shows up, is immediately broken, then never seen again, though Komamura tells him he should have used it in Fake Karakura, implying it had healed.
Renji on the other hand, is repeatedly shown to have a fully recovered bankai.
Chapter 141:
Chapter 143:
In these two chapters we see the full shape of it in it's pristine, intact form, then we see it literally broken into tiny shards by Byakuya. Not one vertebrae is intact in any recognizable form, and on the right you can see the main snake-scull is shattered, only a broken top portion left left.
Chapter 265:
Renji activates his bankai and the skull and segments are intact, not even a scratch. It immediately dissipates because Szayael Apporro has a bankai dispersing field or something, but we DO see it and it is undamaged.
Chapter 498:
Chapter 502:
Renji attempts to activate bankai twice, and from dialogue it's all-but stated to be intact and fully functional, supposedly strong enough to take Byakuya's place if he falls and Renji's only way to imagine fighting the quincy.
Certainly they both at least expect there to be vertebrae and the skull there instead of splinters so the actual function of firing that kido blast is even possible.
But in Chapter 516 Kubo uses Renji as an example of how bankai that are broken stay broken:
But it wasn't just a couple segments Byakuya destroyed that stayed broken that could have feasibly went unnoticed until this reveal.
Byakuya explicitly broke ALL of Hihio Zabimaru, including the prominent skull, and ALL of it came back the next times he wielded it without even cracks or any noticable weakening in expected power.
Forever broken bankai, and in very specific the forever broken Hihio Zabimaru, is one of the most bald-faced and brazen retcons I've ever seen in my life. You literally have to take your audience as stupid and blind to say you'd shown that reality all along even with the other characters that had damaged Bankai through the series, but especially so to use RENJI as the example to "prove" it.
While there was a lot of interesting things the TYBW arc had...a loooot of it was these retcons.
I've read a post on reddit in relation to the inconsistencies and retcons in Bleach where someone said "It's not a retcon if the author changes his mind."
While there is truth to it (Haki and Shanks spooking the King of the Coast in Chapter 1 of One Piece, for example), it is a retcon when you have examples like this.
Ichigo was the light in the darkness for Byakuya that Rukia was for him. He reordered Byakuya's whole worldview and opened up the possibility of strength and power he hadn't known he could grasp - the ability to defy and subvert and hold fast to justice in counterpoint to flawed laws.
He came into Byakuya's life like a sunrise, lightening and warming every part of it and cementing himself as something as immutable and reliable as the sun.
That is why he cannot ever be turned on Ichigo.
The sun rises and sets every day and Byakuya is loyal to the incomparably good man Kurosaki Ichigo.
One of the things that annoys me in the Lost Agent Arc, besides the use of my most loved/hated trope (the whole 'let's abandon our friend now that he doesn't have power, for his own good of course, but we'll take him back if he gets them back) without proper catharsis (AKA the abandoned friend saying NO and moving forward without looking back or making the friends WORK for his forgiveness) is when Orihime asks why it hurt to see Ichigo breakdown, when she's 'in love' *shudders* with Tsukishima.
Maybe because that's your friend?!?! It baffled me, until it hit me.
Ichigo might consider her a friend (or friend adjacent thanks to Tatsuki at the minimum) Orihime doesn't seem to conciously consider him as either of those options! He's just the guy she's crushing on and daydreaming a future with! Take that away and she doesn't seem to understand that she can feel bad for him as 'just a friend'.
And it feels sad to me, you know, that she can't.
I'm sorry if this feels confusing but I had a thought just manifest in my mind as to why exactly Tsukishima was so successful in turning his friends (specifically his friends) against him when the only thing he did was insert himself in their pasts by replacing someone else, and it jumbled everything in my brain.
That is a very good point!
Inoue's feelings for Ichigo never had a basis in real friendship.
Right from the start, right from her introduction, she was dreaming of him as a prince, of them going on dates and him moving in for and him kabedoning her. Before she ever knew anything about him (even that he'd once been best friends with her best friend Tatsuki??), she "liked" him.
Ichigo describes her, in his own words, as the best friend of a guy he knew in middle school (Chad). He knew Tatsuki better and longer but has been distant from her since he was seven, but the friendship associated with Inoue in his mind is Chad, who he is more distant from - and that friendship is something he only learned about recently at the beginning of the manga.
Tatsuki and Chad both have entirely different friend groups from Ichigo that they hang out with on a daily basis at the beginning of the manga and that...doesn't change through the story. They hang with Ichigo more during the upheavals (relatively, if you break it down they're barely around each other in what we see), but it's clear during down time they're very much not interacting often on a daily basis despite being in the same school. Ichigo didn't even know Chad hadn't been coming to school for days.
Inoue is connected to people he's not close to, not him. She's part of the separate friend groups.
And she never got to know him after they were mashed together by circumstances.
She kept and entrenched that heroic image of him, then forcefully suppressed acknowledging all evidence to the contrary about his true nature.
Take away her "romantic" feelings and...there really is nothing left. Without those feelings she had no reason to suppress her fear and revulsion of those darker bits of him, that would be all that's left to color her perception of him and we SEE THAT.
She was GLAD Soul Society had "come to stop (ie kill) Kurosaki-kun" because in that moment all there was for him in her mind was that doubt and never-quite-gone fear of him. He's a friend, but a sus one who could go off the handle or turn on them at any moment. She never looks shocked or surprised when she's defending Tsukishima from him. She just looks resigned and disappointed, like she knew he would turn on them all along.
She's a nice girl so she cares people are hurt around her, so I think it is noteworthy that, for Ichigo in particular in this moment, his being hurt and sad upsetting her is shocking to her. Her first reaction upon the shinigami coming is gladness they'll stop him despite knowing how they operate first hand.
Inoue genuinely did not believe his grief and pain would cause herself any upset. The "love" coming through the cracks for this man was confusing and upsetting and baffling to her. She does not understand why she would be sad for him losing everything, his power, his family, or why the sight and sound of him screaming in deep emotional anguish has an effect on her.
Just look at her face, take away the tears and she's fucking confused, and she's thinking that. "Why does it hurt so much when Kurosaki-Kun cries?" From the girl who's whole thing is emotional intelligence and empathy. From the girl who cries at the drop of a hat for any sob story given to her, who will move to defend someone who'd just been attacking her from the possibility of getting hurt.
Take away her crush and Inoue does not even like Ichigo.
During this brief bit of the manga where her crush is gone, Inoue is openly colder and crueler to Ichigo than she is to any single other person in the entire run of the series.
There is NO ONE but an Ichigo she isn't "in love" with whom she would have stood back as they get their power torn out and be left howling in misery and pain and done nothing but watch.
It's a dark theme through the entire group that none of them are actually friends and TLA really ripped the bandaid off that. It's most damning in Inoue because she claims to love Ichigo, but Chad and everyone else turned on him so easily too.
This arc genuinely broke any belief I could ever have that Ichigo would ever be happy staying in the human world because he demonstrably has NO ONE there who genuinely trusts and believes in him there.
To add to your point: this is also a girl whom, when she was "in love" with Ichigo, was openly happy he didn't have his powers in the novels. IE. Didn't have the one thing that gave his listless, directionless life purpose. A fact that literally killed him inside.
She only relented on her stance when Ichigo's suffering made her personally feel bad.
Although, in fairness to the anon asker, there is a LOT of issues, dramas, troubles and other such incidents Ichigo should've taken a lot of people to task for, not just Orihime - yet never does.
But since she's the subject, do you even think Ichigo holds Orihime the least bit accountable for her idiocy in Hueco Mundo?
Or the fact he died twice trying to save her from her own stupidity?
Or the 'Suddenly, a vasto lorde!' thing that traumatised Ichigo so badly he bungled the best opportunity to win the war against Aizen before he fully merged with the hogyoku? Or that Zangetsu spent three months beating Ichigo until he was reduced to a tired emotionless husk to deal with it?
Did Ichigo take Orihime to task for the fact her moronic decision beget the chain of events that caused him to lose his powers in the first place?
Do you think Orihime would even care? Or would she shield herself behind that selfish 'Oh, but I'm so innocent, kind and sweet. How could anyone hate me?' façade of hers?
No, I don't think he holds her accountable for anything.
To him those are his failures. He failed to be strong enough to beat Ulquiorra. He failed to control himself and unconsciously killed Ulquiorra in a dishonorable way. He failed to understand Zangetsu.
He also willingly sacrificed himself to beat Aizen. He blames no one for that (outwardly, I don't believe he didn't have thoughts about why things ended up that way that he kept to himself the same way he had thoughts about the badge)
Honestly Ichigo just doesn't think about Inoue much at all.
Like, he pays enough attention to know when she's there and how useful she is, but that's it. He knows Inoue is no good at replenishing reiatsu at the top of the dome and at the start of the Hueco Mundo arc he knows Inoue "heals" more thoroughly than anyone else - he doesn't know the specifics, but he knows there's a brief bit of recovery after other healers but not with her, which is how he knew she'd snuck into his room to heal him before she left. This doesn't read as him paying any particular attention to her, but him assessing her to the same degree he does Chad and Ishida and everyone else.
He knows and can judge pretty accurately how strong his friends are and how they will perform in battle. Just before Hueco Mundo Ichigo tries to tell Chad and Ishida to stay behind because they're too weak and, look what happens. They're too weak. They get beat to shit worse than Ichigo against weaker opponents and need way more help than him to make it out. Ichigo gets scolded for trying to leave them behind and Chad makes a dumb show of strength to "prove" himself, but he wasn't wrong. Chad and Ishida need to band together against their "main" enemies in that arc and still get beaten and barely win. Ishida, even with additional help from Renji, ultimately cannot beat Szayel and needs Kurotsuchi to step in to end the fight.
Ichigo knows exactly how strong and capable Inoue is.
And that isn't good or strong enough in Ichigo's opinion because he never goes to her willingly for anything. If she's there, he'll take the healing without protest (unless like in the end battle it's actively getting in the way because why would you stop mid-final-battle to heal a few cuts and bruises?) but it's always her offering or someone else demanding/ordering her to heal him, not Ichigo asking her for help. And she's clearly his dead-last choice in a fight because she can't fight and is a liability outside small skirmishes with hollows - when she is there he's always telling her to leave, back off, and/or protect herself and ultimately fighting alone.
Ichigo's most consistent treatment and thoughts of Inoue are dismissive in nature
He's judged her weak and unreliable and semi-incapable based on what he's seen and then moved on to thinking about other things. She's not important or central enough to anything that happens to him for him to feel any need to hold her accountable.
All those things that went wrong weren't her fault, she was just there to witness them.
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