#ask troius

[troius]

I just want to say a few things before you get to the end. First up, it's been a pleasure to read your thoughts on the series; like any fan, you have your own unique interpretations and it's always good to read how fans see certain scenes. It's also been fantastic to see fellow fans respond to your posts adding on to what you've written, again bringing your thoughts out more and generating discussion.

Also, seeing your thoughts has made me appreciate scenes and characters I never thought I would -- Yamamoto for instance, who would've thought?! They've also reminded me of why I fell in love with the series as much as I did, from the artwork to the themes to the incredible bonds between the characters. You've reminded me that BLEACH has it's flaws that can sometimes take you out of the story, but when it hits, it 100% HITS! It's a manga that's about the bonds we form, how they can help us overcome challenges and be a source of light in our lives. It's about the ways we overcome grief and the fear of death, whether it's literally fighting your way through it or slowly coming to a state of acceptance as time goes on. It's about the 'hearts' of people, about what they look like and how they're shared between those you choose. I could go on and on, but then this would become an essay and we'd be here all day.

All of this is to say, thank you for choosing to create a Tumblr account and deciding to read the series and give your thoughts along the way. I can't believe you've finally reached the end, it almost feels like I'm saying goodbye to the manga again!! I don't think I'm the only one here who sees you as a big and valued part of the community on here, so I hope you'll be sticking around! :)

Thank you so much Rays! Response under the cut because it went long.

This won't surprise you, but I too have grown in my appreciation for the series over the course of the uh three years that I've run this blog. Bleach has character concepts I've never seen elsewhere. It has moments of storytelling brilliance. It has truly, phenomenally astonishing art.

But more than anything else, I, like you, am impressed by the heart. For a story that's largely about the afterlife, Bleach is shockingly humanistic, locating virtue not in any system of belief, in any group or faction in the various conflicts that provide the setting for the manga, but in people. All people, whether they're our extremely relatable teenage protagonist and his friends, the occasionally sketchy adults in his life, or the various adversaries ranging from evil monsters to supernatural samurai to a regular-ass gang to a foreign apocalypse cult. Bleach never, not once, lets the viewer fall into the comfortable childish space of believing that there's good people and bad people in the world.

There's just people. Sometimes these people want to do bad things, like execute their sisters, or kidnap your girlfriend, or isolate you from your family, or destroy the entire world. Bleach doesn't flinch away from that either. But it (again, very humanistically) locates those bad actions not in the individual human beings, but in our relationships with one another through the systems and structures we've created to organize ourselves.

And yet in the face of the idea that humans do their worst work through other people, that's also where Bleach locates its greatest virtue. Alone, we're nothing. It's the bonds that we have with others that are what make life worth living, that are the source of everything good in this world. And navigating that dynamic, between spiritual bonds and structural shackles...that's really what adult life is all about, isn't it?

Anyhow, my adult life has been greatly enriched by all of you on here. But I'll take the chance to thank you specifically Rays, for being such a source of joy. Your positivity and passion are the sort of thing that makes a humble blogger want to come back for more, and I've deeply enjoyed hearing all of your thoughts, not just on my liveblog, but through your own posts and writing. I'll be sticking around for sure.

[troius]

i think the worst part is that urahara doing that to yoruichi is technically in character but it lacks the depth, i suppose, of his previous shitty manipulative actions. for much of bleach, its unclear what exactly kisuke's motives and goals are, but after the fullbringer arc, that lack of certainty is gone. Now the narrative expects you to think of him as ultimately a good guy even while he continues to act shitty, and the only way to do that is to frame him doing this to yoruichi comedically, and that makes it come off worse if anything

Not much to say here, except that I basically agree with all of this. The Giselle and Orihime stuff wasn't great, but you could basically forget about them as soon as you turned the page because there weren't entire fights built around those moments, like what happens here.

I don't even see this as about fanservice. As you noted, Yoruichi could have turned into a mostly naked cat lady on her own and I would have rolled my eyes a little but not really been upset about it. It's the violation, and I'm really struggling to imagine why it was necessary to add to the story here.

[troius]

Shunsui´s bankai tells a real theater story, all of its effects are based on the events of the story:

1st act: a man strikes his lover, but because their bond is so strong her injuries manifest on him too.

2nd act: the man feels so ashamed for his actions he literally falls sick

3rd act: the couple decides to drown themselves instead of dealing with their disfunctional relationship (it was feudal japan back then)

4th act: the man regrets this and tries to escape the waters, the woman "mercifuly" slits his throat so he wont have to live with the shame of being a coward (again, feudal japan)

In the bankai Shunsui plays the role of the woman and Lille the role of the man.

Wait like this is a real play? In real life? What is it?

[troius]

Now that you’re near the end of Bleach, how has it been blogging through it this whole time ? Are there characters/arcs or scenes you weren’t too fond of in the beginning but now you kind of see in a different light ?

Also how likely do you think it is that Kubo would ever continue Bleach after the anime adaptation is finished ?

It has been great blogging through it this whole time. I started this project because I came across this tumblr community and it rekindled my decade-old love for the series, and I thought "hey, I never actually finished it", and then decided to do the read-through...and it's been probably the second most rewarding three-year project I've ever done, just coming short of law school.

More detailed stuff under the cut!

I like to think I've learned to appreciate everything a little more this time around, but here are some big ones:

Renji Abarai. It's not like I hated the guy before, but on this read I really came to appreciate how carefully and masterfully done his arc is. Renji would have been a really easy character to screw up, considering he starts as an antagonist, and is besotted with our female lead despite having had a tortured breakup with her in the past. And then they get together! Those things aren't a recipe for success (as you can tell given his uneven popularity in the fandom).

But I love the guy. It's not totally surprising, I think anybody who has been super In Love can relate to him, and certainly we all want somebody in our lives who has his level of passion and consideration towards the object of his affections. He wears his emotions on his sleeve, and he fucks things up, and then rather than just sit around in his failure, he gets up and tries a different way. And sometimes he fucks that up too! But he never stops trying, and he never stops caring, until by the end he is the one giving the advice, because he put himself through all of that, and he's better for the experience. He's just great.

The Fullbringer Arc. It totally collapses at the end when the Soul Reapers get shoehorned in for no reason but everything leading up to that is sick. It's just a completely different style of story, focused entirely on the alienation of the youth, a tale of what's going in in Ichigo's head. I was really, really impressed with it, again up until the end where everything was screwed up.

Zaraki vs. Nnoitra. I remember hating this in the anime (and not really understanding it the first time I read it a decade ago), but it was actually pretty good! A good development of the themes of the Arrancar Arc, and a testament to how Kubo can make you feel even for an absolutely horrible person like Nnoitra.

How likely do I think it would be for Kubo to continue Bleach? Heck if I know! But the story's kind of over, from what I understand: Ichigo grew up. That's usually the end of things in shonen manga! I'd honestly be more interested in seeing him do more Burn the Witch, something that I understand he has not yet finished.

Or he could just do a Hitsugaya-centric spinoff. That might work, because that guy 1) is not grown up and 2) still has a character arc to be resolved.

[troius]

I feel like aizen’s speech about how a world where death exists, courage exists, shows that Yhwach didn’t really have any courage at all perhaps. He was terrified of death.

I dunno if "terrified" is the right word-- Yhwach is functionally immortal, after all. If he were afraid of death he would have just not started a massive war and chilled in the Schatten Bereich.

It's more that Yhwach has a philosophical opposition to the concept, to things growing and dying and evolving and changing instead of simply existing in eternal forms. I'll try to get a little more into this in my big arc write-up.

[troius]

How did Kisuke know everything about everyone to solve every problem but somehow only knows the vaguest of info about the right hand of the soul king?

I'm not saying he should know about Jushiro's condition but he should have at least known a wikipidia level of info.

Nah because something that is abundantly clear about Soul Society is that nobody in the Seireitei has the slightest bit of actual knowledge of Rukongai. And Kisuke isn't an exception.

Like, Soul Society is an incredible stratified place. All of the most powerful and important people are in the Seireitei. And even the powerful folks from outside are eventually brought in, because the temptation of power/a better life is much too high to resist. And so the Soul Reapers don't care too much about what goes on beyond their walls! Sure, they might need to kill a particularly nasty hollow now and again, or mass-murder the inhabitants to maintain the balance of souls in an emergency, but otherwise? Who cares!

Ichigo and co. jumped from the world of the living to Soul Society, but the Court Guards literally did not care so long as they were not in the Seireitei. Aizen was conducting crazy hollow research for years out there, and Kisuke hadn't the slightest inkling, because why would he? He's a retainer of the Shihouin clan! Their eyes are on their peers around them and the god above them, not the outside world that they consider beneath them.

[troius]

Bouncing off your Ichigo being sidelined discussion (which, yes, where's he been this whole arc?) One thing that really made TYBW suffer imo was the lack of inner character insight from the main squad, Ichigo and Uryu (poor boy got practically offscreened in an arc about his own people) especially, given that the supposed rift between them is meant to carry the Karakura gang side of things and only got /one/ quick scene (and where, i think, the arc being cut short suffers). Where Hueco Mundo managed to balance both Ichigo/Orihime/the Six Hearts gang, their issues and give them a narrative to follow and spent time with them and gave them genuinely compelling moments (the Lust mini arc centered around Ichigo/Orihime/Uryu/Ulquiorra remains, imo, the very best writing Kubo did, it had great art, genuinely compelling writing, good fighting and interpersonal relationships between Ichigo and the three of them, and kept us hooked because we /care/ about these characters and the despair they're going through), and made room for the SS Captains without them being overwhelming (Mayuri/Szayel was tedious, I'll give you that), TYBW really became a Shinigami fest (the extended time spent on characters like Mayuri (two fights, restores everyone's bankai, gets "closure" with Nemu and conveniently zero repercussion for his crimes against the quincies) Shunsui, Urahara and Zaraki (also two very lenghty fights) which yielded, ultimately, not all that much in terms of meaty character development and relied on a lot of convenience/deus ex machina/plot armour, and feels unsatisfying when you're waiting to get back to Ichigo and the squad where the emotional crux of the arc lies (Yhwach killed his mother & Uryu's mother, and it yields... also very little), the arc, despite being super long also did extremely little in developping the Quincies (aside perhaps from Jugram and Bazz, and even that was limited. Uryu suffered the most for it imo, but I guess showing any hint of inner conflict with him would have gone against what Kubo tried to pull with him, the anime also cut out his exchange with Jugram, where Jugram spells out for him that the blood ritual has essentially trapped him on Yhwach's side and Uryu being clearly horrified by it & Uryu's reaction to Yhwach asking him why he's alive), and dropped the ball big time on the main characters we *should* be invested in (poor poor Chad tbh). It's a shame, when you see what Kubo /can/ do with a contained story like Everything but the Rain; which had heart and character development, and made us care about Masaki/Isshin/Ryuken and Katagiri because what limited stuff we were given was actually compelling, and we're already attached to both of their kids and the friendship between them. The Gerard Valkyrie fight goes on for just as long as ebtr, features the three most popular captains, but has none of that heart (and a lot of plot convenience), which is why people bemoan it so much.

It's pretty telling that even anime fans last cour were clamoring for Ichigo to come back after episodes of mere cameos from him, but also nice to see that while Mayuri/Byakuya/Zaraki and co are popular, *Ichigo* is the one who remains the heart of the story, the nexus that pulls together the Shinigami, his gang of friends and the audience. Given that animation can oft make what feels long and tedious in manga (Gremmy vs Zaraki was one ep in anime vs going on forever in manga), the Pernida/Lille stuff should hopefully not last beyond 2/+1/2eps. With all the talk about Cour 3 having a lot of addition, I'm crossing my fingers the anime will spend more time with Ichigo/those close to him (*cough* and the dad squad) in the next parts! Visual fights are nice and all, but character relationships, conflict and depth are, ultimately, far more compelling and memorable than any Cgi flashing swordfight and brute strenght boost can do, there's a reason ppl remember the Ulquiorra stuff on the dome as the pinnacle of Bleach, and not, say, Zaraki vs Gremmy. While I'm not expecting a Lust arc round 2, if the anime team takes their time, I'm hoping the ultimate Ichigo (&co)/Yhwach showdown to be reworked into something just as compelling.

Lol I feel kinda guilty posting this because there's not much to say in response. Get yourself a Tumblog anon, otherwise I'll get all the credit for your meta!

[troius]

"idk I kinda wish his bankai had been like Unohanas" "just a total reversal from what you'd expect"

Im sorry but I have to dissagree here. Unohana´s bankai worked as a reversal because it was an actualy reversal, we were lead to believe she was a peaceful person, but in reality she was bloodthirsty.

Her bankai reflects her hidden bloodthirsty nature. Kenpachi´s arc wasnt about growing out of his brutish fighter ways, or revealing something hidden, it was about becoming the best version of that.

His bankai is straight forward because thats what Kenpachi has always been. There may have not been an epiphany moment that leads to this end point, but the end point itself is perfectly fitting

But Unohana was a peaceful person, that's the trick.

Yes, she was, back in the day, the most notorious criminal in Soul Society, a brutal swordfighter who helped Yamamoto carve out Soul Society from an era of blood, and probably killed her fair share of Quincies in the first war.

But she was also the peaceful healer, the mentor, the quiet pillar of strength that supported all the other companies of the court guards. That's who she chose to be, and while you can say it was a facade...at some point, the facade has enough impact on the world that I don't think you can discount it as a part of the person. If that Unohana was never real, then who wrote that last letter to Isane?

And I know we're all in love with badass Yachiru Unohana, but she was really a terrible person! She apparently used to go to the outer districts and just butcher people in the hopes that somebody would resist, and once again provide her with the sweet taste of mortal combat. That's not just unhealthy, it's horribly immoral. And it created a monster, Zaraki, who behaved in more or less the same way.

But Unohana changed! She's not the only one-- it's a big theme in Yamamoto's fight with Yhwach as well, this idea that actually being a hard-ass killer isn't what should be valued in life. Yamamoto left his arm in ashes back in Karakura town so that he wouldn't again misplace his priorities, and he dies to Yhwach in part because of it, but he leaves Shunsui in charge, somebody who he specifically taught not to value the monster he used to be.

And that's what Unohana does to Zaraki. She brings it all out of him, he finally has everything he wanted, and then he kills her, and realizes well fuck. Maybe fighting to the death isn't the goal of life. Maybe it happens, but it's not your purpose, it's something you do if it has to be done for something in your life, something you care about.

It's the exact same lesson Zangetsu was teaching Ichigo during that first fight against Zaraki in Soul Society, and it's not a coincidence that Zaraki's first fight after this is rescuing Isane, the other person that Unohana deeply cared for. Fighting for a purpose, in sharp contrast to all his previous fights, which were fought more or less because he wanted to fight somebody.

Anyhow, my point with all these words is just to say that Zaraki should be growing out of his brutish fighter ways. Being a brutish fighter is not cool, it's literally how hollows exist. Zaraki's first fight with Ichigo is even titled "the Undead". But I'd prefer it if he lived, life has so many possibilities.