#bleach 652

[t-u-n-a-d-e]

[hikikomoriheadphonegirl]

[devi-chans-art]

Ohana and Okyo from Bleach, the zanpakuto Girls, that belongs to Shunsui and NANAO *-* then are Ukitake and Ichigo the only ones with double swords ^^

Characters(c) Tite Kubo

FANART (c) to me

DONT REPOST OR REBLOG WITHOUT THE SOURCE 

[christine-sullivan]

So, since Nemu and Nanao got to be badasses, do we get to see Momo fighting alongside Shinji? Please. 

[r-dahlia]

Shunsui and Nanao in Bleach 652

This is another chapter packed with backstory on Shunsui and Nanao, but it begins with Nanao facing off against Lille. She confirms that she knows the history and purpose of the sword by explaining them to Lille, and then she springs into action with beautiful determination:

We flashback to one of Nanao’s memories, of being a very small child and seeing her mother entrust something very important to a man she doesn’t know. We already know this man is Shunsui, and he is, at this point, a fully grown man. His hairstyle matches the one we’ll see later in the chapter, in one of his flashbacks:

Her next memory of Shunsui is noticing him at the Academy. I’d speculate that Shunsui paid this visit to the Academy president because of Nanao—he must have arranged for her to end up in the Eighth Division. Since she applied for the Kidō Corps and doesn’t have a zanpakuto, the Kidō Corps would have been an obvious placement for her, but it wasn’t the division she received.

Then there’s this:

Think about your choices, Squad Five person! But this does helpfully give us a reference point in time. In TBTP, we learn Shinji has been a captain for one hundred years at that point—placing this scene less than two hundred years before the present, as Aizen would have become vice captain after Shinji became a captain.

We also learn Nanao has been fostered by an elderly couple after her mother passed away. I would speculate that her mother arranged this before or when she gave the Shinken Hakkyouken to Shunsui. I believe Nanao’s mother must have known giving away the sword would have serious consequences, including possible execution, so she made arrangements for Nanao to be taken care of.

When Nanao joins the Eighth, she sees Shunsui again:

He’s not wearing the hairpins and he has a different kimono than he did when Nanao saw him back at the Academy. But Nanao is very clever, and she deduces that he removed those things because he is the person her mother entrusted with something precious, and he doesn’t want Nanao to know it. His efforts to hide the truth from her only led her to figure it out. I do wonder when he began to wear the hairpins and the elaborate kimono again?  Perhaps at some point, he became confident that Nanao wouldn’t recognize the connection, and resumed wearing those things.

In the present, the fight with Lille isn’t going well. Nanao realizes it won’t be as easy as she’d hoped to kill him, and Lille pulls out yet another new ability. She’s never used this sword before and probably hasn’t trained extensively with any sword, since she doesn’t have a zanpakuto and uses kidō for battle. We see her with real fear on her face. She came to save Shunsui, but now she’s in danger, too:

Shunsui, alone in the dark and sunk down deep into guilt, remembers hearing the news of Nanao’s mother’s execution by the Central 46. This is a very interesting scene, and I would like to discuss it:

First, Shunsui and Ukitake are both regular shinigami here, perhaps seated or unseated members of the Gotei 13. Shunsui is an adult, and he’s drawn in the style Kubo uses for adults that aren’t specifically middle-aged or older—I would speculate Shunsui probably had this appearance for hundreds of years. He already has long hair tied back, and we know he had short hair in the Academy.

I would also suggest that this isn’t too long after he took Shinken Hakkyouken from Nanao’s mother—the loss of sacred treasures seems like something that would be noticed pretty quickly, since the sword was used in rituals and rites by the Ise clan. It’s also interesting that the “sacred treasures” is a plural—was there another treasure lost, or is this something with the translation? Could Nanao’s mother have done something else?

I think that Ukitake doesn’t know what Shunsui did with the sword. If he did, there’s no way he would so casually announce the execution of Nanao’s mother.  We’ve seen that Ukitake is a gentle, considerate character, so if he thought this news would deeply impact Shunsui, he wouldn’t have delivered it this way. He says as much after he’s given the news and seen Shunsui’s reaction.

But Shunsui’s reaction is pretty muted here, so I think that adds weight to the idea that Ukitake doesn’t know about Shunsui’s connection to the sword. I would speculate that Shunsui hasn’t told anyone about the sword—we know that Yamamoto is a stickler for the rulings of the Central 46 from the Rukia Kuchiki execution fiasco, and if he knew Shunsui had the Shinken Hakkyouken, at the very least he’d make him return it to the Ise clan.

It seems likely Shunsui carries the weight of this secret, and the weight of Nanao’s mother being executed, alone for all these years. More than that, we learn he’d also been entrusted with the care of Nanao’s mother when his brother was on his deathbed. I think it’s possible that his feelings of guilt were compounded because his brother asked him to take care of his wife, and in trying to fulfill that promise, he took the sword, leading to her execution. The guilt he carries is enormous.

The next two pages are deeply emotional ones. In the present, Shunsui begs Nanao to take the weight from his shoulders, and to allow him to protect her. He joins her and wraps his hand around hers on the sword from behind.

I find these pages deeply romantic. Shunsui wants to be freed of the guilt and burdens he has carried for so long, and he wants Nanao to take them from him. He needs her, and she needs him. He’ll help her use the unfamiliar sword to defeat Lille, and she’ll offer him the absolution he desperately wants.

This scene is a confirmation of how deeply he cares for and needs Nanao, following closely after the scene in Bleach 651 where she confessed to him that she adores/loves/yearns for him. Whatever the outcome may be here, there can be no doubt that these two are deeply important to each other, in many ways.

There’s been some confusion over how these new chapters can fit into the Bleach timeline. Some people have suggested that Nanao remained a child for a very long time, but I see things differently. Here’s how much Shunsui and Nanao age over the course of flashback events in this chapter:

I simply cannot not believe that these two are very close in age. If Nanao was born while Shunsui was a young teenager, it seems impossible that she should still be a child when she joins the Eighth Division and sees Shunsui with age marks under his eyes. Instead, I would suggest that even if we don’t know the exact timeline of their lives, we can safely say that Nanao is much younger than Shunsui.

Shunsui likely spent hundreds of years as a regular shinigami or an officer below the level of captain. We know that captains are only appointed when there are openings at the position, and that geniuses like Hitsugaya and Gin were not immediately appointed as captains when they finished at the Academy. So we can likely assume that Shunsui’s career path would be similar. He would have been a regular shinigami or an officer until an opening was available for captain.

The time between when he received the sword from Nanao’s mother and when he became a captain would have been useful to him, as he developed a way to hide Shinken Hakkyouken. Since he would have completed this hiding before he demonstrated Bankai for his captain promotion, the evolution of his swords into a dual wield even in sealed form could have passed as ordinary zanpakuto development. Yamamoto praised him as a dual wield user without ever knowing Shunsui’s secret reasons for developing his swords in such a way.

We know Shunsui, Ukitake, Unohana, and Yamamoto have been captains for more than two hundred years, because of information we get from Shinji and Shunsui in TBTP. Unohana was a captain before Shunsui and Ukitake, and never attended the Academy; Yamamoto has been the Captain Commander of the Gotei 13 for a thousand years. So we can speculate that Shunsui and Ukitake attended the Academy sometime between 2000 and 1000 years ago, probably closer to 1000 years ago, and became shinigami. After that point, Nanao was born, and Nanao’s mother entrusted Shunsui with the holy sword. I believe this is likely between 300 and 400 years ago, because of Nanao’s aging in the chapter and the fact Shunsui has been a captain longer than Shinji. This timeline still leaves Nanao reasonably in line with known Soul Society aging, and leaves the obvious age difference between Nanao and Shunsui intact.

I believe it’s impossible for Nanao to be the child of Shunsui’s brother, for a few reasons. There is the age difference, for one. Additionally, if Nanao’s mother had been pregnant when her husband died, would the Kyouraku clan have let her return to the Ise clan? If she had a child, wouldn’t that child become a valuable heir to the Kyouraku clan? Since we know Nanao’s mother was desperate later for Nanao to avoid the Ise curse, if she could have left Nanao with the Kyouraku family, I believe she would have done so immediately.

Instead, I would speculate that Nanao is the result of a later relationship her mother had, perhaps when the Ise clan demanded an heir. Believing that the same cruel fate that befell her would await Nanao, her mother appealed to the only one outside the Ise clan she could trust: Shunsui. In doing so, she left him with the terrible burden of the sword and her death.

Now, Nanao will relieve him of this burden. They’ll defeat Lille together, and their relationship will be strengthened. I can’t wait to see what happens next!

[junko222]

Bleach Theatre Suicide - Scene 6

It took a while, but Bleach 652 finally came out. If you were like me, you spent much of Thursday refreshing your favorite manga scanilation site, so probably you've read, re-read and read all the...

[ruukkii]

What if Lisa comes next chapter?

[ruukkii]

Now the question were all waiting to be answered is: how is Lisa related ( aunt cousin sister?) to Nanao? All I know is Lisa used to be kyoraku's lieutenant and Nanao knows her since she was little.