A rock wrote this
I’ve gone my entire life up to this point not ever retaining any real information about the hougyoku, because if magical power orbs are involved I just stop listening, even if said orb is being stashed inside of Rukia my beloved. Like, I just skimmed the Hougyoku Wiki page and it was basically all new information to me, as though this thing were not instrumental to 50% of the (alleged) plot of this manga. BUT HEAR ME OUT.
In Chapter 59, Urahara is really proud of his basement setup, as well he should be. House Hunters Interdimensional would be all over this finished basement and the increase in square footage he was able to engineer here!
I just think it’s interesting that the two features he draws attention to are also features of... Hueco Mundo...? (And specifically, Aizen’s Hueco Mundo.)
We’re all about the fake sky and the dead plants:
Later on, Ichigo demonstrates that he is consistently not a fan of desert chaparral, claiming that there’s “nothing here” in Hueco Mundo. But he also totally just saw Lizard Hollow, and if he’d spent more time thinking about Lizard Hollow I think Ichigo would ultimately have come to the conclusion that Hueco Mundo has more to offer than initial appearances and/or legend would have it.
NB: I don’t actually think it’s a dead or barren world, or a lesser place than the decidedly deciduous Soul Society or the Living World.
[Chapter 244]
Ichigo is not an ecologist, and so maybe he doesn’t readily make the connection here, but I think through his experiences with Nel (and perhaps in a way only Ichigo can, through Grimmjow) lead him to the same place eventually--and perhaps also prime him to guess at where Aizen was really coming from, at the end of the day and the end of a war.
My point here is, though, that Urahara and Aizen both dabbled in the mystic art of Hougyoku creation. Then Urahara created this training ground in the image of desert, down to the flora, and the necessity of a fake sky. Later, Aizen quested off to Hueco Mundo, land of desert and rock flora, and also took it upon himself to create fake sky. Fake sky that Aaroniero later tells Rukia is emblematic of Aizen’s all-seeingness:
[Chapter 266]
Rukia isn’t sure if this is actually true, because she discerns that Aaroniero has his own reasons for staying out of the light (pushing him into it reveals that he’s Aaroniero and not Kaien). Granted, we did have that one Hueco Mundo episode that was literally a recap of the recap episode, as told by Ichimaru and Aizen in the Las Noches Security Camera Room, so apparently the sky does have some omnivision properties. But there’s that question, right? What is the sky there for, and why go through the trouble of making a fake sky ceiling when the prior king of Hueco Mundo’s party line was NO CEILINGS WE DIE LIKE KINGS UNDER THE SKY? It’s not real sky, and not real sunlight; and maybe it’s not real omnipotence or even the real desire for omnipotence.
The appeal of the Hougyoku as a powerful magic orb is that it can purportedly realize one’s desires, like a Philosopher’s Stone--even if these desires are not apparent to the user. It’s a wish-granter, a giver.
But what are the odds that our two resident Hougyoku-makers both read Edward Abbey* and decided to incorporate him into their primary design aesthetic?
* Edward Abbey is the 20th-century American author of Desert Solitaire, which is widely touted as an environmentalist piece that recuperates deserts as vital environments in their own right, not dead spaces or sacrifice zones.
I think that if people keep building/editing micro-worlds that are full of sand (tiny rocks) and rock flora, the first thing anyone should think is
A rock wrote this.
