#wahrwelt

[elyonholic]

— Ichigo and Orihime enter Wahrwelt

[distinguishedshoeduckdonut]

Appearance Of The Wahrwelt

[bishoujodreams]

On the last episode of Bleach, we got some Bambietta. I don't know if we are going to have more of her with original content, but I can't complain. If you like what i post, feel free to follow me on my socials!

[littleeyesofpallas]

Bleach Cosmology 4/4

Last post in this series on Bleach world terms: [1] [2] [3]  The super super unaddressed Quincy realm from the final arc, soon to be adapted into the final anime season...

Schatten Bereich(シャッテン・ベライヒ) Sha-tte-n' Be-ra-i-hi, German for “Shadow Realm” and pretty literally interpreted in Japanese as [影の領域] “Realm of Shadow(s).”  A straight forward description of what it’s supposed to be as a place hidden in(?) the shadow of Soul Society, and the Seireitei specifically.  It’s a real shame we didn’t get any actual explanation of what this realm was or how it worked or really much of anything other than the super vague description...

Did the Quincy make it themselves to hide in?  Did the Shinigami make it to banish them to?*  What was that thing about Yhwach having a time limit he could spend away from it that just never came back???  If the Quincy were wiped out 200 years prior, how are there so many of them in there?*  Had they been recruiting new Quincy from the human world?(As Nodt having been in a hospital bed suggests yes)  How were people getting in there?  Or were they supposed to be original Quincy from the conflict 200 years ago, in which case... we were told Quincy were specifically humans who’d just mastered and passed down a set of distinct skills, so how did they survive 200 years without just aging and dying?

*[edit]: My mistake. It’s mentioned at the start of the second attack that they hid themselves in the shadows of soul society specifically 1000 years prior, and following the alluded to first conflict between the Shinigami and Quincy.  Although that event wasn’t really elaborated on either, so that just raises other questions.

Anyway...  none of that has to do with the locale itself, and frankly there aren’t really any answers to uncover in the sparse world building material the final arc gave us...  As to the physical features of the realm itself, Kubo really pulled an awkward repeat of Hueco Mundo with the stark white stonework in a realm of eternal darkness...  But this time, it’s more explicitly cold and also literally icy.

I feel like there was supposed to be some kind of theme about the Quincy living in shadows and not seeing the light of the sun, and being denied its warmth, which just seems like a tiny tweak of the Arrancar Arc’s night sky and day light/sun and moon imagery.  Was the Soul King meant to have a sun motif that we just never got to see? (equating light of the sun with love of god and loss there of, harkening back to biblical revolt of heaven imagery?)  Sun gods and sun king and god kings are all pretty classic to Japanese mythos, and also to Japan’s fetishization of some of classical Europe (although that’s more French rococo, ala Louis XIV, than German)  If there’d been a more overt Sun theme with the Soul King it would’ve made a much more interesting parallel with Ichigo’s Black Sun(opposite Rukia’s white moon) motif.

Sorry, off topic again, and mostly just filling space here...

Wahrwelt(ヴァールヴェルト) Vaa-ru-ve-ru-to meaning “True World” and written as [真世界城] “True World/Society Castle.”  Note that while [真世界] being read as “True World” obviously is meant to mirror Wahrwelt, [世界] can also read as “Society” which is probably meant to directly mirror Soul Society[尸魂界] although they don’t use the exact same construction to denote “Welt” and “Society.”  It suggests that Soul Society is a false regency over the spirit world, and that the Quincy are the rightful rulers, rather than being outsiders come to take over.  Although it feels a little misplaced that the Wahrwelt was specifically the replacement for the Royal Realm and not what replaced the Seireitei.

Silbern(ジルバーン) Shi-ru-baa-n' just meaning “Silver.”  Written as [銀架城] meaning “Silver Mounted Castle.”  I've seen people translate this is “Silver Cross Castle,” but I think this is a misunderstanding of the verb kakaru[架かる] meaning "to cross."  But that's not "(a) cross" like the Quincy cross, it's "to cross" like to cross a street.  The Quincy had a whole thing about silver stretching pretty far back in the series so there’s consistency there, but it doesn’t seem like there was much more going on with it...

As you might expect from the kind of shoddily put together final arc, there’s not a whole lot else to go off of here.  Which is a shame, because although there’s not a wealth of potential the way the Arrancar arc had, there was certainly a lot of empty space to fill as far as world building or character motivations go.  It would’ve been nice to have actually taken the time to explore any of that...

In particular there was the super SUPER curious bit with what appeared to be Quincy ruins left in Hueco Mundo that we didn’t really get much of an explanation of.  Kubo even does a remarkably good job with visual story telling where the rough stonework we get only a glimpse of makes it very clear that the ruins aren’t the same same as the clean, sleek designs of Los Noches.

I think one of the light novels gave them the name “Negal Ruins” that the Bleach wikia references, but I don’t have Japanese copies of the LN to confirm that, and the wikia confusingly doesn’t cite where it got the name from or include any kind of kanji or kana...*  But as little as that is to go off of, I do LOVE the idea that the Quincy once occupied Hueco Mundo in the past, and it just feels like the first tiny tiny step toward what should’ve been a much bigger plot point.  Even the fact that Urahara is out there with scientific equipment doing some kind of research seemed to imply that he’d come back with some crucial information...  I guess that was supposed to be the hollow pills plot device?  But that wasn’t especially clear, let alone remotely satisfying either as follow up or even as its own plot development.

*no no, i was way off.  It’s right there in the same chapter they show up. [ネガル遺跡] “NE-GA-RU” + “Historic Ruins/Archeological Site.”  Dunno why my eyes just glossed right over that.  Not that it really clarifies anything.

Curiously, the Taiyou-no-mon[太陽の門] “Gate of (the) Sun” that plays kind of a deus ex machina role toward the climax of the arc isn’t named in German at all.  (it is mentioned on a few separate occasions, so it doesn’t come out of “nowhere” exactly, but it’s never really elaborated on either)  It’s not clear if that’s supposed to mean something, or if Kubo just gave up juggling dictionaries to come up with a new name on the fly.  It sticks out like a sore thumb by comparison though.  Very odd.

Anyway that’s basically it for big world terms across the major story locales...  There are a few misc. locations like the Valley of Screams or or Hell focused on in the movies and only briefly brought up in the manga, but they’re all pretty literal names: Kyougoku[叫谷] “Scream Valley” where the lost souls, Blanks wind up when they can’t make it to Soul Society, referencing their unheard voices.  Jigoku[地獄] just the actual Japanese word for an underworld, originally borrowed from the Chinese Diyu[地獄] and the mix of indigenous Chinese and Buddhist influences mythos, but at this point linguistically used as the translation for any kind of penitent underworld, regardless of cultural origin.  It’s written with the characters for “Ground” and “Prison.”

I may not have had a lot of take aways from all this, but I gotta admit going back over some of this material did kind of rekindle my excitement for the anime this year, so that’s something.

Bleach Cosmology posts: [Karakura] [SoulSociety] [Hueco Mundo] [Wahrwelt] [Hell/Naraka(allusions)] [Animal Realm(?)] [Preta Realm(?)]

[bishoujodreams]

Bambietta Basterbine

[mangahelpers]

A new chapter has been released. Discuss it now!

[owocowo]

The weirdest thing about reading Bleach with English translations will forever be the German words appearing here and there.

[jenanime4eva]

BLEACH CHAPTER 628 IN A NUTSHELL (◕ω◕).

GTFO THE THRONE YHWACH, YOU’RE NO AIZEN :P.

SO GOOGLE TRANSLATE TELLS ME WAHRWELT = “TRUE WORLD”...WOW REAL SUBTLE ( ಠ_ಠ).