▲ aizen or urahara
I have sort of written about them before in a post entitled Everyone “Smart” in Bleach is Actually Stupid as Hell, but I’ve made some other notes elsewhere and I’ll put them all together.
I think it’s pretty easy to take for granted that Aizen was chilling out, screwing around with Las Noches and the Espada and all his nonsense in Soul Society, because he was busy doing “research” to produce Wonderweiss. Literally nothing else mattered to him except nullifying Yamamoto. (Put another way: he was trying to cheese the raid by waiting for a 100% fire resist link to drop from the gacha.) Which is why he tried to kill Harribel himself for no good reason: dude didn’t care, all that was a game.
Aizen acts like he’s a super-awesome manipulator but the dude is just overpowered. Otherwise he’s nothing special.
The thing about Aizen is that he makes shit up as he goes along and then he claims credit for everything after the fact. (He’s a bit like Trump in this regard, except he’s got his mental faculties and isn’t stupid or ignorant.)
If you go look at TBTP, you will find out he had little clue about Squad Zero at that time. I guess he could’ve just been playing dumb, as he did for Shinji, but it fits with the rest of his MO as a whole. He was probably not remotely as prepared as he liked to act like he was.
His bragging to Isshin about how he “sent” Rukia to Ichigo is another example. He’s literally talking about how the Hogyouku reads and fulfills the wishes of those around it, but then acts he was above its influence because he knew about it. It was in Rukia at the time. Do the math: it was fulfilling her wishes (to find Ichigo, to change things). Aizen sent her? No. It made Aizen send her. He was every bit its pawn in the way he claims that Ichigo and Rukia were his. He has the cause and effect the exact wrong way around, because his arrogance and ego know no bounds.
As I already pointed out, everything he was doing in the Soul Society and Hueco Mundo arcs was just a bullshit game to buy time to seal Yamamoto. It only worked because Yamamoto is also stupid and didn’t just immediately nuke Las Noches from the outset. (I’ve been over this before.)
It seemed evident he had no plan to deal with Squad Zero, and they were probably just waiting for him to get up there to use as a new Soul King. (I have also been over this before.)
Basically my unpopular opinion of Aizen is he didn’t really know what the fuck he was doing, acted like he was in control, and flew by the seat of his pants with some loose planning.
Now, Kisuke. Oh, boy, I have written some things about Kisuke.
Kisuke is supposed to be Mr. Genius, Mr. Prepared For Everything. He is supposed to be Tony Stark and Dr. Strange and Mr. Fantastic all rolled up into one.
So what the hell was his plan if Ichigo failed? Because it sure didn’t look like he had one to me.
The Visored? Useless. Literally not worth a damn thing. (Would’ve been great for the invasion of Soul Society though; hey, stupid, why didn’t you send them with Ichigo?)
Him, Yoruichi, and Isshin showing up? Useless. Now, Isshin was kicking Aizen’s ass, so presumably if they hadn’t waited for him to fuse with the Hougyoku, they could’ve done something. So why’d they wait until then?
Anyway, Kisuke. What the fuck was your plan? Just hoping Ichibei would tank it if Ichigo fucked up? Gonna just write off Karakura? For that matter, considering Aizen’s goal was to get up there and fuck with the Soul King, why didn’t the dipshits in Squad Zero take a proactive stance instead of being utterly passive?
Leaving all this on Ichigo’s shoulders actually made no goddamn sense other than “he’s the protagonist.”
Also, notice that Kisuke literally did zero science to try and alter this outcome. Dude has a kidou master as his employee who can literally alter spacetime. He knew how to build Hougyokus. Why didn’t he make another one? Why didn’t he come up with some Star Trek-esque bullshit technobabble solution? (The seal doesn’t count. Good technobabble needs either a long setup or a montage.)
Because Ichigo was the protagonist so it was his job.
And another one. And another one. I don’t wanna be at this all day, so, my unpopular opinions about Kisuke are:
1. He makes shit up and doesn’t actually prepare. He, just like Aizen and Mayuri, makes it up as he goes. Also, like Isshin, he doesn’t communicate.
2. He’s largely apathetic and uninterested. Much like Isshin, Ryuuken, and Mayuri, he doesn’t really seem to give a fuck. If he did, he’d have done a whole lot more, a whole lot better.
3. He’s really kinda scuzzy. Kisuke is not Harvey Weinstein, but he has some serious problems with a priori consent when it comes to other people, especially when those people are women. He’s more like Quentin Tarantino in this regard. (I would not be surprised to learn he has a foot-fetish like him too, tbh.)
tl;dr the whole first two-thirds of Bleach really being this supposed chess game between Aizen and Kisuke, like they’re Kira and L in Death Note, sure seems like a great premise at first, but the closer you investigate it the more it really starts looking like a dick-waving contest between two guys who are fairly intelligent but mostly get by on bullshit by virtue of having the confidence of mediocre straight white men, except they’re Japanese(-ish) instead of white.
They are both “smart” in the way Eddie Morra in Limitless is smart: because the work is contrived to say so. If you take it away from them, they’re just goobers with hax abilities.
