Hi, Troius, I just wanted to let you know that I really appreciate your commentary and analysis. I've been reading bleach analysis for like 15 years and I never stop learning more about this manga. But your perspective is one of the most interesting I've read (do you do this professionally?). I would love it if you could keep going with the anime or the novels or even the rock musicals xD (did you hear they are adapting the arrancar arc?).
Actually, if you want to talk about another series or manga, that would be nice too! Anyway, if you don't continue, I just wanted to say thank you.
Thank you so much for the compliments! I do not review or critic professionally (though I'm open to offers...), although I do in a manner of speaking write for a living.
And yeah, I think I'm going to keep things up somewhat? I don't think I'll go back and watch the OG anime, but I absolutely plan on keeping close tabs on the new series, especially as we get closer to the point where the manga got compressed and new material might be forthcoming. Maybe I'll make episode recap posts if I have some time on my hands...
...although who knows if I will, because there is additional blogging content planned. Another manga by another author would probably be a stretch, but I'd like to cover (and I think my audience would be receptive to) the rest of Tite Kubo's published works, namely:
The Bleach pilot chapter
Burn the Witch
Zombie Powder
The Hell Arc one-shot
And who knows, maybe there will be more to add to that list by the time I'm done!
It's a silly thought because Kubo clearly didn't specifically account for it but I do sort of want to just take stock, i guess, of all the little wuxing oriented details that just kinda line up in Bleach.
The wuxing to be clear, is a bit of daoist mysticism generally translated as "the 5 phases" and outlines the relationship between 5 core elements. But this structure is actually applied to a bunch of different sets of 5, and across those sets certain essential qualities are linked or shared.
So for example Wood is associated with East, with Green/Blue, and Spring and there are kind of some shared themes there around growth and plants and such. Fire and South and Red and Summer. Water, North, Black, and Winter. Etc.... They are also where the very popular 4 Auspicious Beasts motif comes from, something utilized pretty heavily in anime and manga and videogames: White tiger, Blue Dragon, Vermillion Bird, and Black Tortoise/Snake. There is also a 5th "direction" considered Center, and a 5th season considered the transition between seasons; it's associated with, variably, either a golden qilin or golden dragon, and sometimes the dragon is also just the chinese god emperor and thus interchangeably a dragon or a just a dude.
There are a lot of odd little idiosyncrasies, I won't get into all of them here...
Starting with the obvious, though... The 4 gates around the seireitei are directional, and each have a name evoking the corresponding and color, and even mythic beast. Honestly the gate guardians themselves don't appear to be super cohesively themed after the beasts, although the Dragon guy verymuch has an asian dragon beard thing going on, and the black tortoise guy is black.
There is no central guard but conspicuously Kirinji's name comes from Qilin, but apparently according to official height he's actually not nearly as tall as Kubo's drawings always made him seem. Not that he was on the same scale as the gate guardians...
Hacchi's big 4 Beast Gate kidou array he uses fighting Baraggan evokes this same motif with the correct color, and animals. He is also conspicuously large, but not to the degree of the gate guardians...
In regard to directions and associated colors, the Central 46 has a series of banners with made up hybrid kanji combining the 4 cardinal directions and the correct colors. And then the Royal Guard are introduced with according positions as General of the North, South, East and West, implicitly leaving Ichibee as General of the Center direction, which makes sense since he's the defacto leader.
I complained of it at some point when the anime was airing but it annoyed me that when they added the big tsuba crest thing when the royal guard killed themselves that they were not correctly oriented in any kind of cardinal formation.
In a small post I made forever ago, I lightly proposed that the Sword Five actually fit the elemental associations of the wu-xing in accordance with their names and roles as tools of smithing:
Tokie and Mera being Water and Fire are obvious,
but Hasuka being tongs is reflected in the "chopsticks" in her name which I associated with wood(plus flowers in her name),
Nomino being a chisel and having it in her name pegs her as the metal one,
and Tsuchimiya as hammer has a pun on Earth:"tsuchi" in her name.
Oddly the anime chose to give them each a unique color outfit, although they are the 5 colors in the wuxing they do not match the elements
But then there's the incomplete set of season that I actually think are being evoked in the 4/5 Noble Houses.
The Shihouin name and family crest reference the Japanese maple, and Autumn is traditionally the season for moon viewing, which feels like it pegs them as an Autumn themed family.
The Kuchiki name refers to dying trees, and the family crest features what appear to be cranes, and the Japanese red crowned crane is an icon deeply associated with winter and the snow.
Finally, my only very loose guess on the Shiba is that they're Summer themed mostly on the back of Kukaku's fireworks gimmick and summer fireworks in Japan, but also because the other evocations we get of the family's spiral crest are Kaien's whirlpools and Ganju's cliff and sand spell, which all seems to evoke the beach or waterfront bluffs, which again sort of point toward summer. No idea what theoretical spring or transitional season families would be like.
The LN's Tsunayashiro family does not fit this in any way I can recognize.
My brain: the Sigalovada Sutta says there are four types of true friends; the friend who helps, the consistent friend, the friend who gives good counsel and the friend who sympathizes.
My brain: Uryu, Chad, Ichigo and Orihime actually fit each type pretty well.
My brain: Yoruichi, Tessai, Hirako and Urahara also fit each type pretty well for the TBTP arc.
Me: Are we going to do anything useful with this observation?
My brain:
//To elaborate on this idea, this is the relevant passage:
“The friend who helps is a true friend for four reasons: he guards you when you are off your guard, he guards your property when you are off your guard, he comforts you when you are afraid, and when something has to be done, he gives you twice what you require.
“The consistent friend is a true friend for four reasons: he tells you his secrets, he keeps the secrets you tell him, in trouble he does not forsake you, and he would even lay down his life for you.
“The friend who gives good counsel is a true friend for four reasons: he discourages you from doing wrong, he encourages you to do good, he tells you things you have not heard, and he points out the way to heaven.
“The friend who sympathizes is a true friend for four reasons: he is sad at your misfortunes, he rejoices at your good fortune, he restrains others from speaking ill of you, and he commends those who speak well of you.”
I reblogged that great meta post the other day about Renji filled the role of a heart character, and then I happened to be flipping past this page, which I've probably read a million times before:
I think the takeaway from this panel is supposed to be some neat and ominous foreshadowing about Urahara's bankai. There's also sort of a recurring theme in Urahara's arc of regret that he isn't able to act directly (or perhaps that he has to send/endanger others on his behalf). Urahara-enjoyers can go run with that, if they want, because, as is my way, I will be talking only about Renji.
Bleach is a battle shounen, so of course there is a tendency to rank characters and to tally up Ws and Ls. Renji never fares well in these conversations. Orihime doesn't either, which is absolutely inane, because her primary power is *healing*, and none of the main cast would still be around if it weren't for her. It was suddenly interesting for me to read this line, and think suddenly think of Renji in the same light.
Urahara isn't the only captain who holds back using his bankai. Ukitake jumps into Kyouraku's fight with Stark because he doesn't want Kyouraku to have to go to bankai. Shinji can't use his when other people are around. Unohana went to the trouble of becoming one of the best healers in the series in order be able to fight with her bankai for more than 0.6 seconds.
On the other hand, shit starts to go down, and Hihiou Zabimaru is out, immediately. Hihiou Zabimaru is an accessible bankai, a familiar bankai. They can run down 16 Menos in a row, but they can also crash through a wall, or work as a mode of transportation, or you can even use them for a surprise attack. They are good for training and giving people strength, whether it's helping Chad learn his powers, or giving Ichigo something to beat on when he needs to work his way out of a depressive funk.
Color Bleach+ notes that Squad 6 admires Byakuya, but they like Renji. I think that's just a microcosm of a larger theme though-- in Bleach, power sets you apart, makes you remote, makes you something different from those around you. Aizen and Stark are noted to be profoundly lonely. Urahara and Kyouraku have to send people they care about to their deaths as they hold themselves back for strategic reasons. Gin and Hitsugaya poison their relationships with their favorite people because of their devotions to their own separate duties. The one-shot reveals that captains can't even go back into the resurrection cycle and have to go to Hell instead.
Renji gets pretty powerful by the end of the series. He even replaces Hihiou Zabimaru with Sou-oh Zabimaru, who is better for killing guys, but you can't hitch a ride on them. He never becomes a captain, though. The longer I've thought about this, the more I love this ending for him. He gets to marry the woman he loves and have a kid, he gets to keep running his squad with his weirdo captain/bestie, he still gets to go drinking with the other lieutenants. It's exactly parallel to Ichigo's ending, in the sense that he chooses his friends and loved ones over the pursuit of power. Like, Kubo was really not fucking around when he superimposed those images of Ichigo and Renji swearing on their souls as Renji is fighting Byakuya and decides that dying while doing his best to save Rukia was worth it, even if he never ends up surpassing Byakuya.
He doesn't die, though, he gets to live, and help out his friends and train people with his bankai and make them stronger and I think that is very fucking based of him.
I made a volume cover for Hachi because he's the GOAT. Go read what the Volume is about here > https://www.reddit.com/r/bankaifolk/comments/1cj4sb6/the_complete_visored_rewrite_part_1_the_magician/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
yeah, the SRs are ghost. To be in soul socirty means you are a ghost. Back when the gang went to rescue Rukia Urahara used a device to turn their human-world-matter bodies into reishi bodies
Okay, but the gang were not themselves ghosts, even if they had been transformed into having Reishi bodies, and at least one member of the Sternritter (Uryu) is definitely still a living being, which implies that they also have the same matter transformation technology, because otherwise he couldn't have joined in the invasion.
I would guess that the Sternritter are a mixed bunch-- it makes way more sense for Jugram and Bazz to be dead, considering they were alive 1000 years ago, but the obvious ethnic and linguistic diversity among the rest of the crew suggests that many of the others at the very least died recently, if they weren't just recruited like Uryu was.
What are your thoughts on the main characters in Bleach and their relationship with each other? Thank you for sharing your thoughts I love it :)
The main cast of Bleach is interesting because if you analyze the relationships of the main characters, you form what are essentially two main character trios with Ichigo at the center of both. For the humans in Karakura town, the three main characters (the ones the plot centers around) are Ichigo, Ishida and Orihime. For the Soul Society, the three main characters are Ichigo, Rukia, and Renji. Fitting as Ichigo is a character who lives a double life divided between two worlds, his home town and soul society, as the Substitute Soul Reaper.
When I say "Main Character Trio", I'm referring to a specific recurring idea in fiction called the "Alchemy Triangle" where characters are assigned roles of mind, body, and heart in their relationship to each other. Here is a brief summary on the idea of an alchemy triangle, but the gist is, there are a lot of characters in fiction you can assign certain roles in what they represent, heart, mind or body, and what role they play to each other. The main cast of Bleach is pretty compatible with this reading.
BODY, ICHIGO
Ichigo is the center of both trios, and he also plays the same role in both. The body is what encases the internal organs the heart and mind, fittingly, the body itself is usually a caretaker and protectorate of any trio they inhabit. Which, from day one, is Ichigo's greatest motivation for fighting, and gaining the powers of a soul reaper in the first place.
Though often main characters aren’t the heart of the story, Ichigo is unique among shonen protagonists in that he doesn’t make friends with everyone, and he’s not an all-loving hero. He’s only a substitute shinigami, he only wants to protect a small crowd of people around him. He’s not a superman, he’s modest.
There’s also a lot of symbols appearing around Ichigo, that are associated with the body.
What about the Body character? There isn’t one in every alchemy story, but when this does appear, the markers are predictable. Body characters are focused on their bodily needs--they are hungry, thirsty, and, in adult stories, lusty. And they are often fearful.
A person who is continually hungry, thirsty, that may not sound like Ichigo, but a significant part of his powerset comes from his hollowfied soul. Hichigo is characterized by his continual desire for power, battle and victory.
All the words that HIchigo uses to describe that are metaphors for hunger. Not only that but one of the final twists of the story is that Hichigo himself is Zangetsu. Ichigo’s reflection of his innermost self is just his entire body reflected in the mirror. And the deepest desire of his Zanpakuto spirit? To protect Ichigo the way that Ichigo desires to protect all the others around him.
Not only does Ichigo’s entire motivation written around this hunger for pwoer to protect the others around him, it’s also his greatest flaw, and what causes his moment of weakness in the Lust Arc. When Ichigo starts to desire to win too much, forgetting all the cosequences is when we see his full hollowfication.
At his worst moment, Ichigo turns into a mdndless monster, violently attacking everything around him even his own firends, and murmuring the words protect, protect, protect, under his breath. His desire to protect is both his strongest quality, and his greatest weakness.
HEART, ORIHIME AND RENJI
The characteristics of a “heart” character are pretty much what you’d expect: courage, self-sacrifice, occasional rashness and impulsivity.
If the body is the protector then the heart is the nurturer. They see to the emotional needs of the people around them, they are the ones who inspire. In a lot of shonen main character trios, the heart is either the main character, or the girl, which makes Renji’s characterization a fun exception.
Orihime is characterized by her gentle nature, her desire to be helpful in battle to the point where she nearly has a breakdown when Urahara tells her she can’t fight on the front lines. Her power while the strongest single healing power in the series even capable of reversing time, is often underestimated because it’s not so great at physical combat and that’s delbierately because the power is a reflection of Orihime’s inner psyche and Orihime’s gentle nature does not want to hurt people.
Orihime playing the role of the caretaker, is often the character most concerned by the way Ichigo is willing to hurt himself in battle (think the Grimmjow arc, Ichigo stops taking so many hints when he realizes how much watching him get hurt fighting for her sake distresses Orihime). It’s also a role that Orihime chooses to show for her enemies, such as making the choice to heal an arracncar who previously tormented her while under captive. Orihime is also a self-sacrificial person, the hueco mundo arc is kicked off by her desire to willingly go with Ulquiorra for the sake of her friends.
There is also a lot of heart symbolism associated with Orihime. Ulquiorra is the most emotionless of the Espada, and gives a speech to her believing the human heart doesn’t exist, going so far as threatening to break her chest open to find it.
The climax arc of Hueco Mundo and Orihime’s character conflict is called “The Lust” and what is Lust, but physical attraction without love.
Hearts are also, characterized by their vulnerability. It’s called wearing your heart on your sleeve. And this is where Renji becomes relevant. The fact that Orihime isn’t a strong physical fighter doesn’t make Orihime a bad character, because her entire character revoles around the idea of contributing as a support even if you’re not the most powerful person or the one winning fights, and so does Renji’s.
Renji and Orihime are both characters who are characterized by their fear of their own weakness. Renji throughout the soul society arc, gives up before he even begins to fight, because he believes deep down that no matter how hard he fights he’ll never surpass Byakuya. He calls himself a stray dog barking at the moon, due to his tendency to just let Rukia go and his belief it’s impossible for him to ever reach her.
Renji and Orihime are also both, the pursuers in their romantic relationships with Rukia and Ichigo respectively. Relatinoships that for both of them seem nothing more than one-sided crushes at first. Renji’s role is also as a carteaker, as her childhood friend, his only desire is to give her a family, and a home. However, at the start of the soul society arc, he is too paralyzed by his fear of his own weakness to do so. Renji’s self sabotage is his greatest flaw, as it is for Orihime.
Returning to the tragic “Lust” arc, Orihime’s greatest desire is to play caretaker for Ichigo the same way Renji wants to Rukia, and her greatest moment of weakness is when she overrelies on Ichigo as a protector and begs him too hard for his help. In her fear she forgets that she’s just as capable of supporting him as he is her, and for the first time in the whole arc acts like a damsel. (Ironically, despite being kidnapped, Orihime makes a lot of choices and demonstrates agency while under her captor’s thumbs. I’d say this is the first time the whole arc she acts afraid and helpless, but that’s a meta for another time).
When they overcome these flaws rather than succumb to them however, both Orihime and Renji are excellent support to Ichigo. When Ichigo freezes up in the final battle, the same way that Ichigo was the one who gave Renji the push to get back on his feet so many years ago, he becomes Ichigo’s shoulder to lean on. Renji isn’t a character who wins a lot of the fights he’s in, he never becomes captain and stays in his position as Lieutenant to Byakuya at the end of the manga and yet he has his place in the story because of his unwavering support of Ichigo and the people around him.
MIND, ISHIDA AND RUKIA
One might think as the female lead Rukia is the heart, bu au contraire mon friendo. Mind characters are characterized by their knowledge, and Rukia’s primary role for the first part of the story pre-soul society arc is Ichigo’s guide into the word of soul reapers and hollows around him. Mind characters are often partnered up together with heart character, Rukia and Renji are practically always showing up together after the end of the soul society arc as a pair, during the final fights of the soul society arc and hueco mundo arc respectively, it’s Ishida who gets left watching over orihime.
Most commonly, authors mark their male protagonist, the Male Principle of the Work, as heart and their female protagonist, the Female Principle of the Work, as mind. If they have a companion, he or it will be marked as Body. If you look back at the Mundus Elementaris that I just posted you’ll see that Sun corresponds to Cor (heart) and Moon to Cerebrum (brain).
[...]
The characteristics of a “mind” character are if anything even more obvious. “Mind” characters are knowledgeable, book-smart, and sometimes overly cautious.
Rukia is surrounded by moon symbolism, it’s in the background of literally the first panel she’s drawn in. Rukia has also appeared in cover pages at the “crescent moon” to Ichigo’s “black sun.”
The greatest flaw of mind characters is their tendency to be inside their own head (shocking that). When they are at their strongest they are rational, decisive, and act as a guide to the main character, when they are at their weakest they become indecisive and trapped. The entire conflict in the Soul Society Arc is Rukia does not desire to be saved, because her survivor’s guilt has led her to accept her own execution.
Rukia even represses her own desires, and feelings such as her fear of death, in order to accept her fate, ignoring the feelings of those who are fighting so hard to stop her execution.
I would also say there is a distinct difference in the way Rukia and Orihime interact with Ichigo that shows the interplay between mind and herart, Rukia is an incredibly important person to Ichigo, but she’s not really his caretaker, she rarely plays nice with his feelings. Orihime is the one who nurtures Ichigo when he is in a slump, whereas Rukia challenges him directly. Yet even at those times, she is acting as his guide.
Ishida plays a similiar role in the story, the same way that Rukia is our introduction and guide to the role of soul reapers, it’s Ishida who reveals tot he audience and Ichigo the existence of the quincies the human hollow slaying counterpart of the soul eaters.
Ishida is cold, logical, he also challenges Ichigo the same way that Rukia does, rather than playng buddy buddy or playing nice with his feelings. He is most times the most distant friend of the group, despite being as close of a friend to the central four. He also shares Rukia’s flaw of indecision and the tendency to retreat into his own head. He spends the vast majority of the Thousand Year Blood War arc, having gone off on his own and separated from his friends. Just like Rukia, he doesn’t go back, or inform his friends of his activities. His flaw is characterized as his indecisveness, just as Rukia sits in the tower and waits for her execution, Ishida is not immediately able to join with and help his friends.
When they are at their strongest however, mind characters are guiding lights, especially in tense emotional situations they are still able to act and make decisions. Remember how I keep repeatedly bringing up the Lust as the most tragic arc in the manga, basically the only character that wasn’t acting as their worst self at the time was Ishida who kept a cool and rational head taking care of Orihime and Ichigo. He’s the one who tries to prevent Ichigo from going on a rampage, he’s the one Ichigo protects, and Ulquiorra fights the whole time a losing battle where he doesn’t lose his mind the same way Orihime and Ichigo do.
As for Rukia her strongest moments are also when she’s able to overcome her emotions, there are plenty of times she’s the one who delivers the giudance to Ichigo when he’s at his most troubled and overcome by his emotions but for a moment in Rukia’s own arc, her greatest victory in the Thousand Year Blood War arc is overcoming the emotion of fear and winning against it.
She even overcomes a fear which her older brother Byakuya succumbed too. Her perfect self control, and winning against an opponent with the clever use of her bankai to just freeze her body in order to suppress her emotoins is a very mind inspired victory.
So in summary, Ichigo is the center of both trios and the one who plays the role of protector, the body. Orihime and Renji play nurturer and support to the two other members acting as their emotional heart. Whereas Ishida and Rukia are the knowledgeable guides, and also the ones who challenge Ichigo’s resolve and decision making.
